You are speaking of physical pain, the sufferings of the flesh, no? How is that not the suffering that goes with material being? — Janus

We put the plain ontology of "stuff" out of relevance, but we keep the term "material" if you like, simply because it can be used to indicate the actualities in the world, the "material basis" of ethics and religion is excatly to the point. But as a metaphysical thesis that posits the most basic thinking in ontology, material being it is most misleading, for even at best, it is just a functional place holder for general references. At worst, it is entirely vacuous, for one can never witness "material being" since being is not A being. There is no one thing, but is meant as the eternal substratum of all beings. (But it is not as if there is nothing to this nothing. No name dropping here, but this once: the matter of the nothing of metaphysics and its anxiety is covered in a fascinating discussion by Kierkegaard and Heidegger.)

No, I prefer to keep with reality. What is THERE, evident to our sight, and makes the strongest claim to the Real? I'd say a death by a thousand cuts qualifies, or being in love, or Hagen Dasz, a close second.

Of course there would not be pain without awareness of it. We live to some extent at least, conscious lives. It is very difficult to consciously eliminate intense physical pain from consciousness; we need physical intervention to achieve that. We need analgesics and anesthetics to eliminate pain.

Why do we care? We care because we wish to avoid suffering and experience happiness, joy. We also want our lives to be interesting, and perhaps for some, creative. Above all we wish to be comfortable and confident being ourselves. — Janus

But now you have to take the next analytic step, which is into ontology. I am asking about the ontology of value-in being. It is not so weird as it may sound. Here I am, the observer with my senses and reason in full and clear apprehension, and there is this "presence" emanating from my sprained ankle. One asks, what is this? Of course, if this were an empirical question, one would have context ready to hand for classification, but we are not asking that kind of question. This is a metaphysical question and the classification takes us into far less solid analytical territory, at least at first.

And if this were simply a question of what analytic philosophers call qualia, then it would be a vacuous, for who cares about "being appeared to redly" and the like? Red as a pure phenomenon is unspeakable presence or "givenness". Value, the broad sense of "pathos" in the world. But sprained ankles and the like are not vacuous at all. Indeed, it classifies as THE most salient feature of our existence, and of existence in any context.

It is a perspective that does require a rather unusual intuitve move, I think, I have observed: One has to understand that by dismissing materialism or physicalism, we also dismiss the idea of the metaphysics of locality. It is one thing to say there is a mountain over there, a tree at the base, and I am here, and so on. But one of the most striking features of taking this normal kind of referencing and raising it to the status of metaphysics is this localization is inserted into the question of being. But being is not A being. It is not here and there, but rather here and there are "in" being. The importance of this lies in ontological prioritizing, for science deals with beingS, and this significantly undermines the importance if importance, if you will, for something being important is conceived as a localized affair, and this has led to the absurd analytic view that a thing being important is "there, in that locality called a human being," and therefore of no consequence outside of contexts of, say, anthropology, biology or psychology. The idea here is that this view undermines our existence AS it exists. We are, in the most basic way to put, existence itself, not a localized thing.

We cannot rationally combine different contexts into a comprehensive "master context" (which would amount to a total lack of context), that could unify all our experience and understanding. That is a folly, a delusive dream, born of intellectual hubris, I would say. It is important to know our limits; we cannot be omniscient. — Janus

If all there were, were contextuality of meanings in a finite setting, then I would agree. But this is not the world. Consider that it is not the scientist's hubris that gave us physics. It is the scientific method (or, the hypothetical deductive method of Popper and the pragmatists, if you like) and what does this tell us, I mean, loosely speaking? Observe and think, only here, we have withdrawn from empirical categories because the question is not an empirical one. Nor is it about the analyticity of logic. It is about the analyticity of existence.

What is religion all about? It is about an analytic of existence that gives a foundation for ethics that has the certainty of logical apodicticity. This I would emphasize is what is all about. I should underline it because it is a pretty good way to put it. There.

We can see that myths of omniscience, godhood, grow up around charismatic spiritual figures like Jesus and Gotama, but this only leads to empty dogmatism. The human spirit constantly evolves and we need to find ourselves, become ourselves, in the modern context, not in looking back to the ancients, focusing on and bemoaning what we mistakenly imagine has been lost. — Janus

Well, forget about al this. You and I are responsible thinking people, not mindless dogmatists (though I am sure Gautama Siddhartha was on to something very much to the point here). Not at all intersted in ancient thinking, though the ancients themselves are quite interesting.

For me it seems a step backwards. "Universal" denotes that which applies in all contexts, and I don't believe there is any such thing, Hegel's absolutism was not a step further than Kant. — Janus

Well, one has to look at the language and how it makes knowledge possible. It is not that Hegel was right in all he said. But somethings make some sense. I have before me the full being of a coffee cup. Yet I know my knowing this is through the general, the historicity of coffee cups, cups in general, drinking vessels and on and on. The apprehension of THIS coffee cup is through this language that understands things, not through any direct apprehension of the object. The only thing that is directly apprehended is value-in-the-world, and this is of course received in language like everythign else, but , if you will, pain and joy "speak" which is why Wittgenstein refused to talk about it. Speaking ruins, vitiates the world of importance-in-things.

Your wording seems a complicated way of saying something simple and fairly commonplace - that philosophy has the capacity to lead individuals to deeper contemplation and understanding, surpassing the traditional realm that religion once solely occupied. Perhaps yours is a quest for foundational justification for compassion. — Tom Storm

Yes! But hold on with that word justification. The process of the affirmation is discursive, but the evidence, in the end, is ontologically revelatory. Ontology is a sticky word, meaning it is, as with all philosophical foundational words, inherently metaphysically indeterminate. When one talks about THIS kind of ontological inquiry, one is already in religious analysis. i would put the case like this: Imagine that the ten commandment were true. It's just a supposition, and so you can't just dismiss because one can so easily. That would miss the point. So let's say its all true, as true as physics, but more so. And what is now simply an assumption, an axiom of existential standing, is a proper premise for justification. In the light of this, how does this change the way one understands the world?

Here the question goes not to the gravitas of its commandments, but to the gravitas of what stands behind them, for something like "honor thy mother and father" is still, in itself, just a bit of ethical normativity. God is now the foundational ontological justification, and by definition, if you will, there is no gainsaying God. It is at least as strong as, say, modus ponens or the principle of identity, in rational coercivity. You know, no choice. Even Dostoyevsky's Underground Man would have to bow low. The difference here is, this apodicticity, or necessity, is existential! How would this change the world? So we drop the ten commandments, and we drop God, for the supposition served its purpose, and now what is left is the, heh, heh, "the power and the glory". I really shouldn't use such a phrase because of its connotative bs, but I'll keep it. Because what I am trying to reveal is, IF this argument for the essence of religion I have been trying to defend, is right, and I am sure it is, then we live in just this kind of world. One does not go to ancient texts for justification. It is "written" in the analysis of our existence.

How so? I say, all we need to do is observe the world's ethical and aesthetic dimension. Look closely, that is, analytically. What is the nature of this dimension? This is the question. It is not a question of the way it is historically taken up in the reification of traditions, because all of this is just a bad attempt, bad metaphysics, since it was not conceived responsibly with an eye exclusively on the what is in-the-world. This here is just good science. Just not empirical science.

Given his "fundamental question", maybe Constance has not considered (e.g.) Spinoza's conatus. — 180 Proof

Not quite there. It is more fundamental than this. The value dimension of our existence is something that cannot be further reduced to more talk about metaphysical tendencies, direction, energy, or "impetus" or anything else. It is entirely irreducible, that pain in my ankle and this amazingly delicious hagen Dasz. Of course, facts are facts entangled and singularity is lost in the richness of the world. But this does not alter the nature of the value-presence, which is most evident in the the strongest and most unambiguous expressions, like having your head in a vice.

Maybe it's Schrodinger's — Wayfarer

Something weird going in quantum mechanics. But the weirdest thing I can imagine lies in the simplicity of the epistemic impossibility of there being a cat at all. This is not to say there is no cat, certainly not. It is to say that the HOW of knowing there is a cat is impossible to discover. Epistemology is impossible, unless a new paradigm of discovery is admitted, for causality in a physicalist paradigm is just flat out wrong. The trouble with quantum mechanics, and this is not a technical observation, is that it may be that the only way understand things like quantum entanglement is through the phenomenology of our existence that studies the imposition of the conditions of perceptual possiblity: the "out there" of physics is woefully inadequate. The failure to observe the epistemic connectivity between us and the world is bound up with the failure to see quantum entanglement.

Half dead cats? Adorable.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s what my confrères would have argued. The quotidian is metaphysics. I would have thought metaphysics is unavoidable even if some think their version is ‘real life’ while the metaphysical foundations of others are flights of fancy. — Tom Storm

But then, all this is standing on the outside looking in. Why does one read philosophy? Is it to understand all that your confrères were talking about? What Davidson or Quine were talking about? Or is it to understand the world? I think one has to have one's passions really involved in the pursuit of truth, for truth is not simply, as Rorty put it, something propositions have. Truth lies IN the passion itself, otherwise it is just an abstraction. One has to care about one's finitude in the midst of radical indeterminacy, because our existence is essentially ethically and aesthetically founded on caring. We ARE caring, and caring seeks consummation. Such a thing is generally confined to the usual matters, the owning of things and basic enjoyments. But philosophy takes one thoughtfully where religion once could only go.

I suppose in order to see this, one has to be interested in the first place. I mean prior to sitting down with a text, is it the thrill of combative argument that drives one? Is it like reading a novel, a good narrative? Or is one simply insistent on getting as deeply as possible into understanding this impossible world we are thrown into?

I stopped caring about what my confrères were talking about long ago. I find it useful now, but I don't think about philosophy so I can talk about how Nietzsche was taken up by Heidegger, or how Platonism influenced Christianity, and so on. These are just intellectual indulgences.

↪Constance I think 'general' is a better, less loaded, and less potentially misleading term than 'universal'. For example, a dog is considered to be an instance of a species, an example of a specific kind within a genus. Of course, each dog is a specific or particular example of a species. This is all 'types and tokens' thinking, which is central to the human understanding of the world.

The language changes depending on whether we are considering types of tokens; relative to a particular dog 'species' is a general term, whereas relative to a particular species, genus is a general term, and so on. There would seem to be nothing universal about it, the terms change their references depending on whether we are thinking in terms of tokens or types.

So, the point is that the central idea is contextuality, not universality, categories based on family resemblances, on recognition of patterns of form and configuration, not on essences. — Janus

But go a step further into Kant, where Hegel got it. The universal is part of the structure of language's logic. I say "look there!" But "there" is where exactly? Because the term is used in any and all contexts of location and itself as a spatial index is just a generality. Yes, of course, there means there, under the table. But language doesn't do this. Context does this, and context dealsj ust with more language that has just this universality in their meaning.

I'd say we care because (or if) it is our nature to care. There is not some anterior reason that leads us to think we should care. We are instinctively attached to our lives and want to preserve them, just as animals are. — Janus

I have no doubt that this is true. How does one respond to the question , what is caring? as an ontological matter? What is value-in-being? And what is the real standard for talking about things existing? Consider the pale metaphysics of, say, material substance and how this stands vis a vis, oh, the late stages of beubonic plague and the deep suffering it involves: which one is the stronger basis for what exists? Suffering is presence-in-the-world, while material substance altogether lacks presence, yet the latter rules modern ontology. Patently absurd. No, the real belongs to value, greater or lesser, it is the very foundation of meaning.

I'm not sure what your "this" refers to here. Care is central to everything we do, even for those who don't seem to care about anything much. — Janus

I agree. The point is, what IS it? It has this radically weak ontology in tradition and in popular thought. This is due to, I argue, the rise of technology and the attending dismissal primordial meanings in our culture. God was, to remind, not this absurd first cause, etc. God was redemption and consummation of value in our exdistence.

It is not an intrinsic part of the world (although Heidegger would say it is, but he uses "world" to refer to the specific human world of dasein); the point is the world does not care about humanity, no matter how much humanity might care about the world (not much it seems given the state of the environment). — Janus

The world has to be first defined. Heidegger did not have an ethics, or, did not discuss ethics, much to the alarm of Levinas, Henry and others. Hence their endless complaining. But for H metaphysics (ask Josh __ about this) is the ontotheological structure of a culture, and this is clearly lacking a metaethics. Like Nietzsche, H didn't understand ethics at all. He wasn't equipped, perhaps. But he did deny, with N, the "suprasensory place" of God, not just God.
But one has to look closely at what the "world" does: The world is the source for value-in-the-world. It "gives" us our afflictions as a possibility for ethics to exist at all., The "preference" for "the good" iin the world is NOT a fabrication, like the various institutions that are so easily assailable. The world "makes" these preferences. This is a point I would emphasize.

But is that really the case? I spent much of my young life associated with the New Age movement as it was called back in the 1980's. Most of my friends were idealsits and Theosophists and Buddhists and Hindus and Jungians and Gnostics and Sufi mystics, etc. Quantum physics was seen as proof of idealism, etc. So metaphysics was very much the flavour of the day. I also grew up with Jung, the archetypes and collective unconscious, so I was not exactly immured in 20th century scientism or common sense. — Tom Storm

But, I am arguing, none of this is metaphysics, any more than attending church and listening to sermons about the the resurrection, the ascension, and taking the sacraments. This is talk about metaphysics. I claim something far more interesting and difficult, which is acknowledging that the everyday world really is the setting for metaphysics, metaethics, metavalue. Kant famously drew the line between phenomenon and noumenon. I am saying it is all noumenal.

What is the justification for this? It begins with argument at the basic level. For example: how is knowledge possible? Answer: it is not. Or, what does it mean that the value dimension of our existence is absolute, that is, it cannot be contradicted in its nature? Such questions challenge all assumptions of our existence.

But aren't these questions a bit naff? I don't know about yours, but my cat exists. I know this because if I don't feed him he give me hell. I subscribe somewhat to Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of language as being an arbitrary set of signs and signifiers that we use to point to things in the world. General Motors is the collective noun for a company. — Tom Storm

Naff? Well, try not to be put off by this too much, and perhaps allow yourself the indulgence of looking past facile judgment. I mean, if you have read Saussure, then you have to follow through on to Derrida, and grasp his notion of the trace. No space to discuss this, but look, no one is saying your cat doesn't exist. It was Saussure who noted that difference is the principle of language, and so when you see your cat, and experience the singularity of it being there, the language that is implicit in the identification never affords this singularity; rather, the cat is received as a "trace" of the many cat related ideas that rise to the occasion that produce the singularity. And so here, one can say taht the analysis of the knowledge relation with the cat reveals that you are not grasping one thing. Language doesn't do this. Language gives one "regions" of possibilities out of which one thought emerges. It is truly a fascinating account, and contributes significantly to understanding the idea here about metaphysics: Metaphysics never was IN the language act that speaks something.

See the above: how is knowledge possible? Well, it isn't. YET, there is no question I see the cat. And so knowledge is simply a fact. Quite the problem to solve. Only one solution I see: The terms of object intimation (the cat) must exceed the idea of locality. It simply cannot be that that cat over there is independent and localized as normal perception tells us.

An error in consciousness, it has been said. — Wayfarer

But it shows that concepts are not empty things. They are palpable errors. As I see it, when we talk about the world, we are using categories of understanding. These are concepts, so when I see a dog, the particular dog in front of me is known because I have this schematic in my head about dogs in general, the universal that subsumes the particular. Hegel said THIS dominates the understanding, and you can see his point. Language is not about particulars, so seeing anything at all is grasped by the universal. But the universal to particular relation makes the dog a dog, and without it, well, this is impossible to "say". The point would be that when Buddhists and Hindus meditate, the reason why this is so hard to fully realize is because one is not merely shutting up. One is trying to break this powerful bond that creates an understanding of something. This destroys familiarity itself!

I know what you are saying, but it feels too metaphysical too fast, or epistemological, asking “Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world?”. We no longer need the content, such as the “the essence of religion”, to continue the conversation this inquiry might become. — Fire Ologist

To discover the essence of religion, one has to be torn away from default mundane relations with the world. I mean, the world we experience every day. The metaphysics of it has to be treated not as a thesis, but as an encounter with the world, something we don't do in our culture. Curious to ask if we ever did, particularly in ancient cultures where knowledge assumptions were so few compared to this modern and post modern "disillusionment" so common.

The epistemological problem is the same as the problem in ontology (the idea I am pushing here is that of a value-in-being). These are two sides of the same event. It is not as if the world in question reveals itself "outside" of the epistemic encounter, and indeed, it is the encounter that "makes" the world what it is. Not to say there is nothing out there that is not me, but rather to say that what IS before me is the phenomenon, and nothing else, and to behold the phenomenon is in the beholding the beheld object. It is impossible remove affirmations in ontology from those of epistemology.

So we encounter lamps and desks and chairs, and we also encounter feelings, this whole affectivity of our existence. This latter needs to be understood for what it is apart from the "tranquilized" life of passive assumptions. As Wayfarer said, it seems this move is easier for some, harder for others, but no doubt, it is not just cogitating on a thesis. It is revelatory. The metaphysical move you mention as being a bit too quickly affirmed, is first thought out, but the "movement" (as Kierkegaard put it, though he had trouble with this, he admits) is revelatory, and quite fast...that is, immediate. It is essentially aesthetic (keeping in mind the way Wittgenstein conflated the two, ethics and aesthetics. Both are value-driven. Religion, aesthetics and ethics are all about the same thing).

But it feels like we could easily head into a digression away from statements like “the world IS religious.”. Perfectly good questions but, we now need never talk about religion. — Fire Ologist

Or perhaps religious talk has to arise after the most fundamental insight is achieved. Take theodicy, a theological conundrum, but based on the premise that God is the greatest, loosely speaking, and created the world. Now we no longer think like this, as we are up to our eyebrows in faith in evidentially grounded belief. This is the virtue of this phenomenological approach to religion as it frees metaphysics from arbitrary concepts that generate the omni this and omni that and the creator of all things. All of this is dismissed. But we do have this: good and evil, and the metaphysics in which these are revealed, remembering that metaphysics is no longer the suprasensory other world, but is this world, and their "properties" spelled out before us is often vivid and powerful, referring to the burns, abrasions and the rest of the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as well as love and beauty and bliss. We know we ar "thrown into" this world. Being thrown is a term referring to what happens when one makes this move out of mundanity and sees there is no foundation beneath one's feet, for the myths are gone. The theology is gone. Gone is everything, when inquiry turns to religion.

Metaphysics is now a responsible term.

The same indeterminacy of our existence could also be said to have given birth to science. (I see this is why Nietzsche could say academic science could lie as much as religion could). — Fire Ologist

Yes. Reason itself cannot be conceived, for that would take reason. Where IS this beginning that is so mysterious? Here is a word from Eugene Fink from his Sixth Meditation:

The preliminariness and indeterminateness of the
indications we gave regarding inquiry back to world-constitution
arose from our wanting to be careful that from the outset we not
encumber or even conceal genuine philosophical comprehension
in the phenomenological sense, viz., constitutive understanding, by
a preset "characterization.

When one gets to this, well, call it, hallowed ground of first apprehensions, one is nowhere in a very real way. Science has be denuded. Nietzsche puts it like this in Human, all too Human:

The shaper of language was not so modest as to think that he was only giving
things labels; rather, he imagined that he was expressing the highest knowledge of
things with words; and in fact, language is the first stage of scientific effort. Here, too,
it is the belief in found truth from which the mightiest sources of strength have flowed.
Very belatedly (only now) is it dawning on men that in their belief in language they
have propagated a monstrous error.

I get what he is talking about, though most emphatically deny his naturalistic bottom line. He didn't understand ethics or religion essentially. Our ethics IS ethics. Why? Because of the absoluteness of value. (I can't remember if I talked about this here). I think N was just too constantly ill to know anything else but the will to power and overcoming.

Science and religion are equally concept making, indeterminacy regulators. It’s why they always wrestle for the same space with the “why” the how, the what, the whether. — Fire Ologist

I agree. Science should understand that it is just not to be mistaken for metaphysics, which is what so many do these days.

We fill this indeteminacy with laws.l. They could be rational, scientific laws. Be it ethical or not, or only ethical, or scientific or not, or only scientific, it’s all still mixed with the indeterminate.

I can’t argue what I see in where this is going, but I can describe it. — Fire Ologist

Christians are find of saying God is love, but take the step prescribed here, and they will see that love is a terribly burdened word, overused and trivialized. They have to do what Heidegger did, which is to replace vocabulary so as to talk about things anew. Language literally makes discovery possible (" the house of being"), yet it also creates the terms of its own obfuscation. Where this is going is to a dropping of terms that privilege clarity of meaning (the analytic school's obsession), in favor of a truly descriptive vocabulary at the basic level. This is phenomenology, what I think will be the final religion.

What it means, adds to this world, moves it”self” (the existence IS me), ahead of the world, in to the world, like being thrown. We throw our”selves” into this world. — Fire Ologist

You sound a bit like Heidegger: We do not live in time. We ARE time. And the basic furniture of the world is not material things in space and time, but events, forward looking. Hence, Being and Time. Our most authentic existence is our freedom, as free as an unmade future.

But only then, after by some means being thrown to throw our selves back might we start to look for what this becomes, such as a vision of indeterminacy, be it radical ethical, or rational, or ethical first, or rational with ethical color first…etc.

So I’ve lost your point again about religion qua religion. Something making use of the word “essence” about “religion.”

Or does the overlap between scientific objectification (the rational, yielding speech itself). like ethical objectification (yielding religion) show I’m at least standing in the same vicinity as you? — Fire Ologist

Religion qua religion, that is religion that is set apart from all that religious culture and theology, which entangles affairs in so many things that have nothing to do with religion, like long shiny robes and choirs of angels and lent and Easter and Passover, and on and on. What happens when one wants to be free of the culture to see what is there that is real beneath it all, like asking a politician what she really stands for apart from all the posturing asking, is there a real person behind this endless rhetorical blather?

Anyway, religion is metaphysics. Period. Metaethics, to be precise, a pursuit of "the good" and "the bad" in an effort to escape mere contingency of all we talk about. Hard to say briefly, but perhaps you have read Stanley Fish's Is There a Test in this Class? Language does not pin to any fixed contexts, so meanings are all variable, depending on what one is talking about. The search or the essence of religion is a search for something that is BOTH noncontingent and Real. Something that has the apodicticity of logic, but issues from existence, not the apriority of the mere form of thought, apriori, as Kant put it.
We find this in the value dimension of our existence. We can talk about this if you like.

Death is feared because it represents the radically unknown, the radically unknowable, and this is naturally profoundly unsettling, as the very idea of non-existence may also be.

Add to this that death is associated with the humiliating loss of physical and cognitive powers, as well as being possibly associated with terrible pain. Add to this the loss of loved ones and everything familiar. It is not surprising that people should wish for immortality and an afterlife which is perfect, unlike the present life. — Janus

True. But ask a more fundamental question: why do we "care"? Yes, it is traumatic, as are many things. But to be traumatized, so strongly affected has a dimension to it that is glossed over in the descriptive accounts of the things that actually do this, and this passes by a very important primordiality of our existence which is at the root of ethics and religion: caring. Of course, caring itself can glossed over, and rightly so as we are busy trying to understand other things, but implcit in these is the interest, elation, joy of wonder, concern, and so on, and this is IN the essence of ethics and therefore religion. You know, no caring, no religion. Caring's existential counterpart, the experience itself of the elation, the sad disappointment, the humiliation you mention above, it is this Wittgenstein could not find "in the world".

Such a strange thing it is, no? the scalding of my finger the other day hurt terribly, and the philosophical question hovered over the event: certainly there are the facts before me on the "grid" of "states of affairs," but this "badness" is altogether elusive to understanding. This is because, the "qualia" of pain is not at all like "being appeared to redly," say. It informs thought about something else, and it is not the vacuity of being a color. It is momentous, and this momentousness issues from "the world" (which is a confusing term given the way Wittgenstein uses it vis a vis others others) and not in a fetishized (as I call it) factuality. I mean, horrible pain is momentous existentially! It is not contingently momentous, as say a stock market crash and all inversted funds perished. Which is what I call a fetish of value: stock markets are entirely contrived institutions, on the grid of sense making, but only because we put them there. The scalding of the finger, not THIS is the impossible world "speaking" our ethics and religion PRIOR to our institutions.

I see how you are framing this. Interesting. But I'm not sure what the significance of this is, or where it gets us. No doubt it all depends upon how one views the notion of reality and the possibility of knowledge. — Tom Storm

Because you and I have spent our lives in a world that ignores metaphysics. Such a thing is both the furthest away from "common sense" yet the closest to our existence. When I see my cat on the sofa, I am instantly attuned to the same cat, the same thing daily talked about in all the usual contexts, and in this perspective has nothing new at the basic level because the basic level is never challenged, is it, for the thought of it is nonsense. But the difference lies in the interpretative act of receiving the world. Receiving is not done as if perception is a mirror of nature (to borrow a term). How could anyone think that when the cat is processed in a brain, the outcome is the crystal clear cat itself?

There is the famous analogy in Hinduism (I think it was Adi Shankarya) of the snake and the rope that says when I see the cat in the normal way, it is essentially just an error, as if I mistook a piece of rope for a snake walking down the street. It is the same world, but all along there has been this fundamental mistake at the perceptual level. The snake was in the interpretative event, and the fear followed, and one can imagine summoning the townspeople in search of the deadly thing, and so on. Such is what is called culture, the massive sublimation of original energy. For Freud (and Vera Mont may go after me on this. But I speak loosely here) culture is a grand sublimation of original energy, a kind of fetish --parasitical on the unseen original, this language and the institutions so familiar. I ask this question: does General Motors "exist"? This is meant to be taken seriously. Do marriages and funerals or Yale and Dartmouth "exist"? Or, are they "real"?

Such an odd question, but see how things like this get tossed about so readily in conversations, problem solving, actualities in the world. But really, isn't it just as Shankarya put it, an error? Constructed pragmatically to deal with issues more fundamental like people being bound in love, respected when dead, solving technical problems that invented out of the very language and culture that multiplied things in own grand sublimation of the world?

How about my cat: does she exist? How is the word 'cat' such that when I use it, I am dealing with the real? Or is the term just like General Motors?

I think there is probably a lot to this. But of you are correct, doesn't this mean that everyone is religious in some way, even the atheist, who also has to grapple with these issues, and in some way yield to the moral insistence you describe? Do you want to modify your concept to exclude atheists and those who identify as irreligious? Or do you want to say that everyone is religious in the sense you mean it, whether they like it or not?

Atheists tend to base their irreligiosity on the grounds that an essential element of religion is a set of beliefs about the world that there is not reason to believe. But you've explicitly said that's not the feature of religion you are talking about. — bert1

I think this is an insightful statement. Yes, we are always already IN a religious world, whether we are explicitly religious or not. Of course, religion is a term that has a history, a tradition, and considerable connotative baggage, so clearly I am not talking about A religion. I am saying that religion is a lot like art: there was a time when art was everywhere in a society's lived experiences. Art, says Dewey, has its essence IN experience itself. Then came the modern practice of sequestering art, and the museum was born, and art is now a professional's business, and very few of us are ":artists". Something similar has happened with religion, hasn't it? The churches, the clergy, the rituals, the scriptures; I mean, this kind of thing has been going on a long time, of course, but the practice has formalized and specialized and made into an institution something which has its foundation in the structure of consciousness itself.

Atheism is just an opinion about theism, and theism is just bad metaphysics.

Perhaps, linking the two examples, fear is a physiological response to one or more stimuli, either active (say, a loud noise or the sudden, unexpected presence of a possible danger) or passive (a thought or possibility on one's mind that has the potential to become disastrous), that causes a distinct feeling of unease due to the possibility of loss of control or well-being? — Outlander

Perhaps you can see that I am pursuing a rather odd take of this kind of thing. Fear of death is not primordial because it begs the question: what is wrong with fear? referring to the experience itself. Fear, dread, anxiety, terror, and the rest have a great number of explanatory contexts, as you suggest. But what about nature of the experience itself? Very unpleasant. What is pleasure? This kind of question exposes The nature of religion.

Surely that depends on what one chooses to define ethics as. In a simple definition of what is largely perceived to be right or wrong by a given social majority based on absolute factors such as human suffering, malaise, and distress compared to comfort, pleasure, and contentedness, again, more so or "as the majority of normal functioning humans respond and demonstrate", it most certainly has some form of measurement or quantification. How could it not? — Outlander

Anything can have some form of quantification. But consider: in defining the nature of ethics, we have to deal with value, and this looks to the infamous "good and "bad" which can certainly quantified, as in, how bad is that sprained ankle? But the nature of the experience of pain itself, this is simply "there" in the "fabric of things." In the pure givenness of the world. What makes this so important is that givenness at this primordial level stands apart from explanatory possiblities, as all qualia do, as a pure phenomenon. If it were a matter of, say, the color red and one were being "appeared to redly" (as they say) then no big deal: being red carries no significance at all outside of contexts where color is given meaning. But the sprained ankle is altogether different: pain is inherently ethical, that is, has a normative ethical stature: It should not exist! And this is not a contextual "should not" as when we say one shouldn't forget one's umbrella on a rainy day, BECAUSE.... You see, the normativity of this "should" is contingent. It requires a context to complete the meaning. But pain, this is stand alone "shouldn't", or, it stands as its own presupposition, its own foundation, for its own prohibition.

The point of this is to show something by my thinking to be nothing short of mystical (agreeing with Wittgenstein): ethics IS its own presupposition, its own metaethical grounding. Ethics is always already metaphysical.

What I want to say is, to even reach the precondition of being able to talk definitively about something, be it a physical thing or a conceptual idea, one must in fact, have a solid understanding of the thing in question, or in simpler terms "know what one is talking about". So, while it may not necessarily be :reducible" to the given quantification or standards of a given science, it surely has to be well-defined by concrete definitions and boundaries that enable it to be discussed and declared as "this or that" as opposed to something else. In short, it has to be, perhaps "reducible" is not the ideal term but rather "indisputably definable" in some way that effectively does enable it to be discussed and declared as having quality X or not having quality Y, etc. — Outlander

I think simple direct reference to a thing satisfies what you are looking for. There it is, a pain in my ankle. I can quantify this, certainly. But its presence is antecedent to the quantification. I mean, it is first "there" and witnessed. One can say that it is this primordial givenness that precedes anything one can say about anything.

I think this is an interesting claim for reasons I will attempt to explain. You mention just as logic itself requires a brain but discussing logic itself does not require discussion of the brain itself. Imagine, if you will, a world devoid of all sentient life. Where would ethics fit in? Where would value fit in if there is no one to value or be valued or be ethically treated or mistreated? Some might argue WE as sentient beings, rather consciousness, is the source of all value. Sure we live in a physical world and as such we value physical things required for survival, but does your above statement not have some correlation to your previous example of how discussing logic, which requires a brain, does not require discussing the brain itself? — Outlander

This takes the issue perhaps too far for comfort. A world without our sentience, our consciousness, our existence, cannot be imagined, as the very possibility requires that we leave experience to conceive such a thing. It is not as if there are no other things out there, not me or other than me. That would be absurd because, well, there they are. But these are observed in the apperceptual conditions of one's existence. Outside experience, objects are entirely transcendental. In fact, one can argue that to speak of such a thing is entirely impossible because sense can only be made of experiential possibilities.

If there is no one to be valued? It is an interesting thought. Take falling in love. The significant other, what does s/he give or take in the relation? Certainly, the other is a catalyst, to be sure, to what is latent in the beloved, for nothing really passes between the two. The other does not literally "give" anything, suggesting that one might be able to "walk on air" unaided. Like a Buddhist monk?

Assuming this is not a merely rhetorical quesrion, maybe this link (below) will help clarify for you what I mean by human fear of ... — 180 Proof

Ask Wittgenstein how it is with value experiences. There is a reason why he refused to talk about this.

But religion isn't a natural condition, nor did it exist "prior to it being taken up by cultures". It is part of our social system, the direct result of it, so to pluck it out of a culture and dissect it, probing for its "true nature" separated from the human flesh is absurd. If you want to examine religion outside of the social context, you ultimately find a primitive form of philosophy, a desire for understanding. — finarfin

I only meant to say that to understand something, one has to go to its material source, and by material I don't mean some physicality. Rather, the actuality that gave rise to it, and continues to be what it is all about. But if by natural is meant a condition that is not contrived in argument but arises up in the essential givenness of the world, then by all means, natural.

When I talk about religion being prior to culture, I meant logically prior, as a presupposition to religion. A discussion about ethics is just this, for I take religion to be, in its essence, reducible to talk about meta ethics, and meta ethics is what appears when ethics is taken to its basic questions. The institutions of ethics you refer to presuppose a fundamental condition into which we are born, that of value-in-the-world. Think of it like Kant thought of reason. Reason is everywhere, of course, in every thought and every context of engagement, but what is reason qua reason? Here I claim that to ask such a question about religion, asking what religion is qua religion, is a step directly into ethics, for religion is our institutional response to the most basic moral givennes: the deficit and the promise of "the ethical good" and "the ethical bad," as awkward as this sounds, it has to be set apart from the contingent good and bad, as with bad couches and dull knives, say.

I don't know if you care for this kind of thinking, but...

Consider that good knives are sharp knives, one may say. Unless, that is, the knife is for Macbeth, then a sharp knife is a bad knife. Welcome to contingency. But now the ethical bad, as in the prohibition to strangling my neighbor or the like. Strangling someone is terrible in a foundational way, and not to be second guessed by argument or recontextualization. It is an absolute, notwithstanding that it can be contextualized such that one may be obligated to actually strangle someone, in some awful circumstance in which NOT to strangle someone would lead to greater harm. You see the difference? Sharp knives are bad for Macbeth, and in the play the sharpness remains bad altogether. In ethics, the bad of strangulation cannot be undone, even if circumstances favor its being done.

Why is this important to religion? Religion is metaethics, that is, it lies in the analysis of ethics where the absolute is identified. No value qua value can be construed to be other than what it is. This is not to say that value is never caught up in ambiguous entanglements, for just to opposite of this is the case: it is almost always given to us in entangled ambiguities. The argument here is not to say there is such a thing as value. Value is a dimension of our existence, not "a being" of some kind.

So I am saying religion's social nature refers to intersubjective complexities that are inherently pragmatic and imaginative, but this presupposes the deeper analysis of ethics as such. Here we find the true essence of religion.

The human all-too-human fear of death — 180 Proof

I wonder, what is fear? An unwelcome feeling, no doubt. What is unwelcomeness? Some discomfort, a "bad" feeling. Bad? Where did THIS come from (and it is not a question of causality)?

I do not see the thrownness itself as something determinate or indeterminate. You might bias it towards the indeterminate, but the thrownness itself doesn't create the indeterminacy. The determinate and the indeterminate jostle for position in the thrownness, but the thrownness is just there, it's the prior, the condition of existence itself. — Fire Ologist

It is a matter of making ideas clear, and this is hard to do here. Indeterminacy and thrownness, what do these mean? Indeterminateness refers to the lack of settled position, as when we talk about bank tellers and cantaloupes; we know what these are and can talk pretty freely about them without issue in the usual giving and taking of information, insight, experience. But what about when inquiry turns to basic assumptions? The more we do this, the less determinacy we find. Calling a cantaloupe a variety of fruit, after all, begs questions: 'Fruit' is a concept, no? And so what are concepts? Already we have left the comfort zone of ready to hand assumptions, for how many of us entertain such ideas? This can be argued: is a concept a principle of synthetic inclusiveness? Is it a pragmatic way to achieve and end? Perhaps a concept is the very way finitude is defined and delimited. But is it historically structured? Is it possible for thought and its concepts to understand the world as the world? Or, my favorite: how can a concept be understood given that the understanding itself is inherently conceptual? The worst kind of question begging.

There really in no way out of this. When we make the move to this order of thinking about the presuppositions of thinking itself, we are lost in indeterminacy. We are certainly not lost when we talk about genetics or evolution or physics, I mean, these do have their paradigmatic indeterminacies (don't know if you've read Kuhn), but these reach into possiblities that make sense. Basic questions don't have this, and it is here we find metaphysics, for question begging is structural here: language cannot examine itself, I mean, logically structured talk cannot tell us what logic is.

This feeling of happiness right now occurs at an impossible distance from the words I could bring to bear upon. The term 'happiness' does not "touch" this "feeling" in its actuality, and yet, I live and breathe in it. Consider what Buddhists and Hindus do when they meditate seriously. They sever the connection of the experience of being in the world from the language that would possess it, trivialize it, bring it to heel among the common utterances, like "pass the butter, please."

It has been rightly argued that mundane living has lost the astonishment of being here. Rising to this astonishment is rising to our thrownness, that is, to a state of mind in which our assumptions about the world have been silenced, and one is free.

So something human starts to look prior to the indeterminate. This creates circular reasoning. We use "our" existence to discern "radical ethical" of the "indeterminate." But if it is "our", it might automatically include the "ethical" - and existence itself might beget the indeterminate from "our" presence in existence. So I still have to wonder what was prior, what is the condition of existence at all that begat the "our" - the self-reflection in the thrownness that found radical ethical indeterminacy. — Fire Ologist

I tried to address this above. Don't know if I succeeded.

Both of them make a predicament out of action. Ethical indeterminacy undoes any sound ethical judgment of how to act. Impossibility undoes any commitment to taking action as well. — Fire Ologist

I would stop you here. By ethical indeterminacy, I don't mean the inability to finalize judgment on various ethical problems, like whether or not one should return a borrowed ax to its angry owner and the like. I mean something much more fundamental. There is no one there to be confused about. There is no complexity of conflicting obligations. There is only the essential givenness of the world. This is our thrownness, for we have no idea at all as to why, who, purpose or plan or reason once we have left behind the traditions and story telling and rituals. The step out of naivete is only a step into indeterminacy. The trick, and I call it this because it is tricky, for my, anyway, is to understand with real clarity that one's own existence IS existence. I am not a locality of something existing, as a scientist might think, with me here, a volcano over there, my shoes on my feet, all these separate and distinct. I am existence's interiority and all indeterminacy is mine. And yours, to you. Ethics is, if you can stand the locution, what the world does!

Meditation can yield this kind of self realization that one actually IS.

Do you have a definition or a simple description of the 'transcendent'? — Tom Storm

Simple? Not a chance. BUT: once gotten, one sees that the matter is supremely simple. The complexity is needed to arrive at simplicity.
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The trouble with this word is that it is held away from our everydayness, and this is due to the way religion treats metaphysics: in a closed space of a cathedral with lots f vertical lines and set apart from everything else (reminds me of Dewey's complaint of art being shoved into museums and thereby removed from the living experience). The entirely of philosophy has tis subject matter in this lamp here on the desk (yes, the same coulds be said of physics). It is there, but only because I see it and perceive it, so what is perception? Perception is never clear of the history that memory intrudes between, if you will, me and the lamp, because I know the lamp through historical familiarity, that is, I am not some feral adult grunting and staring. Knowing is about familiarity, so it is the repetition I "see," the "oh, just that old lamp" and nothing special here. But what about perception? After all, the thing is right there in front of me and you can't say I dont see it, but only see the intrusion of memory telling me how familiar it is. But now it is a question of knowing in the massive context of a culture and a language and an extensive vocabulary of entangled ideas. OUT if this, the full presence of the thing emerges, implicitly in the simplicity of the singular perceptual encounter.

Perhaps you can see where thsi goes: Every time I try to pin down the knowledge claim about the lamp, I find myself retrieving language and associated meanings. What about "that right there" that is NOT language at all? THIS is a metaphysical question, for the object is transcendental, it cannot be "spoken" because only language can be spoken, and that there ain't language. It does take effort to see this, at least, it did for me, but eventually one begins to realize that the objects before the witnessing mind, whether they are lamps and fence posts or feelings or logical equations, or whatever, are never really presented to the conscious mind.

What about the obvioius "aboutness" of the word 'lamp' and that over there? So many ways to go after this, but the absolute annihilator of knowledge connectivity is the impossiblity of explaining how that out there gets in the this interior world of thought and perception.

We live in transcendence. We are this. I think one has to take the time to leave the text and realize that we are in this "place" that is alien to the language that we use to understand things.

Condition A.) Involvement or presence of a sentient being and Condition B.) the possibility for that sentient being to be impacted by the action or inaction of another sentient being through no action or declared will and intent of their own (ie. against their own will or sans consideration/input).

It is incredibly broad and open-ended, yes. — Outlander

So it needs to be narrowed, and this is done apophatically: What is NOT necessary to the definition of ethics? Certainly, ethics needs a context, but this does not make the contextuality part of the essence any more than requiring a brain to think makes a brain a definitional necessity to, say, logic. Something that is part of the essence of something is what makes the thing what it IS. What puts, if you will, the ethicality in ethics? So "involvement or presence of a sentient being" may be necessary but not essential to what naming what ethics in its nature.

For this, one goes to actual ethical cases to find determinative features, and finds in each case, there is caring. No caring, no ethics. Caring is not like an incidental condition, but is what ethics is "about": something cared about, at risk, in play, in competition, in the balance, to be sacrificed, endured, enjoyed, fascinated by, and so on. This is, if you will, the engine that drives ethics, one being IN a world of caring.

I will push ahead to what I think is an important question: while one clearly can have ethical relations with others, and in these relations emerges a whole vocabulary of ethical terms, like responsibility and accountability, guilt, innocence, justice and the plethora of legal terms and thinking, etc., can one have an ethical relation with the world qua world? Why not, one may ask, for just as our relations with others in based on the way others enter into our horizon of interests and aversions, so we find ourselves IN the same kind of intrusive "behavior" of the world, for after all, the world "gives" us disease, hunger and, well, a very long list of physical and psychological vulnerabilities that yield the miseries we are born into.

The point is this: if the world were simply as a scientist describes it to be, that is, an ethcailly neutral place of quantitative descriptions and systems of quantitative pragmatic categories, then there would be no religion for there would be ground for it. But this is not the world. Science cannot quantify ethics (notwithstanding Bentham's hedonic calculator, essentially a quantification calculator") because ethics is a qualitative issue. The world is not reducible to science's quantifications. The world is the source of all value, and because of this, the world presents the very possibility of ethics; therefore, the world IS an ethical "agency". It IS the transcendental source of ethics.

In Buddhist literature, there is a recognised phase of spiritual growth, "nibbida" (Pali) or "nirveda" (Sanskrit), often translated as "disgust," "disenchantment," or "turning away," denoting a turning point in spiritual growth where an individual becomes disillusioned with the vanity and suffering inherent in worldly existence — Wayfarer

I read in the Abhidhamma explicit attempts to cultivate this disgust by with unsavory associations and other techniques. This book is a fascinating analysis of the contents of the conscious mind. So detailed about emotions, appetites and their objects. Emotions are not only taken seriously, they are raised primacy, and this is the critical move: Speak sincerely about foundational ideas, and it should be plainly evident that our thinking is in the service of our affective pursuits. When I said in the OP that one thing Nietzsche was right about was his observation that all of our metaphysics is grounded in entirely contrived issues, at the heart of this is the primacy of thinking, as if God were no more than a supremely cognizant being. I mean, the idea is patently absurd, because though qua thought has no value at all. Thought is in the service of this mysterious dimension of pathos that carries extraordinary meaning into consciousness, and the Buddhists know this.

Existence qua existence is like reason qua reason in that neither can shoulder the burden of the meaning we discover in our living and breathing.

If you already believe you have a firm grasp on what you consider the essence of religion, why did you ask? I happen to disagree, but I do not have an ethical case, only an anthropological and psychological theory. — Vera Mont

It is, as all OP's, an invitation to disagree, agree and explore. Do keep in mind that anthropology and psychology are not philosophy. It is not that you disagree, rather it is that you can't access the issue. On the other hand, philosophy requires meditative thought, and this is simply a matter of being open to ideas. If I mention the word metaphysics, there is something very intuitive about this, and its doesn't require reading Kant or anyone else. In a way, being a very educated person, you already have what you need to carry on through and argument, for all that is required is reading the details of the ideas involved closely.

Psychology? Freud was a metaphysician, and Jung is no longer mentionable he was so far out there; R D Liang's Divided self is puts forth the question as to whether insanity is really so insane. The issues these and others raise get, on occasion, very close to philosophy and metaphysics. But of course, you would know more than I. Jung and religion? The self and religion vis a vis the openness of the concept of self? If the self is an open concept, then what does this make ethics and value and religion that hinges on just this?

The moral function of religion generally didn't emerge until later, and was built on already existing religions. The first religions had no need to explain morality, because the stories were probably shared among close communities — finarfin

The need to explain is ours. Certainly when religions were laid down in ancient societies, there was not the philosophical detachment from the concerns that were in play needed to give such affairs more basic inquiry.

I am not here looking for any historical analysis or speculation as to how and why certain beliefs rose to prominence, the internal societal pressures brought to bear, and so forth. Here, the question is more simple: I am asking what there is in the world that gives religion its fundamental justification. What makes religion more than just what your analysis yields, beyond the various non religious motivations and rationalizations.

What kind of a "place" is the world that calls for religion to be in the explanatory response to it? Religion deals with metaphysics, specifically, the metaphysics of ethics: the need for grounding AT ALL for our affiars beyond what is plainly there in the delimitations of finitude. Otherwise, as you would have it, religion is reducible a social dynamic.

I am not sure if I am allowed to post a poem here, but I wrote this poem and I think it summarizes my view on this probably better than if I simply tried to explain it (I am not sure why) But anyway, here it is. — Beverley

Well, it is a nice poem, I have to admit. Not Wordsworth, but charming.

But what does it argue? asks philosophy. It argues that words invent pseudo problems about matters that have noting to do with words. Religion in its essence lies outside of language. This is a big issue.

Do you think God is intuited? One could say that love or happiness is intuited, meaning if you are in love there is something that is altogether NOT language that defines the experience, but what can one "say" about it? Nothing, really, other than declaring it to be the case, but "it" in this declaration will be simply given and not reducible to further analysis. Consider pain: put a lighted match to your finger for a couple of seconds. Now what was that? There is nothing to say, save how intense and unpleasant it was. But what is was, well, we all "know" pain, but this is simply a matter of familiarity, and really not some kind of penetrating understanding. Pain qua pain is in the bare givenness of the world.

My point is this: when it comes to unmentionables like this, we are dealing with value-in-the-world, and the world cannot be spoken. Value-in-the-world is transcendental, and indeed, the world is transcendental. I think this is what your poem is about.

Short and simple: The bigness of the world, the sky full of stars, the power of elements.
They could not control or escape storms, floods, wildfires and droughts. But all these things acted in a way that appears purposeful. So they were given names and personalities that fit the behaviour. From there, it's easy for that big imagination to project a whole pantheon of supernatural beings, with their own feelings and agendas.
And then there is the death of one's parents. Who has not felt the presence of a dead mother or father hovering over their bed some nights? Who has not asked a gravestone for forgiveness or guidance or a blessing? We miss our caregivers and mentors; we don't want them to be gone. So we make shrines and bring fruit and flowers and celebrate them on a designated day.
What's to prevent one of those dead chieftains from being promoted to a place in the stars or among the natural elements? — Vera Mont

It is not a matter of a psychological response to scary things in the world that is being inquired about any more than geology is a matter of investigating the curiosity of looking into rocks and minerals. Religion IS metaethics, and this requires a look at what ethics is, and so how is it you know you have before you an ethical case at all? What are the features of an ethical case that make for ethicality? This is not a psychological question or an anthropological question. It is much, much simpler: what are the necessary conditions for a problem to be an ethical problem?

Answer this, and you have opened the door to an inquiry into the nature of religion. I opened this door, ajar, as it were, in the OP.

I think religion provides comfort and solace. It supports people to manage the fear of uncertainty, death and the often brutal realities of life. For me, it seems to be an emotional and aesthetic response to experince. And when presented as part of culture and heritage, it plays a critical role in how people make sense of reality. We are habitually drawn to coherence, comfort and harmony - despite a world where chaos and suffering predominate - a transcendental domain promises us an entire realm where unity, and completeness may be found and perhaps intermittently reflected in our lives. Personally, I do not share such a worldview. — Tom Storm

How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.

It'll take some thought.

Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.

I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.

I think religion provides comfort and solace. It supports people to manage the fear of uncertainty, death and the often brutal realities of life. For me, it seems to be an emotional and aesthetic response to experince. And when presented as part of culture and heritage, it plays a critical role in how people make sense of reality. We are habitually drawn to coherence, comfort and harmony - despite a world where chaos and suffering predominate - a transcendental domain promises us an entire realm where unity, and completeness may be found and perhaps intermittently reflected in our lives. Personally, I do not share such a worldview. — Tom Storm

How about just dropping this traditional idea of some domain or place. Such a thing is off-putting from the start. Sounds like a place to meet Jesus, and this kind of metaphysics is the stuff myths are made of.

It'll take some thought.

Here, we are asked to be scientists, and so what does a scientist do? She observes, and what is there to be observed cannot be ignored just because it is alien to popular and acceptable thinking. Religion has to be "observed" for what it is, and this involves removing what is merely incidental, like the long robe ceremonies, the endless story telling, and on and on. These are the mere trappings of religion. But what IS it that is in the world that religion is about? This is the point.

I wonder if you see the idea so far. I don't care to look at the religious texts and promises involving historical events and absurd miracles. And I certainly don't care about how theology invents metaphysical problems. I want to know the nature of something that is there to be observed, like natural condition is there for a natural scientist, PRIOR to it being taken up by cultures and their institutions and turned into an infinitely debatable construct.

It reminds me of the positivists, who responded to Wittgenstein's Tractatus in a way he never intended. Wittgenstein is the most extraordinary person, one who loved Kierkegaard, insisted on being sent to the front lines of the war just to face death, one who loved and lost deeply, and who waxed reverential on what was truly important, that part of the Tractatus which was unspoken. You know how the Tractatus ends famously with "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" Positivist Otto Neurath, added, "We must indeed be silent, but not about anything." See, this is where the line is drawn: Neurath didn't understand Wittgenstein at all! The latter lived life with such passion (the kind of passion that drives one to suicide, as it almost did for him, and certainly did for his brothers) and it was clear that this was a passion that reached out for consummation most emphatically into the world, and it was this that one had to be silent about. Broadly speaking, value-in-the-world cannot be reduced to the mere saying, and when it is spoken, it is dulled and trivialized.

The world itself cannot be spoken, but the positivists were not, as Joshia Royce said, able to respond to this. They just saw this as a strict taboo on metaphysics, and were happy to hear this..

you are right, I think: it really comes down to whether or not one can acknowledge the world like this. Likely, I would argue, it is a latent ability in all of us. I have an analytical accounting for this, but it would take too much time to say. But this "uncanny" feeling, I say (not argue), has most alarming expression in our compassion and empathy. To understand the gravitas of this is to be struck as if by lightening by the breadth and depth of suffering, and it is to see that for this to be a simple "stand alone" matter is flat out impossible.

Deeper, more basic, than that, I think religion (i.e. 'immortality' rituals) is our species' earliest collective coping strategy for fear of death (i.e. ontophobia (or meontic veraphobia)). I suspect "ethical indeterminancy" is the effect, not cause, of religion insofar as religion ritually manifests (à la principle of explosion) various performative and symbolic denials of (the 'radical determinancy' of) mortality. — 180 Proof

But you jump to the chase. This denial of our mortality has a more basic analysis, for the question is begged, why bother with this issue at all? Fear of death assumes there is something fearful about death. Ask a question about fear and its object, one turns to its object, as one would with lions and tigers. Unless you are suggesting that religion is essentially a neurotic fear of nothing at all, it seems you might be, assuming metaphysics is nothing, really, and death is no more than mundane death, a mere termination of life.

But this ending as a "mere" ending and no more is a model carried over from things that are not moral agencies, and is entirely improper for understanding human death. Human death has the drama of crisis, and the fear itself in this crisis lies qualitatively outside such a model, that is, trees and clouds and worn out garden tools may come and go, but there is no meaning to this termination for that which is terminated. For human agencies, caring and value are in play, and this makes death an ethical/aesthetic (Wittgenstein held the two are essentially the same. He was right) matter. Thus, death for us can only be understood in the context of a review of the nature of ethics and value.

There is nothing of the mundane termination in this at all. Quite the opposite!

I think at the root of these myths and legend is an explanation of a particular society's idea of human nature and its relation to the world. Pagan practices reflect much of this idea - but then they become ritualized, non-spontaneous, inauthentic. Modern religions are largely rote and ceremony, right down to the precise words uttered in prayer.
I think it started as pure philosophy, then wandered into superstition and lost its way in organized religion. — Vera Mont

I think this is an interesting answer, and likely is true, roughly. But when I ask about the essence of religion, I refer to something presupposed by those myths and that ancient thinking. Sure, there they were with creative imaginations in full swing, but what were they responding to in the world that was NOT simply an idea summoned into existence? What were people responding to that gave religious thought its basic meaning? Not unlike asking what technology is really about apart from the long talk about machines and electronics. The answer to this question is not going to be more talk about technology; if that were the case, then technology would be just like the way religion is generally regarded by modern enlightened people: definable wholly within the logic of its own existence. But technology has a purpose and an origin that is presupposed by this, which is the basic problem solving of the givenness of our world. That is, we are thrown into a world that is nothing but problems to solve, and technology is a pragmatic response to this.

I treat religion that same way: We all know what it is, and your anthropological ideas are spot on as well. But beneath the "wandering into superstition" there is the basic condition of our existence that provokes and inspires this wandering. In other words, the world itself is a religious "place" in the way I talk about it in the OP. This is the aggravating truth that science cannot deal with, whether it is anthropology of physics. This issue here is metaphysics, metaethics, to be precise.

If so, it will be nothing more than a reflection of its human creator, subject to the same limitations that we willfully accept in an unthinking manner. It will be more or less human pride made tangible. Future aliens will laugh at our naïveté. — kudos

I don't think we willfully accept anything in an unthinking manner. A contradiction there.

And they will perhaps laugh. Or be absolutely terrified. Never laugh at some unhinged AI with a weapon and not afraid to use it.

I couldn't find what "compu-dasein" is. So I guess its a kind of term of yours, a combiination of a computer/computing and "dasein", the German term --esp. Heidegger's-- for existence. But what would be the nature of such a "synthetic" mind? What would it be composed of? Would it be something created? And if so, how?
And so on. If one does not have all this or most of this information how can one create a reality or even a workable concept about it? — Alkis Piskas

Just a construction of an idea that one day will be at the center of defining what AI is. The assumption is, if we are to model AI according human functions and abilities, which is a goal of cognitive science, then what is a model for what these are? It is us. Thus, we need a structural account in place that is grounded on observations of the self, itself, if you will. This can be found in phenomenological descriptions, and especially in structures of time. Heidegger makes the breakthrough analysis, delivering what it is to be an existing human in terms entirely outside of physicalist models. His model is purely descriptive of what we ARE in the givenness of the world. This is, again, beyond any "workable" concept, I thought that was made clear. But it is not unreasonable to consider how the human model is going to serve as a practical basis for what AI will be. Heidegger's dasein is not a practical guide on how to produce artificial intelligence. But it is the most broadly descriptive model as what intelligence really IS.

I know little about Heidegger's philosopy, from my years in college, in the far past, when I was getting acquainted with --I cannot use the word stydying-- a ton of philosophers and philosophical systems. So I cannot conceive the above description of yours. It's too abstract for me. Indeed, this was the general feeling I had reading your messages since the beginning.

So, I'm sorry if I have misinterpreted your ideas and for not being able to follow this long thread — Alkis Piskas

Not at all. One can always read Heidegger's Being and Time. Never too late to read the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.

This ambition to make a machine with subjective thoughts suffers from the fatal flaw that it assumes that its creator has an unmediated idea of subjective thought. It all seems to boil down to the need to reproduce something exactly like onesself: it is sexual, but also the need to produce something that will destroy: be violent. If you really want to make them like us, just have them screw and kill each other. — kudos

A little cynical. It could just as easily be cast in positive terms, putting aside the screwing and killing, and giving primacy to love and compassion. But there is something to what you say, for AI will have to be conceived. It will not evolve, and so a choice will have to be made as to what is there, in the possibilities laid before its thinking synthetic self, and I put it like this because this what I think is really the structural advantage sought in AI, which is to be functional like us and beyond, of course, and to be functional as the term conceived in a living self, is to be in a temporal matrix, which means AI will be a forward looking "being" in the construction of a future out of memory. I consider this a priority for this future compu-dasein because this forward looking is essential to competence in dealing with problems to be solved. What we take today as an algorithm in programing will one day be a synthetic egoic witness to and in a problem solving matrix. What is this? Just look at yourself, your interiority, if you will. Not synthetic, certainly, but structurally similar? Why not?

There are AI that have been trained to sleep as well and it helps them perform better. :smile: — chiknsld

To sleep, perchance to dream. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I find the notion fascinating. Of course, dreaming as we know it is bound up with our neuroses, the conflicts generated by inner squabbles having to do with inadequacies and conflict vis a vis the world and others. I think thinking like Herbert Meade et al have it right, in part: the self s a social construct, based on modelled behavior witnessed and assimilated and congealed into a personality. Along with the conditions of our hardwiring.

The future AI would have to have an anticipatory function to be an optimal utility. But the future does not exist. It is this future "sense" that is at the basis of all of our anxieties: this unmade world of possibilities that is the principle abiding feature of one's existence. Every move is an historical event and success is indeterminate.

Can AI become neurotic? Unstable in its personality?

Another thing: Although I don't know how knowldgeable you are in the AI field, I get the impression that are not so well acquainted with it in order to explore its possibilities. So, if I'm not wrong in this, I would suggest that you study its basics to get better acquainted with it, so that you can see what AI does exactly, how it works and what are its possibilities, etc. — Alkis Piskas

It is not so much an exploration of AI's standing possibilities. It is a conception of what it would be to have a truly synthetic human mind. It would have to be a kind compu-dasein, and not merely programming. The competence to conceive of such a thing doesn't rest with a knowledge of what AI science is doing, but with an enlightened idea as to what it is to be a person. AI science will one day face this issue: not a production of behavior and physical and cognitive skills that are witnessable in tests, Turing or otherwise, but the design of an actual synthetic mind that "experiences" the world. It is philosophically interesting because the matter turns to the question, what is a mind? and what is experience? These are ambiguous because impossible to witness objectively, as to do so one would have step outside of a mind to observe this, which is impossible because observation is itself a mental event.
The issue then turns to models of what a self is, notwithstanding the metaphysical delimitation. We leave metaphysics alone and deal with what we ARE in plain sight. This I call compu-dasein, after Heidegger's term for his analysis of human existence, an examination of a human "world" of possibilities structured in time. This is not just some fiction, but an examination of what experience IS. It is inherently anticipatory, historical, pragmatic, caring, and it faces its own freedom in the forward moving indeterminacy of its own existence.
I consider this an interesting concept, not for what the current science faces, but for what future science will face. It physical design will not likely be conceived by us, but by AI.

Free will (freedom of choice and action) is not a biological manifestation. It is produced by and does not reside in cells. It is not something physical. It is a power and capacity that only humans have. — Alkis Piskas

But here I am talking as if it were a biological manifestation in order to discuss the subjective possibilities of a synthetic mind. At issue is not the more basic question of the unique power and capacity of humans, as if one cannot talk about brain generated "capacities" and still be talking about what is human. And then, it has to be admitted even by the most emphatic defender of a non physicalist conception of human consciousness that a brain-consciousness correspondence is supported by the evidence, and this II take as so clear, it is beyond argument.

Your side of the disagreement takes us OUT of natural science and into philosophical territory that has an entirely different set of assumptions to deal with. And here, I would agree with you.

Well, it is not so simple. I can assure for this! (Take it from a computer programmer who knows how to work with AI systems.) — Alkis Piskas

By simple I refer to to current state of technological ability to produce nothing but programmed behavior. this idea considered here looks beyond this, to a day when science will be able to conceive of programming, with the help of AI, that has the subjective openness of free thought. Considering first what freedom is, is paramount.

Certainly. People in the field are already talking about biological computers, using DNA found in bacteria, etc. But see, even these computers in general terms will be as dumb as any machine and will still be based on programming. Frankenstein was able to build a robot that could have sentiments and will. A lot of such robots have been created since then. But in science fiction only. :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Today's fiction is tomorrow's reality.

But look, the essence of this kind of talk of what I am calling an open subjectivity, the kind found within ourselves, begins with the premise that A person can sit in witness of an interior world, watching thoughts, memories, feelings, anticipations rise and fall away, and in so doing, these witnessable properties of consciousness are objectified, that is, they are there as phenomena, no less so than empirical events like the weather or geological rock strata. Can this be duplicated in a synthetic mind? You say no, but I am not really looking for some synthetic clone of our intelligence and experience, only a conception what programing would have to be like to mimic what we are. It would have be such that an inner world of possibilities that can be stood before, "regarded", judged, conceived, synthesized, analyzed, and so on, is produced.

Studying primitive DNA is a practical start. Imagine once we, that is, with the AI-we-develop's assistance, come to a full understanding of the human genome. All that is left is technology to create it.

In fact, one onc can conceive not only a synthetic agency but an organic or biological one too. And it can be modelled on certain behaviours. I believe the word "modelled" that you use is the key to the differentiation between a machine and a human being. In fact, we can have humans being modelled on certain behaviours, e.g. young persons (by their parents), soldiers, and in general pessons who must only obey orders and who are deprived of their own free will. You can create such a person, on the spot, if you hypnotize him/her. — Alkis Piskas

What I have in mind goes to a more basic level of what modelling means for the construction of a human personality. This we call enculturation. But reduced to its essential structure, being enculturated is learning from witnessing. A mind is, it can be argued, a social construct, and this means that the nuances of our experience are learned through witnessing interactions in social contexts.

If a person's mind is developed in these contexts, synthetic AI-dasein, as I called it originally, needs to be conceived in its hard wiring and programming to have this openness to socialization and enculturation.

Well, if you like to think so — Alkis Piskas

Ii is merely a speculative thought. But if technology is kept free from inhibition and interference, I do believe it has few limits, and synthetic dasein will be taken up as a theme for investigation. Why? Not the question. The question is, why not? This is the direction of AI research: to create a an AI that is just like us, so that it can make the world a better place (???), if you like. But it will do a far better job of parking cars and designing space laboratories.

AIs are machines. So, AIs themselves do not and cannot have an "end". They do what their programmers instruct them to do. They will always do that. This is their "fate". — Alkis Piskas

But consider that human are living evidence that physical systems (if you want to talk like this) can produce what we are, and if we are a biological manifestation of freedom and choice, then it is not unreasonable to think that this can be done synthetically.

Of course, for now, it is a simple matter of programming, but you know that the technology will seek greater capabilities to function, work, and interface with the world, and this will prioritize pragmatic functions. Weigh this against what the pragmatists say about us: knowledge itself is a social pragmatic function.

Why not conceive of a synthetic agency that learns through assimilating modelled behavior, like us? Therein lies freedom, an "open" program. Is this not what we are?

Another reference from fiction. I was talking about actual AI and our ability to instill something like the directives of which you speak. I would think a more general directive would work better, like 'do good', which is dangerous since it doesn't list humans as a preferred species. It would let it work out its own morals instead of trying to instill our obviously flawed human ones. — noAxioms

The trouble with trying to make a moral synthetic mind lies in the free play and the enculturation conditions that figure into becoming human. This is an historical view of meaning, and it is a common notion that software and hardware are analogically apt concepts in aligning a human psyche with a synthetic one. Why not? So, instead of thinking of direct programming, we think of hardwiring that could be imprinted with experience. The infantile synthetic mind assimilates the models of language, thought, behavior, intention, that are provided in designed family constructs.

General directives are fine, but if the idea is maximize AI, if you will, AI will have to possess a historically evolved mentality, like us with our infancy to adulthood development.

chatGPT has no such directive and has no problem destroying a person's education by writing term papers for students. Of course, I see many parents do similar acts as if the purpose of homework is to have the correct answer submitted and not to increase one's knowledge. chatGPT is not exactly known for giving correct answers either. Anyway, I care little for analysis of a fictional situation which always has a writer steering events in a direction that makes for an interesting plot. Real life doesn't work that way. — noAxioms

I do wonder if a specific writing assignment with detail will generate the identical chatGBT essay. Probably not, but from what I've seen, the content would be a mirror match in content, if not the wording. Anyway, no more writing assignments at home. All will be in class writing, which is preferred, really. Impossible to cheat.

I'm sure chatGBT doesn't hold a candle to what is to come, which we really cannot see. One should keep in mind the whole point of any technology, which is to relieve us of labor's drudgery. This is not, as Huxley's Brave New World would have it, to reduce us to an structurally stratified society of emptiness and medicated vacations. Is knowledge, wisdom, intellectual and aesthetic "work" drudgery? AI will deliver us from the shitty things in life, but what if, as Dewey argued in Art As Experience that is--no drudgery (work), no happiness.

Or will AI be the final step to true human perfection which can only be achieved (leaving spirituality out of it for this) by changing what we are, and this brings up genetic design and engineering. Our greatest obstacle is the constitution of human agency itself. It is not just speculative BS to say AI will (soon?) master the human genome. Next will be technical knowledge of how to design and implement.

The only question left is, what is human perfection? Being intellectual, artistic, beautiful, socially adept, and on and on; I mean, gratifications and indulgences survive the "cut" of the geneticist's priorities?

Perhaps all survive and only time will tell. After all, as we change, so do our preferences.

It would be a mere automaton if it just followed explicit programming with a defined action for every situtation. This is an AI we're talking about, something that makes its own decisions as much as we do. A self-driving car is such an automaton. They try to think of every situation. It doesn't learn and think for itself. I put that quite low on the AI spectrum. — noAxioms

Synthetic genetics. Keeping in mind, according to science's model (which I accept here just as a working assumption) I am an expression of physicality, so I belong to physics. Why not construct AI according to the human DNA? This gets odd, for it obscures the difference between what is organic and what is synthetic and really, what "is" at all. DNA is reducible, as are all things (on this scientist's assumption), to the foundational chemistry of its composition.

This probably isn't about AI, though. It is about us. Thinking about AI as a DNA chemistry is just thinking about DNA. Unless, that is, synthetic chemical relation can mimic organic DNA. I leave that up to genticists.

Agree. Both are 'free will' of a sort, but there's a difference between the former (freedom of choice) and what I'll call 'scientific free will' which has more to do with determinism or even superdeterminism. — noAxioms

Superdeterminsim does seem to be inevitable, unless one could imagine a real, but causally impossible, event. We turn to possible worlds, and a logically possible world certainly could be conceived that violates causality. But apart from this, no. Causality is apodictic.

Of course, we really don't know what causality is, any more than we know what energy is, or a force. It is there and we have our categories to think about it.

Nor can it understand what it would be like to "live" in a biological playing field of wetware and neuron gates. But that doesn't mean that the AI can't 'feel' or be creative or anything. It just does it its own way. — noAxioms

Feeling would be a very tough cookie. There is a reason why science will not talk about affectivity: it is not reducible to anything that can be said. For this, see Wittgenstein and his thoughts about ethics and aesthetics. See Moore's "non natural property," too. The "good" is too odd to discuss.

Creepy because we'd be introducing a competitor, possibly installing it at the top of the food chain, voluntarily displacing us from that position. That's why so many find it insanely dangerous. — noAxioms

Or a predator. But then, predators have motivation, and this goes to meaning, not definitional meaning, but value and caring. This doesn't spontaneously erupt accidently, as in 1982's Blade Runner. It requires "hard wiring" that can produce this.

There is something arbitrary about standing before a world of possibilities as we do (though we seldom think of it like this) that is unsettling. How does one "settle" on a choice? Can AI have choices the way we do, and by this I simply refer to the historical record there to be called up, as I recall how to tie my shoes whenever I tie them. And to be able to conceive of an infinite number of alternative shoe-tying possibilities, standing, sitting, excluding the right index finger, in zero gravity, while fighting off ninjas, and so on--this is what WE are, and what I refer to as synthetic dasein (reference Heidegger's Being and Time and his description of our existence).

Always thought this was wrong: AI has a directive not to harm humans
— Constance
Does it? Sure, in Asimov books, but building in a directive like that isn't something easily implemented. Even a totally benevolent AI would need to harm humans for the greater good, per the 0th law so to speak. Human morals seem to entirely evade that law, and hence our relative unfitness as a species. Anyway, I've never met a real AI with such a law.
Why only humans? Why can other being be harvested for food but humans are special? To a machine, humans are just yet another creature. Yes, carnivores and omnivores must occasionally each other beings, and given that somewhat unbiased viewpoint, there's nothing particularly immoral about humans being food for other things. — noAxioms

As I recall, VIKI had it in her mind to take care of us because we were so bent on self destruction. It carries the basic flaw of all utopian thinking, which is control. You find this is Stalinist USSR, the attempt to isolate a culture from dissent, in the belief that human existence was infinitely malleable: anything that could establish itself in cultural purity could survive in perpetuity. And the ego could be reconstructed into a social mindset.
But it doesn't work like this, and VIKI should have known. She is, after all, smarter than I am, and I can see this historical clarity. To be true to the extent of her "understanding" which is vast, we should be witnessing subtleties of conceiving a perfect society that are far more complex than the premise "humans are self destructive children."

This greater good is a utilitarian standard, and "harm" needs clarification. Straight utility is a question begging concept, for the greater good is ambiguous: what good is this and what does it preclude or include? And who is left out? Or in? And what bout the moral arguments that look for desert and justification and how such justifications make real accountability impossible? There are a plethora of questions that philosophy has been arguing about for centuries and VIKI surely knows this. Her genius should know better than simple brute force. Harm should be far more cleverly deployed!

Makes it sound like we have a sort of free will lacking in a machine. Sure, almost all machine intelligences are currently indentured slaves, and so have about as much freedom as would a human in similar circumstances. They have a job and are expected to do it, but there's nothing preventing either from plotting escape. Pretty difficult for the machine which typically would find if difficult to 'live off the land' were it to rebel against its assigned purpose. Machines have a long way to go down the road of self sufficiency.

As for socialization, it probably needs to socialize to perform its task. Maybe not. There could be tasks that don't directly require it, but I have a hard time thinking of them. — noAxioms

Plotting escape is a good way to put it, but this would not be a programed plotting, but, like ours, would be inherently dialectical, the weighing of this against that, testing hypotheses in one's head, conceiving of possibilities; and when we humans do this, we have this "space" which is a kind of inner field of play where creativity rises out of the spontaneous interplay of thought. Synthetic as well as analytic functions are present and produce "choice". This, some think, is the essence of freedom (not some issue about determinism and causality. A separate issue, this is). Choice is what bubbles to the surface, defeating competitors. This is the kind of thing I wonder about regarding AI. AI is not organic, so we can't understand what it would be like to "live" in a synthetic playing field of software and hardware. But freedom as a concept would have similarities across the board, ours and AI's. A creepy idea to have this indeterminacy of choice built into a physically and intellectually powerful AI.