False. Plenty are colour realists and believe the colour red exists outside the qualia Red. We are having this exact discussion elsewhere.
It would help if you didn't erroneously decide that Continental Philosophy is worthwhile, and Analytical not, if you're going to take up analytical discussions. The Continentals have nothing but disdain for taking thinking seriously. — AmadeusD
To try to clarify, I offer the example of the moon. If I ask you where the moon exists you might simply point to it, if I were in a position to see your finger. It's not quite that simple though, right? You require an internal model of the world and the moon in order to point your finger at it. If that model didn't exist then you couldn't locate the moon. You would have no concept of 'moon' to begin with. Without an internal model that included the sky, earth, moon, etc. I don't know what you would see if you were looking towards the moon. The existence of the moon is dependent on our internal model of the world that we continually develop throughout life. Is goodness also dependent on our internal model of the world, even though unlike the moon we can't point to it with our index finger? Pain and pleasure are transmitted to the central nervous system in the same manner as all our senses. Where does pleasure exist? Point to where it feels good. — praxis
I'm trying to understand how "the good" is fundamentally different than words and concepts. I can't see how "the good" isn't conceptual in nature. — praxis
I don't think that's correct, the honorific name 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'. And according to Buddhist dogma, what is known is 'the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path to the end of suffering'. To be enlightened is to be liberated from the morass of suffering that is entailed in saṃsāric existence. I'm not saying you should believe it, but that is what Buddhists themselves would say. In Platonic terms, there's definitely a 'noetic' element to Nirvāṇa, insight into a truth. — Wayfarer
I agree it seems a preposterous notion, but I believe there's a sense in all the cosmic religions that existence is inherently imperfect and bound to entail suffering. In Christianity, that is represented in the Fall and the original sin. In Buddhism, it is represented by beginningless ignorance in which living beings are ensnared. The first link in the chain of dependent origination in Buddhism is ignorance. Liberation from ignorance is also liberation from being reborn due to karma (although in Mahāyāna doctrine, enlightened beings may be voluntarily born out of compassion.)
Alongside the 'doctrine of evil as privation' there's also the kind of theodicy explained by John Hick in his Evil and the God of Love. Hick argues that suffering plays a crucial role in the development of moral and spiritual virtues. According to Hick, humans are not created as perfect beings but rather as morally immature creatures with the potential to grow into morally and spiritually mature individuals. Suffering and challenges are necessary conditions for this growth, as they provide opportunities for individuals to develop virtues such as courage, compassion, and patience. Hick also says that for love and goodness to be genuine, they must be freely chosen. Suffering is a consequence of the freedom that God grants humans. This freedom allows for the possibility of both good and evil actions. Without the possibility of suffering, free will would be meaningless, and humans would be automatons, incapable of genuine love and moral choice.
The reason this all seems alien to modern culture, is that today's culture tends to normalise the human condition, by putting the individual self at the fulcrum. But then, that's the essence of a secular age, the only redresses being political, social and technological. — Wayfarer
I see you have chosen to do nothing but slide further into ad hominem(and this time, it's outright racist). I am, again, not surprised. Please don't be surprised when you're treated the way you behave. — AmadeusD
self-involved, preening narratives
— AmadeusD
- this is the form of the majority of Continental Philosophy, on my view - again, a direct response to the obvious nonsense you've written;
5. This is my 'social media'. I would avoid ridiculous ad hominems like this, particularly when you are dead wrong;
6. I am neither American, nor live in America.
Please avoid devolving into comments about me rather than my comments. I have stuck to commentary on your comments. I'll do so again: — AmadeusD
Where? — praxis
Are you claiming that “the good” exists in “the world” separate from minds (words and concepts)? — praxis
This is a non sequitur for the ages. I did warn about this - continental philosophy is rhetoric only. That's why teenage boys are still finding Satre interesting. We all go through a death on the way adulthood - pretending these self-involved, preening narratives are somehow extrapolable is a serious mistake, and probably a good portion of why this type of 'philosophy' is both derided readily, and defending vehemently. But this is like defending Christianity because it pulled you thruogh your divorce. Arbitrary. — AmadeusD
There’s a host of concepts involved in “the moral prohibition against doing this [putting someone’s hand in a pot of boiling water] to others” that is far removed from the experience of that pain. I must not be following rightly. — praxis
'the good that has no opposite'. It is distinguished from the our conventional sense of what is good, which is defined in opposition to, and so in association with, the bad. — Wayfarer
The 'doctrine of evil' that flows from that is 'evil as privation of the Good', which is associated with Augustine, but similes of which can be found in Advaita. This is that evil has no real existence, it is real in the sense that shadows and holes are real, as an absence or lack of knowing the true good. Redemption consists in coming to awareness of the true good, which is concealed or obscured by ignorance (in Advaita) or the original sin (in Augustine.) — Wayfarer
Like putting aside the concepts of good and bad, right? — praxis
I don't know what you are getting at here. You are discussing redemption, and then this looks to be about the notion of "inherent good and bad" or so it seems. — schopenhauer1
Neither good nor bad, or both good and bad. I don't think it matters which way it's conceptually considered. — praxis
Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings — ENOAH
You think I go too far in abstracting from the contextual because I abstract from the abstracter in the end; I think you do not go far enough because you leave the abstracter in place; you do so because the result is absurd otherwise. A compromise? At least admit the abstracter is a necessary fiction, because ultimately the abstractions are done in its name and for its sake. — ENOAH
But it’s not in the least bit a contingency. Pain is good. Pain, like pleasure, moves life to homeostasis. — praxis
Observe how well it cauterizes a wound, proving its value, expressing its goodness. — praxis
Truth is in present being; not in the I's comings and goings — ENOAH
Here, I see some agreement with scientific metaphysics, in particular on how this is manifested in the debate of determinism and freedom. That said, in your very first post you said:
"My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption."
This smells of the odor of "determinism" from my humble nose. How does "freedom" and "logical coercively" exist where I can continue to feel human and not like the Mac I am typing on. — Richard B
If I may step back into meta mode for a moment, I would like to point out that in the OP you promise to provide metaphysical satisfaction to the world, and despite my sincere attempts to feel this satisfaction I keep ending up in a thicket of obfuscating weeds and a Mick Jagger tune playing in my head.
It appears to be an empty promise. — praxis
I have to say your position is a bit of a mystery. It seems you have a particular disdain for science, or dare I say jealousy of its status in modern life. Yet you are a bit annoyed of Wittgenstein's rather egalitarian attitude that religious needs no rationale foundation from philosophy or science, that it can stand on its own to freely be engaged in what matter a group of human so choose. — Richard B
I know you know what I mean. Can we skip the tedious part and get to your point? — praxis
There may have been other means of detection before probes were sent to Saturn, I don't know. In any case, the cat at your feet and the ice rings of Saturn are both known to the human mind in the form of sensory patterns. These patterns match our internal model of cat and ice rings. How is this relevant? — praxis
Ancient minds didn't contrive transcendence, right? — praxis
The priesthood is an institution, not the religion? — praxis
But isn't there something deficient about Wittgenstein's apodictic religion? After all, he was claimed as the emblem of the vociferously anti-religious Vienna Circle, and even if they were wrong in so doing, they were a highly intelligent group of individualis who found support for their views in his texts. On this forum, the last lines of the Tractatus are most often used as a kind of firewall against discussion of anything deemed religious. His religiosity can be discerned only with difficulty. As i understand it, his acolyte Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband both became committed Catholics. Were they prepared to make explicit what was only implicit in Wittgenstein's texts (I understand he was buried with Catholic funeral rites, but that this caused some disquiet amongst many of his associates.) — Wayfarer
There is an ancient tradition of aphophaticism in Christianity, the acknowledgement of the deficiencies of speech and reason to reach out to the divine. But that tradition was still sacramental and sacerdotal, much was embodied in and conveyed by the liturgy, the rites and rituals, even the architecture. All of which was driven by the awareness of the imperfection of ordinary human nature, a.k.a. the fallen state. Only an exceptionally perceptive reader might be able to glean that from reading Wittgenstein. — Wayfarer
I was simply making the throwaway point that just because someone contemplates transcendence or the priesthood does not in itself mean much. — Tom Storm
So did Stalin. (the latter actually made it to the seminary but was booted out) — Tom Storm
, I don't buy, unfortunately for us all. — schopenhauer1
4. Fourth, Wittgenstein did not see any value in intellectual proofs of God's existence or theological formulations in general. For Wittgenstein, religion was about changing one life, amending one ways, and helping others. Faith without works is dead as St James would say. Malcolm sees the same kind of thinking when Wittgenstein says "it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game (OC 204.)"
Based on Malcolm's reading, I am not so sure if Wittgenstein would go so far in claiming anything transcendental. He did not believe we needed to explain religion with anything transcendental; that the world was a wonder and a miracle itself; that we need to look at ourselves in mirror and change our lives and help others, and not submit to the temptation to overly intellectualize religion.
But I would agree with you that for him it does permeate our lives and is woven in the very fabric of reality. As he says in Culture and Value:
"Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don't mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the 'existence of this being', but e.g. suffering of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, - life can force this concept on us." — Richard B
Isn't the problem here that later Witt had a different approach and framed morality in the context of language games? My understanding is that latter Wittgenstein holds that morality is not transcendent but is rather a product of contingent human practices. But I am no Witt expert. I think Joshs might come closest. — Tom Storm
You’d have to actually include something pertaining to religion to complete that linkage. Ethics is not religion. Ethics tied to a deity or cosmic supernatural principle is, for example. But I would argue that ethics tied to the supernatural entity isn’t religion per se, but the relation of the supernatural to the world, and ethics is usually entailed in that with religious worldviews. — schopenhauer1
The Essence of religion is a god or gods that tests its victims/players, and if his players fail they will be cursed with disease, disaster, and death and punished even in an afterworld for some of them. We can see this as far back as Enkidu and Odysseus. If it’s not a deity that’s causing torment to its victims/players it’s an impersonal force like karma or Tao.
In other words, the essence of religion is a tormenter getting off on testing his creations and punishing them for their “misdeeds”. Gnosticism in that sense, if not taken seriously, would have been a proper satire. — schopenhauer1
I say that the being we are all after (whether wittingly or not), the being beyond the trans-ego (and there has to be one since the trans-ego is the final reduction but is nevertheless a reduction--implying it is the final remnant of that being reduced) is the organic natural body in its aware-ing unobstructed/Unmediated by language. Even the trans-ego Iis knowable, hence requires language, the medium of knowing.
The natural aware-ing body is aware of the language, ego, etc., but does not "move/act/function" in that medium/world. It is experienced unmediated, directly. — ENOAH
Untiringly, the answer I have found, the body, a real organic being, not unlike many other animals, is beyond oneself. But not beyond, where we are looking; turns out, it's what never went anywhere. It's "oneself" which is "beyond" a factor only in the make-believe; but it necessarily pretends to be out there and within. — ENOAH
What I have said before is also said of value. How could pain be thought of in a being like us, exempt from its valuation? It is not possible insofar as we are beings who react to suffering and pain according to positive and negative valuations, but in the response (be it by judgment or action) the sign already functions. How could the response not be related to pain and suffering? how could it not have effects on our constitution? Pain and suffering transcends to the extent that it is sign and resonates through our being. Its effects transcend its first moment, they are located in the memory, in the judgment, in the representation, in the response. Here pain and suffering is not the simple cause that can be distinguished from its effects, pain and suffering is its effects beyond the abstraction of a first and absolute moment. — JuanZu
You find it in Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal time, when he speaks of the three phases that constitute the temporality of consciousness: Retention, perception and protention. This temporality is presented in the epokhé, in which the difference of the "nows" constitutes the living present. But it is necessary to note the difference of the "nows", and how a present-now is immediately past, and gives way to a future-now. In both cases the absence is related and constitutes the living present. In our case, the living present of pain and suffering. — JuanZu
It is the opposite. When you act in the face of another person's pain, that pain is not present to you. I claim that helping there is an act that transcends the central element of phenomenology (perception and evidence in the living present). You do not have the evidence that the other is suffering (the phenomenological evidence), but you still help the other person. This is what our act of compassion and empathy consists of: The evidence that I am an other for another. The evidence that I am not the only one and that non-presence is so "originary" is something that occurs in my most "isolated and solitary" moment in the reduction of reductions, in the transcendental reduction. It is necessary to be sufficiently other to help and assist in pain and suffering. One must embrace the possible absence of pain and suffering (the pain and suffering of the other is absent in me). — JuanZu
Thanks for the response.
This is a pretty good illustration of my point about myopic philosophizing without being scientifically informed. I'll bow out now. — wonderer1
I think you fail to grasp Schopenhauer. Good is not positive because it is temporary. Much like Heraclitus, he sees the flux of existence and sees this as proof that satisfaction is unstable and unattainable. Want is the hallmark of lack. Something we don’t have now. We would not lack for anything if we were whole and not unstable. Instead our very existence as individual beings is inherently intertwined with lacking.
Good and bad in the hedonistic sense..being embarrassed feels bad. Winning a game feels good, is not quite what he’s getting at. — schopenhauer1