I just watched Brian Cox explain the incomprehensible minuteness of the Planck Length: if you expanded a single proton to the size of the solar system, the Planck Length would be the size of a virus. :yikes:

Plato rejects materialist attempts to explain everything on the basis of that of which it was made. According to Plato, the entities that best merit the title “beings” are the intelligible Forms, which material objects imperfectly copy. — SEP. Substance

This definition seems to blur two quite different senses of the term being. In contemporary English, "beings" typically refers to individual entities—what we might call things or particulars—especially living or sentient beings. But in the context of Plato’s metaphysics, "being" refers not to discrete entities, but to what most truly is—that which grounds the very reality and intelligibility of particulars.

The Forms, in Plato’s view, are not "beings" in the same sense as horses or trees. They are not rival “things” set over against the sensible world. Rather, they are what makes the sensible world intelligible and real at all. As Eric Perl puts it:

Plato’s understanding of reality as form, then, is not at all a matter of setting up intelligible forms in opposition to sensible things, as if forms rather than sensible things are what is real. On the contrary, forms are the very guarantee of sensible things: in order that sensible things may have any identity, any truth, any reality, they must have and display intelligible ‘looks,’ or forms, in virtue of which they are what they are and so are anything at all. It is in precisely this sense that forms are the reality of all things. Far from stripping the sensible world of all intelligibility and locating it ‘elsewhere,’ Plato expressly presents the forms as the truth, the whatness, the intelligibility, and hence the reality, of the world. — Eric Perl - Thinking Being p25

Think about this way - take any object. The very first thing you need to do, is identify it. 'Hey, it's an 'X'. If you can't identify it, then you don't know what it is.

I notice in the opening of the SEP article Substance, the description of Brahman as “some fundamental kind of entity” seeks to impose a thing-like characterization on a concept that, in its original context, is expressly beyond all such determinations - which is precisely what the term 'reification' means.

An entity, after all, is typically understood as a bounded, identifiable thing. But Brahman, like Plato’s Being or Heidegger’s Sein, is not an entity among other entities. It is that which makes beings possible, while itself transcending all objectification. The tendency to treat foundational metaphysical principles as “things” or “entities” characterises what Heidegger criticized as 'ontotheology'.

So I was just listening to Fareed Zakaria declare DOGE ‘an abject failure’. Of the $165b savings it claims to have made, media analysis indicates a figure nearer to $65b. (I don’t know if that takes into account repairing the damage accidentally inflicted by the chainsaw.) Musk has practically dropped from view in Washington, presumably to rescue Tesla from its death dive, and DOGE programs have been taken over by Dept of Finance.

Also, Bill Gates has come out with blistering criticisms of DOGE, saying that the richest man in the world has destroyed programs (which Gates as head of Gates Foundation knows backwards) which could lead to literally millions of lives lost. Musk has maintained a sullen silence, although some of the MAGA minions have been trying to find insalubrious rumours to spread about Gates, who has said he plans to sink his entire vast wealth into global health and economic initiatives. The contrast between the two could not be clearer, though. Bill Gates may not be a saint, but he’s at least a good guy.

At least one of you does, anyway. (Or it might only be me.)

It's paywalled. The Telegraph is a conservative outlet. But I'm sure there are leftist threats to free speech. A few years back I looked into the cases of prosecution of preachers in Canada for preaching against same-sex relationships. But both the UK and Canada are parliamentary democracies, and they're light years from anything like the totalitarian tendencies showing up under Trump. These include the abuse of the justice system to take vengeance on perceived enemies, the invocation of emergencies to justify wartime powers, the disregarding of Congressional authority - there's a long list.

Hope this isn't geoblocked, it's from a Sydney morning TV show couple of days back: feature interview with Australian guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel, whom I first saw in, oh, about 1979.



Never learned to read or write music. When I used to see him, he would turn up and stand in as a guest artist, and he's just play anything whatever by ear, on the spot, often with little or no rehearsal. He's a true legend.

Plibersek: from environment to social services. Hardly a demotion although the media seems to want to frame it as such. Michelle Rowlands takes over as A-G. Full list here (The Guardian). Shame about Dreyfus and Husic, but, as the saying goes, that's politics.

Thanks, Banno. I appreciate you pressing for clarity. Let me try to make my position more explicit.

The real issue here is not whether we can use words like “game,” “red,” or “round” without reference to forms—we obviously can, as you say. The deeper question is what makes such uses possible in the first place. What makes it possible, for instance, for different people in different times and places to agree that 2+2=4, or that a circle is defined as form with all points equidistant from a center? These aren’t just verbal habits or social conventions; they are stable, objective insights that transcend their pragmatic use.

On your view, meaning arises from use. Fair enough. But that already presupposes that all meaning is socially constructed or linguistically mediated, which is already nominalist. The trouble with that is that it fails to ground the stability and universality of many basic concepts—not least those in mathematics, logic, and ethics.

For example, the concept 'equals' does not arise from observation. It isn’t the property of any object we can point to. Yet without it, as I said, both language and mathematics would not be possible. So what grounds the universality of this relation? Saying “it’s just how we talk” sounds more like an attempt to dodge a metaphysical question than to account for it.

As I said, I think the origin of forms and universals was as explanatory principles that account for why the world is intelligible in the first place. Forms are not things alongside other things. They are the reason why things are what they are and why we can know them as such. Eliminating them may appear to simplify your ontology, but it actually leaves you with no account of meaning other than habit or social practice, leaving only a consensus reality.

So the choice is not between “plain speech” and “unnecessary metaphysics.” It’s between two competing worldviews—one that treats intelligibility as real and one that reduces it to a social artifact. I’m inviting you to consider that the first may have more going for it than analytic fashion currently allows. And also that the historical reasons for the current ascendancy of plain language and analytic philosophy are plainly discernable.

Imagine some species on another planet, far larger than Earth, with a daily rotation of one of our weeks, and an annual rotation of tens of our decades. Presumably the units they would use for measuring time would be very different to terrestrial units.
— Wayfarer
You are thinking of the Planck units, and yes, a species on another world can independently discover those units.
Under those units, four universal constants (speed of light, gravitational constant, reduced Planck constant, and Boltzmann constant) are all 1. Of course the aliens would give them different names.

There are also some quantum constants like the charge of an electron, and obvious unit charge. — noAxioms

I'm was not familiar with this terminology, so I sought help from the Oracle, who provided some helpful clarifications along these lines, although having read it, I now understand it.

The claim that Planck units (Planck time, Planck length, Planck mass, etc.) are a set of "natural units" derived solely from fundamental physical constants: the speed of light (c), the gravitational constant (G), and the reduced Planck constant (ℏ) is correct. These constants are believed to be universal throughout the cosmos. In this sense, an advanced alien civilization, by studying the laws of physics, could indeed independently arrive at the concept of Planck units and their values. They represent the fundamental scales at which quantum gravity effects are expected to become significant, and they are independent of any specific planet's rotation or orbit. (Remember the Pioneer Plaque? This was attached to a satellite bound for interstellar space, on the basis of the belief that an alien culture capable of intercepting it would know what it meant.)

However the existence of Planck units, while providing a universal and objective scale for duration, does not fundamentally undermine the argument that measurement (or observation from a specific frame of reference) is an essential element of duration, nor does it negate the "subjective" components we discussed.

Even if an event's "true" duration is, say, X Planck units in its own rest frame, an observer moving at a high velocity relative to that event, or an observer in a strong gravitational field, will still measure a different duration for that event due to time dilation. The laws of physics (including those that lead to Planck units) are universal, but the measurement of duration is relative to the observer's frame of reference. So, while Planck time provides a "floor" for how short a meaningful duration can be, and a universal constant to define a second, it doesn't mean all observers will measure the same number of Planck times for a given event. The "objective unit" itself (e.g., one Planck time) still experiences relativistic effects. (Also while Planck units are fundamentally important in theoretical physics, they are incredibly tiny (5.39×10 ⁻⁴⁴seconds) and are not a practical unit of measurement.)

But the structure is more like a 'transcendental' for the world (i.e. a precondition of it). — boundless

My point that "measurement is an essential element of duration" stands. In a relativistic universe, duration isn't an absolute, pre-existing quantity that merely needs to be "counted" by an observer. In other words, it is not transcendental, but phenomenal. The duration of an event itself is dependent on the observer's frame. Therefore, the act of measurement, by defining the observer's frame of reference, is intrinsically linked to the definition of that particular duration for that observer. You're not just measuring a pre-defined duration; you are, in a sense, participating in the definition of its duration by being in a specific frame.

If "they exist in a different manner to phenomenal objects", then an account of this different existence might be offered, and a reason given as to the need for such a thing, especially in the light of what was said above. — Banno

You won't see it because you're representing a philosophical attitude (analytic philosophy) which has long since eschewed any idea of an hierarchical ontology, which is what is required to make sense of the idea that things and principles are real in different ways or exist on different levels; there can be no 'levels'. The default view is that existence is univocal, there is only one meaning to 'it exists' and something either exists or it doesn't. But that sense of univocity, and the corresponding loss of an hierarchical ontology, is itself a subject for metaphysics. And as metaphysics is a dead subject - why, then, there can be no account!

Why should there be a thing that is common to all our uses of a word? — Banno

Again that is the very reification that you previously criticized. ‘Reification’ is derived from the root ‘res’ which means ‘thing’ (it is also the root of 'reality'.) And forms (or universals) are not things. Nor are they thoughts, although when they appear, they appear as thoughts (per Bertrand Russell, previously quoted.) But if they are principles that operate in reality and are grasped by reason, then they exist in a different manner to phenomenal objects. That is the nub of the issue.

And furthermore, being round or being red are not very good examples of forms (principles or ideas). That they can easily be regarded as attributes or properties of particulars is not an argument against the idea of forms. Better examples are those debated in the original texts - such as the form ‘equals’ in the Phaedo. What attribute or shape does 'equals' correspond to? None that I can think of. Yet you and I can both grasp what it means, because we’re possessed of rational skills and the ability to apprehend abstractions. Is 'equals' a thing? Perhaps in the modern vernacular, (‘when did that become a thing?) but not in any other sense. But without the concept equals, verbal communication and certainly basic arithmetic would be impossible.

The difficulty is, we’re some centuries removed from the cultural milieu in which forms were part of philosophy (then known as "realism" with quite a different meaning to what it has today). And they were then part of an alternative conception of knowledge, which provided the broader context within which they were meaningful:

Ockham (a principle instigator of nominalism) did not do away with objective reality, but in doing away with one part of objective reality—forms—he did away with a fundamental principle of explanation for objective reality. In doing away with forms, Ockham did away with formal causality. Formal causality secures teleology—the ends or purposes of things follow from what they are and what is in accord with or capable of fulfilling their natures. In the natural world, this realist framework secures an intrinsic connection between efficient causes and their effects—an efficient cause produces its effects by communicating some formality: fire warms by informing objects with its heat. ....

A genuine realist (concerning forms) should see “forms”...as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom — Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?

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@Count Timothy von Icarus

An historical myth. According to my sources it has some truth mixed with exaggeration.

Around 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued a papal bull called Vox in Rama, which described alleged satanic rituals involving black cats. While it did associate cats (especially black ones) with heresy and devil worship, it did not universally declare cats as the "incarnation of Satan" or call for their general extermination across Europe although it did contribute to fear or superstition about cats, especially black cats, which lives on.

While there may have been some localized killings or persecution of cats due to this association, there is no historical evidence that it led to a widespread or systematic reduction of cat populations across all of Europe.

The Black Death (1347–1351) occurred over a century later. It was primarily spread by fleas carried by black rats. A theoretical link is sometimes made that fewer cats meant more rats, and therefore more fleas and more plague. However, it's far from established.

Also, I do have confidence in some of the individual ministers. I think overall Chris Bowen has been effective in Climate Change. Jim Chalmers is highly professional in treasury. There are others. There's much more professionalism there than in the opposition team.

I think the best that can be hoped for is competence. But that is something.

Hey the ABC vote counter how has Labor at 92 - which I think is the largest majority since Federation, unless I’m mistaken.

Non-eliminativist physicalists don't assume the physical world to be totally mindless of course (unless the minds under discussion are defined as being incompatible with physicalism). — wonderer1

I’d be interested in an elaboration of that. Would that be the minds of animals other than h.sapiens, or ‘mind’ in a more abstract sense?

I’m not saying that what they’re proposing is a good thing. I can *kind of* understand the motivation, because the influx of undocumented migrants is a serious issue in North America and Europe. But I think legal ways of dealing with it need to be found, rather than declaring it a ‘military emergency’ in order to justify the suspension of basic human rights. But, make no mistake, this is not a thought-bubble - it’s been the trend of the Trump administration right from the beginning of his first term.

I feel obliged to save God from the fiery pits of Hume’s “to the flames!” — Fire Ologist

One my lecturers in philosophy wryly pointed out that Hume’s condemnation at the end of his Treatise actually applies to the Treatise. ‘Take any book of scholastic metaphysic…’ The lecturer compared Hume, like the positivists after him, to the Uroboros, the mythical snake that swallows itself. ‘The hardest part’, he would say with a mischievous grin, ‘is the last bite’.

(BTW I cross-posted my above reply to you before I saw your reply above that, although I don’t think we’ve crossed purposes.)

I believe anyway. Because God makes no sense either, and really my own existence with all of its questions and knowledge of illusion, makes no sense either. None of it makes sense, so, to me, there is plenty of room to trust God anyway. — Fire Ologist

I know I’ve already said plenty, but your comment has stayed with me—partly because it touches on a deep philosophical issue that I’ve reflected on before.

One of the most insightful books I’ve read on this is The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie. Gillespie challenges the usual story that modernity arose from reason overcoming faith. Instead, he shows that the transition to modern thought was deeply shaped by a theological struggle within Christianity itself—especially the debate over divine reason versus divine will.

Brief summary: Gillespie turns the conventional reading of the Enlightenment (as reason overcoming religion) on its head by explaining how the humanism of Petrarch, the free-will debate between Luther and Erasmus, the scientific forays of Francis Bacon, the epistemological debate between Descarte and Hobbes, were all motivated by an underlying wrestling with the questions posed by nominalism, which according to Gillespie dismantled the rational God / universe of medieval scholasticism and introduced (by way of the Franciscans) a fideistic God-of-pure-will, born of a concern that anything less than such would jeopardize His divine omnipotence. This combined with the emerging nominalism to form the basis of much of modern thought.

Subsequent intellectual history is, in Gillespie's reading, a grappling with the question of free will and divine determinism. Protestantism involved at its core fideistic, denying free will in order to preserve God's absolute power. However, this in turn culminated in an ambivalence about salvation. If God simply wills whom to save, human action has no real merit (ex. Luther's "sin boldly"). Gillespie's chapter on the debate between Erasmus-Luther was among the most interesting in bringing this out. — Christopher Blosser

In medieval scholasticism, especially in the work of Aquinas, God was understood as transcendent but also rational. The universe was seen as ordered in a way that human reason could, at least in part, comprehend—since human reason reflected the divine logos. But Gillespie argues that a shift occurred with the rise of theological voluntarism, particularly through the influence of Franciscan thinkers. They insisted that God’s will was absolutely free and not bound even by rationality. To suggest otherwise, they argued, would limit divine omnipotence.

This paved the way for a more fideistic view of God, where faith meant trusting in the unknowable will of God, even when it seemed to make no sense. This tension played out dramatically in the Reformation, especially in Luther’s rejection of scholastic rationalism and his emphasis on trust in God’s inscrutable will.

So your comment, about trusting God because nothing makes sense, actually reflects a deep-standing thread in Christian culture —a move away from the idea of a rationally ordered universe toward a faith based on trust in God’s sheer will. In that light, what feels like a modern attitude is actually rooted in a much older theological shift. This is what Gillespie brings out. But, be assured, Thomist philosophy lives on, and there are many profound Thomist philosophers to this day.

It isn’t settled yet, until the final announcements are made by Albanese. I should wait until then.

As for there being no time outside the awareness of it, that depends on your definition of time. — noAxioms

OK, how about ‘no time outside the measurement of time’. I refer back to the earlier quote:

Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession. Clocks don’t measure time; we do.

The objections to this seem to be that time is ‘obviously’ objective. But isn’t that because, as we’re all members of the same species and culture, we measure it acording to agreed units?

Imagine some species on another planet, far larger than Earth, with a daily rotation of one of our weeks, and an annual rotation of tens of our decades. Presumably the units they would use for measuring time would be very different to terrestrial units.

Is there an objective time which is independent of these two apparently incommensurable systems of measurement?

So the Trump administration has finally acknowledged something I’ve pointed out for a long while. That is that the writ of habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, applies to everyone, including non-citizens and undocumented immigrants. It means that, once arrived, a person has the right to argue his or her case before a judge. I’ve said in the past that this amounts to a kind of osmosis - if a person arrives from a territory with no recognition of human rights, it violates the rights they receive from being in the US to return them.

Now Stephen Miller is calling this principle into question on the (dubious) grounds that undocumented immigrants represent an invasion, and habeas corpus doesn’t apply in the case of an invading force. Trump has said a number of times of late that it would be impossible to bring each case of a couple of million undocumented immigrants to court, so this argument is making that claim explicit. Miller of course says ‘the constitution is clear’, which it is, in the case of an invading force. So it will depend on whether the judiciary agrees that undocumented arrivals constitute an invading force.

Everything I say here is well within the bounds of philosophy of religion in which this thread is situated, although it will be meaningless to positivism as a matter of definition.

I don’t at all but I recognise the metaphor.

a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’
— Wayfarer

Because there is such a thing as “making sense”, I agree it therefore makes sense that there is a being that makes all sense of everything. And I agree, such a being is not one of us, so we may never apprehend it, or will never make sense of everything. — Fire Ologist

I don’t generally quote scripture, but one of the New Testament aphorisms is ‘blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall know God’ (Matt 5:8). In saying that I’m well aware of my own lack of purity and the probable consequences of that. But I want to consider this through a philosophical rather than confessional perspective.

I understand that teaching to be a reference to what came to be called ‘theosis’ or ‘the divine vision’, It is described as a state of union with the Divine and is the culmination of the spiritual life in both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity (although with a few exceptions it is not nearly so explicit in Reformed Theology for reasons I won’t enlarge on here.)

Similar motifs can be found in other spiritual traditions, of divine union, mystical absorption and so forth. Of course there are also profound differences between them and I’m not suggesting they all be blurred into a kind of mushy new-age syncretism. But from a philosophical perspective it’s the convergences that are interesting, as it suggests archetypal forms found across cultures. And all of these traditions - not only religious teachings, but also philosophical traditions - indicated the importance of purity of motive, lack of attachment, abandonment of craving, and so on, as preconditions for that insight to arise. That is the kind of ‘saving insight’ that the Biblical verse is referring to. It is not an empirical observation about states of affair in the world, but insight into the divine origin of being- mystical insight, known under various terminologies in different cultures - Gnosis, Jñāna, Prajñāpāramitā being examples from different traditions. Again, the cultures differ amongst themselves as to the specifics, but again the similarities are of more significance than the differences: they are agreeing and disagreeing about something real.

I also think there is a possibility that, in our likeness to God (the higher one), we sometimes apprehend things completely, that when we know something, we know the same thing God knows. We will forever pursue all-knowledge, but along the way, possess particular knowledge the same as any knowing being would possess. — Fire Ologist

Well, your own Catholic tradition has a noble and still esteemed school of philosophical theology, namely, that of St Thomas Aquinas, who (again from a philosophical perspective) I would propose as an example (and possibly the last example) of the philosophia perennis in the Western tradition. Thomas’ adoption of Aristotelian hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism conforms with your general idea. See Sensible Form and Intelligible Form in Aquinas. I’m not presenting it as ‘holy writ’ (which many will present Aquinas as) but as a philosophical model which I think still holds up even in light of the many scientific discoveries since Thomas’ day. That idea is that the rational soul of man (psuche) has insight into the formal causes, which themselves arise in the Divine Intellect. I know there are many ways to criticise that philosophy and that it is overall regarded as superseded in the Western tradition, but I’m not sure how many of those who criticise it really understand what they’re rejecting. Underlying all of this is a different mode of knowing and being to that of the detached observer of states of affairs in the world.

Incidentally, the ‘through the glass, darkly’ is part of a Pauline scripture that is very often read at wedding ceremonies, and indeed one of the most poetic invocations of the spirit in the whole New Testament. The complete verse is

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. — 1 Cor. 13-12

‘Then’ is a reference to entering the divine presence, nowadays generally understood as something that happens only at the time of death, but in the mystical sense, corresponding with the advent of the beatific vision.

What, then, are these assumptions? What are scientists assuming when they do science? Probably no one would say they're arbitrary -- that scientists just like scientific method -- so what justifications can philosophy of science offer for them? — J

Totally other thread - but it’s along the lines I suggested. Early modern science and philosophy - Galileo, Newton, Descartes - the division of mind from matter, primary attributes from secondary, the exclusion of factors not considered amenable to quantification. The description given in Nagel’s ‘Mind and Cosmos’. But meta-physics never goes it away, per the famous remark about philosophy burying its undertakers. Quantum physics has brought up large metaphysical questions which remain unresolved. Philosophy of biology has expanded to include biosemiotics and the metaphysics of symbols. And so on. But the positivist spirit is still powerful - ‘all that can be known, can be known by science’.

Much more to say but family duties call for a couple of hours.

You posited a sense we can have no sense of. — Janus

As I said.

Right. Should have been ‘me’ then, rather than:

what could it be to us? — Janus

Can’t disagree but increasing tax rates on higher incomes is necessary and it would be a forward step if a Republican congress does it.

You have this tendency to regard your own experience as the sole criteria for what anyone else should accept.

shame that Dreyfus and Husic were rolled by factions - but that’s politics, I guess. I do wonder if Dreyfus will resign his seat, though. After such sterling service, it’s pretty shoddy treatment.

None of it makes sense, so, to me, there is plenty of room to trust God anyway. — Fire Ologist

I would like to believe that a higher intelligence makes perfect sense, but sense that we’re not able to apprehend - after all we see ‘through a glass, darkly.’

I don't 100% believe there is no afterlife, but it really is nothing more than a fantasy, — Janus

So, which?

I can't see any point in worrying about something you can do nothing about. — Janus

Death can’t be avoided but if there does turn out to be an afterlife then what one has or has not done may indeed be highly significant.

Yes, all true. Anyway, it’s been interesting to see how big a story it has been, it’s been headlines here in Australia ever since Francis’ demise. There’d be nothing like that over the election of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Well, knock me down with a feather. Trump has told Johnston that he wants him to support raising tax rates on high incomes :yikes: - something the Republican Party has long refused to even consider. My bet is that Bessent and his other Treasury wonks have suggested it. But it actuallly seems - gulp - a good idea.

I guess, but the stress laid on nationality (and also to some degree nationalism) sits awkwardly with the supposed universality of the Catholic faith.

The oft-stated idea that the Buddha says there is no self, tout courte, is mistaken. The Buddha denied there was a permanent self 'set like a post' or 'immovable like a mountain peak' that migrated life to life. But asked outright 'does the self exist?', the Buddha declined to answer. When asked later why, he said he didn't want to side with those ascetics who maintain that kind of 'eternal self', or on the other hand, to say that 'there is no self whatever', as the questioner would not have understood it.

So the idea that there are future lives, but no single individual, is how it comes across in popular culture, but it's not entirely accurate. It is well known that in Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnate lamas are said to be able to recognise the possessions of their former incarnations - that is part of the test for recognising them. It's not a soul that is reborn, but a mind-stream ('cittasantana') that has manifested again (voluntarily, in the case of lamas, whereas for most other people it's due to ignorance). And liberation from the cycle relies on the extinction of the idea of a self to which karma is attached. That's the theory, anyway. But the practical upshot is, everyone else is destined for some future existence in one of the 'six realms'.

What's dawning on me is not at all romantic: it's the fear of God's judgement which is said to occur at the time of death. (That struck me recently when I watched a feature on Mt Athos, in an interview with the head monk.) In Buddhist terms, no God is involved, but Buddhists have just as vivid a depiction of the hell realms as well as the other realms which await one in the next life. That scares me a lot more than the idea that death is simply the end - the fact that one is condemned to exist and that many of the possible existences that await might be considerably less fortunate than the one I find myself in. That is something often found in Buddhist texts, although Buddhist modernism tends to neglect it.

I believe the real reason behind the claim that science disenchants the world is that it seems to foreclose on the idea of any kind of afterlife. People say science is dehumanizing and I can only think that the dispelling of the fantasy of an afterlife must be what they mean. — Janus

However, if there really is a life beyond this one, then foreclosing it would be momentous, would it not? If you don't believe in it, it is only a matter of a fallacious belief; but if you do, then something is at stake which might be more significant than anything else in your life.

Me, I'm wrestling with it. I think a lot of what is said about it is obviously mythical, but it remains, for me, at least an open question, and something that nags me, now I'm in my 70's. And that if it turns out to be real after all, it could be the ultimate in rude awakenings.

*

Not being Catholic, the philosophical question that occurs to me is why the fuss about nationality? Surely such a figure transcends nationality.