Got no time for Ziporyn sorry.

God is just one of the 10,000 things — T Clark

One doesn’t have to subscribe to any religious belief to see the falsehood of this, whether you believe in God or not. As a matter of definition, God is not a thing or a phenomenon. In terms of philosophy of religion, the ‘uncreated’ is a term that may be used, and the uncreated is not one or any number of things.

Humans are indeed “special” in the sense that they categorize events from a selfish perspective. — Gnomon

According to Buddhist lore, human birth is precious and rare, precisely because humans alone can hear and potentially understand the teaching as to the way to escape the endless cycle of birth and death. (Are Humans Special? David Loy.)

Something from the SEP entry on Michel Henry that resonates with me:

Contemporary Culture as Barbarism

If, for Henry, culture has always to be understood as “a culture of life”, ie, as the cultivation of subjective powers, then it includes art without being limited to it. Cultural praxis behaves what Henry designates as its “elaborate forms” (eg, art, religion, discursive knowledge) as well as everyday forms related to the satisfaction of basic needs. Both types of forms, however, fall under the ethical category of subjective self-growth and illustrate the bond between the living and absolute life. The inversion of culture in “barbarism” means that within a particular socio-historical context the need for subjective self-growth is no longer adequately met, and the tendency toward an occultation (i.e. obscuration) of the bond between the living and absolute life is reinforced. According to Henry, who echoes Husserl's analysis in Crisis , such an inversion takes place in contemporary culture, the dominating feature of which is the triumph of Galilean science and its technological developments (B xiv).

Insofar as it relates to objectification, the “Galilean principle” is directly opposed to Henry's philosophy of immanent affectivity. For Henry, science, including modern Galilean science, nevertheless remains a highly elaborated form of culture. Although “the joy of knowing is not always as innocent as it seems”, the line separating culture from “barbarism” is crossed when science is transformed into scientific ideology, i.e. when the Galilean principle is made into an ontological claim according to which ultimate reality is given only through the objectively measurable and quantifiable.

(Not that anyone would ever do such a thing.)

Does atheism entail that the category of 'the sacred' is meaningless? Does it entail that the 'mokṣa' of Hinduism or the 'Nirvāṇa' of Buddhism have no transcendent referent?

Taking Buddhism as an example (Buddhism is non-theistic as a matter of principle as it recognises no creator-god.) One of the attributes of the Buddha (or Buddhas) is nevertheless described as 'lokuttara' (Sanskrit). The translation is usually given as 'world-transcending' but it is, not to beat around the bush, supernatural, to all intents and purposes. The Buddha (or Buddhas) are said to understand the root of the impersonal causal chain which gives rise to material embodiment (i.e. being born) and to be able to bring a complete end to that process (although later Buddhism maintains that Buddhas and bodhisattvas (wisdom-beings) are able to re-enter the world voluntarily out of compassion.)

Hinduism likewise posits human existence as an instance of an endless process of birth and death from which liberation is sought through the extinction of avidya (ignorance). Hinduism is poly- rather than non-theistic, although the impersonal Brahman of nondualist Vedanta could hardly be equated with the personalist deity of the Bible.

Traditional Taoism included the belief that practitioners can aspire to physical immortality through specific practices. This belief is rooted in Daoist cosmology and the goal of aligning with the Dao. In early Taoist traditions, physical immortality was often pursued through alchemy. External alchemy (waidan) involved creating elixirs using substances like mercury and lead, though these could be dangerous. Later traditions emphasized internal alchemy (neidan), which focused on refining the body and spirit through meditation, breath control, visualization, and energy cultivation.

The cultivation of qi (vital energy) is central to these practices, supported by techniques such as controlled breathing, diet, sexual cultivation, and exercises like Tai Chi or Qigong. These methods aim to preserve life force and harmonize the body with natural rhythms. For some, physical immortality is understood literally, while for others it symbolizes spiritual transcendence, where the spirit becomes an xian—a transcendent or immortal being—achieving liberation from the cycle of life and death.

Again, non-theistic. But is it atheist, in the contemporary sense? That's the question I want to pose.

Does Zipporyn attract an audience because he is 'anti-God'? There's a large pool to be tapped.

J D Vance on Jan 6th:

If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 and you’ve had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned.

Don't bet on him taking it up with The Boss.

True. None were murdered.

In the days and weeks after the riot, five police officers who had served at the Capitol on Jan. 6 died.

Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police, who was attacked by the mob, died on Jan. 7.

Officer Jeffrey Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department killed himself after the attack.

Officer Howard S. Liebengood of the Capitol Police also died by suicide four days afterward.

The Capitol Police had previously said that Officer Sicknick died from injuries sustained “while physically engaging with protesters.” The Washington medical examiner later ruled that he had died of natural causes: multiple strokes that occurred hours after Officer Sicknick’s confrontation with the mob. The medical examiner added, however, that “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”

A bipartisan Senate report, released in June, found that the seven deaths were connected to the Capitol attack. But the report was issued a month before two Metropolitan Police officers — Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag — died by suicide in July.

During the siege of the Capitol that day, over 140 police officers were assaulted—including over 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and over 60 from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

But he cannot bypass both houses — ssu

Maybe but he’s sure as hell wanting to try. He’s already muscling both houses to allow him to pass Pete ‘Pass-the-Bottle’ Hegseth as Defence Secretary as an interim appointment.

You’ve generally struck me as open-doored :-)

in a very Soviet way — ssu

Hence my reference to apparatchiks. It’s obvious Trump intends to rule by decree and bypass both House and Senate. And he’s protected by the absolute immunity conferred by the Supreme Court last July.

Having outraged half the nation by acquitting numerous violent offenders and secessionists who assaulted and in some cases murdered police officers on 6th Jan 2021, Trump has now drafted the Ending the Weaponisation of the Federal Government order:

The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions. These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives. Many of these activities appear to be inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States, including those activities directed at parents protesting at school board meetings, Americans who spoke out against the previous administration’s actions, and other Americans who were simply exercising constitutionally protected rights.

The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process. It targeted individuals who voiced opposition to the prior administration’s policies with numerous Federal investigations and politically motivated funding revocations, which cost Americans access to needed services. The Department of Justice even jailed an individual for posting a political meme. And while the Department of Justice has ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6, and simultaneously dropped nearly all cases against BLM rioters.

Let's remember the criminal actions that two of those prosecutions were directed towards:





Now we're going to witness the purging of the Department of Justice and the implanting of thousands of Trump political apparatchiks in their offices, hellbent on extracting revenge for those who tried and failed to bring Trump to justice.

The Washington Post's slogan is 'Democracy Dies in Darkness'. Wrong. We're witnessing it being strangled in the full light of day.

Revealed religion used to be regarded as a source of knowledge. Prophecy was a part of that, as was ritual, symbolism, and sacred lore. It is believed that the prophets were visionaries, that they had insights that others did not, and that at least some of the recorded events documented in the texts (or originally passed down aurally) concerned actual historical events. From the perspective of modern culture, that tends to b deprecated or even disregarded. None of it is able to be validated by peer-review or empirical methodology and so it is generally relegated to myth, pure and simple. From which perspective, it can't be known, but only believed, which is pretty well where it stands. Most people here will simply regard any religious claim as 'belief without evidence' (with the implication that religious beliefs are examples of gullibility or wishful thinking.)

An exception might be the Vatican's annals concerning the attested miracles that have been documented in cases of beatification. As is well-known, recognition of a saint requires that at least two bona fide miracles are documented which can be attributed to the intervention of the candidate for beatification. A panel is then set up to examine these claims and to try and discredit the purported miracles as a form of QA (from whence the well-known office of the 'devil's advocate' originated.) As a result of these processes there is a body of several thousands of such cases documented over many hundreds of years, which is, at least, a data set!

A haemotologist and medical writer named Jacalyn Duffin became interested in this as a consequence of being called as an expert witness in one such case. An atheist, she was nevertheless intrigued by the data, saying:

Over hundreds of hours in the Vatican archives, I examined the files of more than 1,400 miracle investigations — at least one from every canonization between 1588 and 1999. A vast majority — 93 percent over all and 96 percent for the 20th century — were stories of recovery from illness or injury, detailing treatment and testimony from baffled physicians.

If a sick person recovers through prayer and without medicine, that’s nice, but not a miracle. She had to be sick or dying despite receiving the best of care. The church finds no incompatibility between scientific medicine and religious faith; for believers, medicine is just one more manifestation of God’s work on earth.

Perversely then, this ancient religious process, intended to celebrate exemplary lives, is hostage to the relativistic wisdom and temporal opinions of modern science. Physicians, as nonpartisan witnesses and unaligned third parties, are necessary to corroborate the claims of hopeful postulants. For that reason alone, illness stories top miracle claims. I never expected such reverse skepticism and emphasis on science within the church.

(You can read her story here, (NY Times gift link))

I'm just trying to pull our focus toward what this entire issue opposes, namely a philosophical view that claims that objectivity is strictly a matter of what is "out there," and that there is a clear separation between what I judge and the act of judging it. It is in this context that the entire fraught issue of "I think" can most usefully be considered. — J

Agree.

Thanks for your input, as always. I think I will continue with this book now, having previously been having second thoughts about it.

:up: :pray:

Ever heard of a physicist beginning her theory with an account of the perceptual act itself?? Of course, this is ignored. This is why we have philosophy. — Astrophel

Husserl noticed this, of course.

It is probably equivalent to LSD experimenting culturally. — Jack Cummins

Nothing like it, and I've done both! Dive in. ChatGPT is programmed to be friendly and approachable, and it is. Open a free account, copy your OP into it, and ask, "What do you think?" You'll be surprised (and, I think, delighted) with what comes back.

So the amnesty for Jan 6th rioters amounts to sanctioning Trump’s right-wing militia partners, straight out of the Authoritarian Playbook, as Rachel Maddow explains (and I wonder how long it is before she gets a knock on the door at midnight?) Meanwhile, the NY Times observes:

the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers. It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.

Have you been interacting much with any of the Large Language Models? If not, I suggest it is one way to get some insights into these questions. Not the only way, but it does help. I suggest creating a login for ChatGPT or Claude.ai or one of the others, which are accessible for free.

Other than that, what @Manuel said.

Could you elucidate the bearing this has on the OP? For example how this might provide a basis for ethical normativity?

@Mww - like others, I appreciate your guidance in these difficult matters. But I'm kind of stuck on something arising from the discussion of the last few days. So forgive me for reproducing these rather lengthy passages from Rödl and from Kant's section on 'the synthetic unity of apperception', but it seems to me that Rödl's appeal to Kant seems well-founded. Forgive me if some of this has already been discussed. First Rödl then Kant.

Kant said: the I think accompanies all my thoughts. Hegel calls this way of putting it “inept”. However, in defense of Kant, we note that he hastened to add that the "I think" cannot in turn be accompanied by any representation. Thus he sought to make it plain that the I think is not something thought alongside the thought that it accompanies, but internal to what is thought as such.

When I say, the I think is contained in what is thought, this may with equal justice be called inept. It suggests that there are two things, one containing the other. Perhaps we should say, what is thought is suffused with the I think. But here, too, if we undertake to think through the metaphor, we come to grief before long. People have tried saying that the I think is in the background, while what is thought is in the foreground, or that what is thought is thematic, while the I think is unthematic. These metaphors are apt to solidify the notion that there are two things represented, the object and my thinking of it: in a visual scene, what is in the foreground and what is in the background are distinct things seen (the house in the foreground, say, the trees in the background); in a piece of music, the theme is heard alongside its accompaniment. But we must not take issue with these figurative ways of speaking; it is not through metaphors and images that we understand self-consciousness. We will continue to talk of containment, not to provide illumination, but to have a convenient way of speaking. — Rödl, p7

The “I think” must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing. That representation which can be given previously to all thought is called intuition. All the diversity or manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the “I think,” in the subject in which this diversity is found. But this representation, “I think,” is an act of spontaneity; that is to say, it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility. I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from empirical; or primitive apperception, because it is self-consciousness which, whilst it gives birth to the representation “I think,” must necessarily be capable of accompanying all our representations. It is in all acts of consciousness one and the same, and unaccompanied by it, no representation can exist for me. The unity of this apperception I call the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate the possibility of à priori cognition arising from it. For the manifold representations which are given in an intuition would not all of them be my representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness, that is, as my representations (even although I am not conscious of them as such), they must conform to the condition under which alone they can exist together in a common self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me. From this primitive conjunction follow many important results. ....

...The thought, “These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me,” is accordingly just the same as, “I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them”; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious. — Kant, On the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception

Doesn't this lend support to Rödl's contention that 'As thinking that things are so is thinking it valid to think this, the 'I think' is thought in every act of thinking.' It seems a perfectly reasonable interpretation of Kant's 'original synthetic unity of apperception' to me.

An insanity which is the new normal. Or so we are to believe. Trump is now protected by the Supreme Court ruling which gives him total immunity from prosecution for official acts. God knows what he'll do with it. Anyway I'm not going to let him live in my head, I have to fight the urge to vent.

In one of his first official acts, Trump has pardoned nearly all the felons convicted of the disgraceful assault on the US Capitol Building, 6th January 2021, as he promised. What happened that day, and how close it came to overthrowing democracy in the US, should never be played down or understated. The assault on democracy continues, but now from within the Oval Office. Truly a day of infamy. :cry:

Also, my remark about 'scientism' was in response to an essay that the thread originator wrote and linked to, specifically:

Following the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, nominalism went on to further influence Catholicism, finding a ripe feeding ground in the Protestant Christianity of Martin Luther, then swiftly spreading by the invention of the move-able printing press. Judaism, Islam, and other theologies were not immune to its far-reaching influence. This theological element went on to have further effect on philosophy through the work of Rene Descartes, his individualistic and particularistic “I think, therefore I am” and those that followed in his vein of thought. This short-sighted thinking went on to promote dualism and the materialistic sciences of classical mechanics as seen in Leibniz’s absent-of-time equations meant to mimic the eternal and separate-from-us, casting-at-will nature of the nominalist God. Today’s sciences are finally beginning to realize the difficulties that lie in trying to rectify and consolidate what they inherited from the past with what they have since learned, and they are now being challenged with conundrums very much like the theologians of the Middle Ages. In fully recognizing the influence of the nominalism thought virus on our now global civilization, we can see that what some believe is an ongoing debate between materialistic scientism and the theological religions is actually a debate between two camps infected with the same virus. Not only has this thought virus infected science and religion but it has a strong foothold in our politics, the way we treat our planet, each other, and even our closest neighbors and family members. Symptoms and casualties of this virus manifest in mass shootings, domestic violence, drug addictions, suicides, hate crimes, climate change, the ongoing destruction of our biosphere, and so much more. — Mapping the Medium

Probably the place to discuss this is in the thread on the topic, that's if you have anything further to add.

That is a very poignant interview with DBH and Curt Jaimungal. (He's had back surgery and is looking much thinner, I notice.) I have to respect his honesty.

But also recall that Schopenhauer quote I included a few days back:

In order to always have a secure compass in hand so as to find one's way in life, and to see life always in the correct light without going astray, nothing is more suitable than getting used to seeing the world as something like a penal colony. This view finds its...justification not only in my philosophy, but also in the wisdom of all times, namely, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Empedocles, Pythagoras [...] Even in genuine and correctly understood Christianity, our existence is regarded as the result of a liability or a misstep. ... We will thus always keep our position in mind and regard every human, first and foremost, as a being that exists only on account of sinfulness, and who is life is an expiation of the offence committed through birth. Exactly this constitutes what Christianity calls the sinful nature of man. — Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in Schopenhauer's Compass, Urs App

So the reason for the suffering of this world is that this is in its nature, and furthermore, we're only in it because of some primeval fault or flaw. So nobody is really innocent! If you were completely innocent, then you wouldn't have been born in the first place. That's the bad news! But according to the Christians, the good news is, that you really don't belong to this world.

I might take that in. I bought his last book All Things are Full of Gods, and didn't much like the format, and it spends a lot of time rehearsing arguments I'm very familiar with.

I don't think he trivialises suffering or says 'have faith that it'll be OK in the end!' He deplores any kind of triteness, and he also takes a dim view of Calvin and Calvinism. It's obviously a problem he wrestles with. But I think he must believe that the 'life eternal' is free of suffering. ('There's no sickness, toil or danger in that bright land to which I go.')

Something that I've been mulling over is this. When I first became interested in Eastern religions, it is because they seemed to appeal to something other than belief. They seemed to promise something like a direct insight or an experience or realisation - the key word - which was superior to the stuffy Churchianity that was how I saw religion. But then life taught me that such realisations may be elusive - they can come and go without much apparent cause. There is also a lot of capacity for self-delusion in their pursuit. And the cultural context in which they were practiced and understood is vastly different to our own. So at this stage in life, 'belief' is no longer looking like the shibboleth that I once thought it was.

isn't death the end of suffering for secular types? — Tom Storm

Secular philosophies certainly believe it is. Religious philosophies, on various grounds, do not. Maybe the religious patients you have tended are tormented by that possibility, whereas those who don't believe in an afterlife won't believe there's anything to dread.

David Bentley Hart has said (and recently at great length) that the problem of suffering (the inherent cruelty of this world) is atheism's best argument and that there is no answer to it in religion which he finds plausible. — Tom Storm

That couldn't be right, because if he didn't believe that his religion has a plausible attitude to suffering, surely he'd abandon the faith, which he hasn't. While Hart often says that the problem of suffering is a formidable challenge and "atheism's best argument," it doesn't mean he accepts atheism's perspective on suffering. He addresses the problem of suffering in this interview , conducted shortly after the 2004 tsunami catastrophe, which ends:

(Referring to a photograph seen in the Baltimore Sun.) The story concerned the Akhdam, the lowest social caste in Yemen, supposedly descended from Ethiopians left behind when the ancient Ethiopian empire was driven out of Arabia in the sixth century, who live in the most unimaginable squalor. In the background of the photo was a scattering of huts constructed from crates and shreds of canvas, and on all sides barren earth; but in the foreground was a little girl, extremely pretty, dressed in tatters, but with her arms outspread, a look of delight upon her face, dancing. To me that was a heartbreaking picture, of course, but it was also an image of something amazing and glorious: the sheer ecstasy of innocence, the happiness of a child who can dance amid despair and desolation because her joy came with her into the world and prompts her to dance as if she were in the midst of paradise.

She became for me the perfect image of the deep indwelling truth of creation, the divine Wisdom or Sophia who resides in the very heart of the world, the stainless image of God, the unfallen. I’m waxing quite Eastern here, I know, But that, I would say, is the nature of God’s presence in the fallen world: his image, his bride, the deep joy and longing of creation, called from nothingness to be joined to him. That child’s dance is nothing less than the eternal dance of divine Wisdom before God’s throne, the dance of David and the angels and saints before his glory; it is the true face of creation, which God came to restore and which he will not suffer to see corruption.

The thread is about religion and suffering, so it is relevant to re-state the implicit claim of religious philosophies variously designated as salvation, deliverance, or liberation, depending on the context, meaning the ending of suffering. As mentioned in an earlier comment, there is an unspoken convention that this is not something that can be considered in the secular context, as by definition, secular culture can't accomodate it.

Very good book, was on college curricula for many a year.

So are you saying that there has been no kind of ethical or socio-political thought or advancement since the renaisance? — Apustimelogist

Not that there has been none, but there was plainly a massive sea change in the conception of man's place in the universe, from imago dei to Bertrand Russell 'Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving;...his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.' This has been subject of massive literature and commentary, it is not something of my devising.

People who throw about the word scientism are so focused on what they dislike about science that they fail to see the rest of western thought and philosophy outside of that. — Apustimelogist

I didn't 'throw the word about' I used it consciously and deliberately to refer to a specific kind of attitude: that those who are transfixed by technological and scientific progress fail to grasp the shadow side of modern civilization which manifests as the meaning crisis.

Fascism in the US starts tomorrow. New variety: techno-fascim. Not as blatant as the older versions, but far more insidious.

I’m a bit confused about what exactly you’re pursuing in this thread. The original post was a link to a physics professor’s thoughts about the relationship of physics and maths, which is what I tried to address in my comment about the quantification of phenomena. Philosophy of mathematics is an interesting albeit difficult subject that is often discussed here.

But then you linked to a completely different essay which mentions mathematics but in a very different context. That second essay is much wider-ranging, starting with reflections on the nature of knowledge, and saying:

When we recognize that mathematics is just one form of the many semiotic cognitive expression and reception tools that humans can use to navigate our terrain, this one by means of measurement, it is very important that we keep reminding ourselves that our perception of the terrain is only the human perspective.

Which I take to be a rather deflationary account, in that it deflates the notion that mathematics enables us to know any kind of universal truth, and basically ‘relativises’ the whole field (i.e. declares it is of human origin, presumably as a consequence of evolutionary necessity). This then segues into a wide-ranging survey into the shortcomings of human symbolic languages, including maths, and an excursion into ‘history of ideas’ and nominalism as the root of all modern evils. But there’s a wide range of ideas in that essay across a very broad sweep of history. It is impossible to tell which tack to take, so to speak ;-)

I too recognise the ‘evils of nominalism’ although I’m inclined to narrow the scope of the problem considerably, to the decline of scholastic realism and the influence of Ockham (which you acknowledge). In some ways, my own approach (and speaking very much as self-taught and without formal training in classical texts) is more traditionalist. I admire the Platonist attitude, that the ability to grasp numbers, and other exercises of reason, enables us to know something beyond the ‘treachery of sense’. It is that capacity which has enabled h.sapiens to reach into the domain of possibility and extract such astonishing inventions. As I said, I see mathematical knowledge as a power.

But I also agree on the shortcomings of ‘scientism’ and the evils of what has been described as the ‘reign of quantity’. (I sometimes wonder if from the Renaissance forwards, the West has taken all those elements of Platonic and Aristotelian thought useful for engineering and science, while abandoning the ethical dimension which went along with it, in their eyes.) I am a long-time and persistent critic of scientific materialism and many aspects of what is taught as philosophy in the modern academy. So I’m very much in your overall corner, at least as far as I can understand it, but that may not be very far!

I just think talk "beyond the conceptual" says too much. — Astrophel

And saying that the Buddha’s enlightenment is a ‘language phenomenon’ doesn’t?

if Kant thought the I think accompanied all thoughts (or even representations), he would have said so! — Leontiskos

I’m saying it’s an arguable implication of Kant’s intent, and that you’re making a polemical mountain out of an interpretive molehill.

They say in Tibet there is a dialog among masters of concepts those on the outside cannot even imagine — Astrophel

There is also an understanding of non-conceptual wisdom. In yogic terminology concepts are ‘vikalpa’, mental constructions. They are not necessarily erroneous, but there are domains of understanding, or so it is said, beyond the conceptual. In the same way that other skilled pursuits like acrobats or skiing might be, neither of which rely on or can be conveyed by concept.

I dare say within the Tibetan context, these types of non-discursive understandings can be shared amongst those who are similarly skilled in that sense.

In your case, would it not be fair to say that a skepticism about the mainstream and its platitudes drew you towards a countercultural orientation and by extension into traditions of higher consciousness? — Tom Storm

I guess you could say that. As I’ve often related, I’m pretty typical of the boomer generation, in whom some such convictions were planted by the popular culture of the day. When I went to University in pursuit of understanding, I had (and still have) the distinct impression that a great deal of what is taught in philosophy is conditioned by what ought not to be said, what ought not to be believed. There are these culturally-reinforced guidelines, or barriers, which grew out of a reaction against previous history. What is acceptable and or ‘politically correct’ to say, in various domains of discourse. That is where most of what is being discussed in the OP originates.

When Kant writes, "The I think must be able to accompany all my representations," he underscores that this "I think" is the unifying activity of consciousness, presupposed in every act of thought. Rödl is arguably drawing out this implication rather than making an unsupported claim. Kant’s texts are notoriously dense and subject to varying interpretations. Rödl is working within the tradition of Kantian scholarship that sees self-consciousness as central to Kant’s project. Like others, he will build on or extrapolate from the texts to make broader arguments, but that does not amount to lying.

Rödl’s interpretation may emphasize aspects of Kant that others downplay or read differently, but this is part of philosophical engagement, not dishonesty. I see it as a plausible and defensible reading of Kant’s argument.

To claim that Rödl is "lying" presupposes not just a disagreement but an intentional misrepresentation, which is a serious charge requiring compelling evidence. I don't think it's justified on the basis of the discussion.

our resident Kantian, Mww — Leontiskos

also said

Anyway….not that big a deal. — Mww

I think, possibly, what this thread about, is not skepticism so much as unbelief. The intention to blow away the cobwebs of inherited beliefs and start afresh with what is really there.

Anyway, it's provided the impetus for me to acquire a book I've often read about but never read in full, Pyrrhonism: How the Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, by Adrian Kuzminski. It is a study of Pyrrhonism - usually regarded as an original form of skeptical philosophy - and its relation with Madhyamaka, a philosophical sect of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which Pyrrho encountered in journeys east under the auspices of Alexander the Great's armies. (At the time, Greco-Bactrian culture was in full swing, with many exchanges of goods and ideas between the then-cultural centre of Gandhara and the Greek-speaking world. It is from this epoch that the well-known Greco-Buddhist statuary hails.)

Kuzminski disputes that Pyrrhonism *is* skepticism, per se, pointing out that the latter is a form of dogmatic belief (or dogmatic unbelief, more to the point.) Kuzminksi points out the the Greek 'skeptikos' meant originally an 'enquirer' or 'seeker', which is very different from what negative or dogmatic skepticism developed into. Pyrrho advanced no skeptic doctrine in that sense, but was aiming at reaching a state of ataraxia, or tranquility, in part by abstaining from judgements about what is not evident. Ataraxia is compared to the Buddhist 'nirodha' or cessation of attachment.

Non-Pyrrhonian sceptics, Pyrrhonists maintain, go too far in making doubt absolute and indiscriminate, in making the denial of everything inevitable. Confident of not allowing any positive assertions to be made, they draw the negative conclusion that no positive assertions can ever be made, and that even what is apparent must somehow be an illusion rather than something anomalous, something unusual and challenging. This kind of scepticism is a nihilistic negative dogmatism that claims we can know nothing at all. The point of positive dogmatic belief is to transcend the uncertainties and vicissitudes of life, of the space-time, flesh-and-blood world of appearances of which we are conscious, by appeal to something nonevident. The point of negative dogmatic belief, what is now called “scepticism,” is that there is no way to transcend life in this way. The point of Pyrrhonism, by contrast to both these, is to leave the question open..

For Pyrrhonists, like Buddhists and other nondogmatic soteriological schools, attachment is a symptom of a problem, not a solution. But ataraxia, free of any link to a view or attachment, escapes this burden; it is quite a different response to the claims of beliefs, and...it is for this reason that ataraxia was introduced by the Pyrrhonists in place of euthymia and other similar terms, such as eudaimonia. Ataraxia is not the elation of finding the hidden “truth” underlying experience, nor the security offered by a belief in such a truth, but is instead a liberation from the urge to seek such “truths” or beliefs at all. Insofar as ataraxia follows only upon such a suspension of belief, and not upon the adoption of any belief, it could not have been experienced by dogmatists like Epicureans, Stoics, Aristotelians, Platonists, Academic Sceptics, etc. — Greek Buddhism

I too like magpies, as I live here, and there's a large clan in my neighbourhood, but am puzzled by the bearing it has on the question at hand. If the point is that crows and other birds can demonstrate rudimentary reasoning skills, I'm tempted to ask, 'so what?'

I am saying that Rodl lies about what Kant says — Leontiskos

And I for one am not persuaded by your claim. I spelled out the exact passage in which you said he does this, and compared it to the passage in Kant, and could discern no difference between them, nor have you explained how they differ.

I'd also question the depiction of mathematics as a tool. It's more than a tool: it's a power. It is not coincidental that arithmetic and geometry came into existence with the advent of agriculture, the generation of surplus wealth, and the beginnings of architecture. All of these activities require calculation, measurement and accounting. Some of the oldest written records, cuniform scripts on Mesopotanian pottery shards, often recorded transactions of wheat and cattle. 'Other living forms' have no need of such powers, as they don't engage in the same kinds of activities. True, ants cultivate aphids so as to harvest their excretions for sugar, but they have no need of calculation in such activities (which is also true of many other symbiotic relations in the natural world.) Mathematical prediction enables degrees of control and invention which couldn't be found by any other means, so far as we know.