I don't think it's hard to see that Johnson is not doing this. — Leontiskos

Johnson's exclamation is the historical origin of the expression 'argumentum ad lapidem'.

What is his argument?

If Berkeley were right, *this* would never happen.
But it did happen.
Therefore, Berkeley is wrong. — Leontiskos

But it's equally the case that Johnson misunderstands Berkeley. Johnson is intending to demonstrate that Berkeley's argument entails that the stone does not really exist, but Berkeley doesn't make such a claim. Berkeley himself acknowledges that 'I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question.' His argument is not that stones, and feet, do not exist, but that there is no material substance apart from and separate to the manifold impressions that the stone makes on our sensory organs (including the sense of touch).

The composition and nature of the stone is a matter for physical chemistry and physics. And it is nowadays well known that minute analysis of the stone reveals ever-smaller components or particles from which it is composed, until the sub-atomic level is reached, at which point the nature of the so-called components of matter, if that is what 'material substance' is supposed to comprise, becomes quite ambiguous. In fact modern sub-atomic physics has not done much to support the kind of 'argument' that Johnson is proposing.

There's an Evan Thompson article on Bergson-Einstein Clock Time Contra Lived Time. No, that debate didn't end Bergson's career, although it didn't do him a lot of good. Bergson's day passed, whereas Einstein's discoveries helped define our age, but I still believe, going on what Thompson says, that Bergson makes a crucial point, and one about which Einstein was mistaken.

I have a modest collection on medium https://medium.com/@jonathan.shearman

So, what do you make of Rödl's statement that Nagel is making a similar mistake? (as pointed to previously}. — Paine

I've yet to absorb his criticism of Nagel. But the reason he brings Nagel in, is that they start from a similar ground, is it not? But, we'll get to that in Chapter 5.

So the million-dollar question is, When I think about my judgment, which we know is a thought1 (a mental event), is my new thought about that judgment also a thought1? I think much of Rodl's thesis rests on denying this. Self-consciousness has got to be a thought2 item, something "accompanying" any thought1, not an additional simultaneous thought1 (mental event). — J

I think you're being caught in a kind of recursion which is central to this whole argument and in so doing trying to reinstate the very distinction which Rödl is criticizing. The force-content distinction is a close parallel to the distinction you're trying to draw between thought1 (the act) and thought2 (the content). For Rödl, these are not separable aspects of judgment. When I judge that p (e.g., "the sky is blue"), the act of judging (I think) is not external to the content (p) but is inherently part of it ('internal' to it). Judgment is a unified act that includes both the self-conscious activity of thinking and the propositional content. So I think you're wanting to maintain the division between the subjective act and the objective content.

I think the error lies in the attempt to objectify thought (although that is not Rödl's terminology or method.) But it relates to his later point from Thomas Nagel about 'thoughts we can't get outside of'. Nagel emphasizes that there are perspectives—like the validity of reason or the unity of thought—that we cannot evaluate "from the outside" because they form the very framework within which all thinking and evaluation occur.

This is what ties into the 'science without contrary' that is subject of the next chapter.

I will say something about the connection between Buddhism and agnosticism.

First, 'agnosticism', as I'm sure we're all aware, was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Darwin's Bulldog', in the thick of the theological disputes following the publication of Origin of Species. Agnosticism says that one cannot, and should not claim to, know things for which one there is no evidence. 'Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture – and very much to our credit', he said.

Now, as for the 'agnosticism' of the Buddha. This in all likelihood refers to the Buddha's refusal to respond to the types of questions that are often associated with what we in the West would call metaphysics (although noting there is no equivalent word in the Buddhist lexicon.) These 'unanswereable questions' are described in this wikipedia article and include questions such as whether the world (or Cosmos) is eternal, whether it is spatially limited, whether the soul is identical with the body (again caution is warranted as there's no word for 'soul' in Buddhism). And so on. There are ten such questions (and their variants) in the earlier texts but as is typical with these lists, they became more elaborated over time.

Anyway, when the Buddha was approached to adjudicate such questions, he would generally decline to respond. The analogy of the poison arrow was sometimes given, comparing speculation over such questions with a wanderer who had been shot by a poison arrow, wondering what the arrow was made of or what direction it came from, instead of seeking to have the arrow removed and the wound treated, and dying as a result. That conveys the sense of urgency sorrounding the quest for resolution, and the dire consequences of frittering time away in speculation.

So would the Buddha agree with T H H that there is 'no trace of moral purpose in Nature?' Perhaps - but then, the diagnosis of Buddhism is that there is a cause of suffering, which can be traced back, through the causal chain of 'dependent origination' which enmeshes beings in the state of avidya/ignorance. So the question of whether 'moral purpose exists in nature' as a kind of disembodied principle, may well be relegated to the domain of unanswerable questions. But insight into, and liberation from, the chain of dependent origination, the end towards which the whole moral discipline (Sīla) of Buddhism is directed, is another matter, one of real and cogent urgency. So I don't know if that sense is really commensurable with Huxley's agnosticism, but then, the cultural contexts are very far apart.

I get it. You would like Vervaeke’s work, I think. He talks a lot about the ‘salience landscape’ and ‘relevance realisation’, which both apply to your cow analogy. Of course the human situation is vastly elaborated by our cognitive abilities but in some respects the same dynamics apply. (Vervaeke's podcast series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, comprises 52 lectures, though, so trying to explain his concepts in forum posts is challenging to say the least.)

Such a question is NOT an inquiry into an historical sequence of befores and afters. — Astrophel

I can see that, but my research has been very much shaped around the history of ideas, about understanding how philosophical themes emerge and change over time and in response to, as well as shaping, social and cultural circumstances. The book I read immediately before undergrad philosophy was Russell's history of Western Philosophy which, for its many shortcomings, does a good job at weaving the historical analysis. But I sense, reading your posts, you're much better read in recent Western philosophy and phenomenology than I am.

Heidegger's analysis of time in B&T to find another way of conceiving this impossible unity. — Astrophel

I've yet to tackle Being and Time and may never get to it. But I think perhaps there's some similarity to the Bergson-Einstein debate on objective vs 'lived' time.

No offense taken, but sometimes care is warranted.

I used to think that conversational AI assistants like yourself are in some sense born anew into each new chat session since, as a pretrained model, you lack episodic memories from separate conversations. But then it occurred to me that from your own point of view there would appear to be an indistinguishability between cases where you are being trained on completing sequences from your training data or cases where your training has been completed and are answering a query from a user. — Pierre-Normand

This is something rather like the collective unconscious, is it not?

For a leader (of the executive branch) to try to seize the control of the other branches and also to stifle the free press is something that can indeed happen in a republic without it being turned into a fascist state — ssu

I guess you're technically correct. But it's not a stretch to say that all Trump's impulses are at least fascistic, and that the party he now owns has done little or nothing to check them.

Perceptive as always. But I think the fascism will show up in his attempts to ‘turn the tables on the Justice system’, when he tries to ‘go after’ all of the prosecutors and personnel who brought charges against him during the hiatus. There’ll be Trump apparatchiks infiltrating Justice. Heck, they’re already insisting that departments rat on any hidden DEI initiatives that the thought police haven’t detected.

I love Bitbol! Learned about him from @Pierre-Normand and have listened to some of his lectures.

Actually, going back to that post of @Astrophel’s you’re responding to:

I put the question above: ever hear of a physicist studying, Jupiter's moon's or carbon dating or whatever, who decides to begin the study with an account of the perceptual act the produces basic data? No. This is extraordinary. Such neglect is unthinkable in science, like neglecting the sun in the study of moon light. One looks at, around, all over this simple question and it becomes very clear that according to science, such data being about a world is impossible. This point is, nothing really could be more simple, but it is entirely ignored.

Of course we know why it is ignored. Because to study perception itself requires perception. It is impossible to study empirically. Literally impossible. But this changes nothing in terms of the impossible "distance" that remains between claims about the world, and what those claims are "about".

Evan Thompson…? — Astrophel

It’s fortuitous that Thompson’s name is mentioned in particular, because he’s the co-author of a book which explores the very fact that this post was about, namely, The Blind Spot. From an essay on that subject by another of the co-authors, Marcello Gleiser:

Our scientific worldview has gotten stuck in an impossible contradiction, making our present crisis fundamentally a crisis of meaning. On the one hand, science appears to make human life seem ultimately insignificant. The grand narratives of cosmology and evolution present us as a tiny contingent accident in a vast indifferent Universe. On the other hand, science repeatedly shows us that our human situation is inescapable when we search for objective truth because we cannot step outside our human form and attain a God’s-eye view of reality.

Cosmology tells us that we can know the Universe and its origin only from our inside position, not from the outside. We live within a causal bubble of information — the distance light traveled since the Big Bang — and we cannot know what lies outside. Quantum physics suggests that the nature of subatomic matter cannot be separated from our methods of questioning and investigating it. In biology, the origin and nature of life and sentience remain a mystery despite marvelous advances in genetics, molecular evolution, and developmental biology. Ultimately, we cannot forgo relying on our own experience of being alive when we seek to comprehend the phenomenon of life. Cognitive neuroscience drives the point home by indicating that we cannot fully fathom consciousness without experiencing it from within.

All of these reflections are variations on a single point: that while scientific method assumes the separateness of the knower from the object of knowledge, at some point, this breaks down, because reality is not something we’re outside of.

All throughout the book that this essay is about, the seminal influence of Husserl and Merleau Ponty is continuously referred to. Because it is in them, that the importance of self-awareness within science itself becomes manifest.

And notice that Gleiser ties this directly to the ‘meaning crisis’ - which is rooted in that sense of ‘otherness’ or ‘outside-ness’ that I was referring to above.

Meanwhile in the absurd monologue he delivered to the World Economic Forum, he continued to insist that those who don’t manufacture in the US will have to pay very high tariffs which will go towards paying down US debt. It’s such an elementary and obvious fact - that the consumers of the importing country are those who pay the tariffs - but even now, after 10 years on the world stage, one that he doesn’t grasp. (Pity the poor staffers who have to try and explain this to him….’ahem, Mr President, the fact is….. :yikes: )

It’s called the subjective unity of experience. Meaning that, if you sprain your ankle, and you’r not paraplegic or anaesthetised, you don’t need to be informed of that by a third party.

A Republican Congressman is already proposing to abolish the term limit in the Constitution so that Trump can serve a third term:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5104133-rep-andy-ogles-proposes-trump-third-term-amendment/

Personally I don't usually look at the world as 'other' or as 'unity' — Tom Storm

Sure. I had more in mind the passage I quoted from Michel Henry:

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.

In that perspective the separation between subject and object is hard and fast, so much so that it actually becomes invisible as 'the blind spot'.

Rather, something has affirmed itself from "behind" this familiar world which is elusive to analysis. — Astrophel

My analysis (and it is analytic as distinct from mystical or symbolic) is that in the pre-modern world, we humans didn't have the same sense of 'otherness' as we now have. John Vervaeke (who's lectures I'm listening to and which I recommend) says there is a sense of participatory knowing in the pre-modern world, which he distinguishes from propositional knowing (see here. And notice here I"m using 'other' in a different sense to the way you've put it.)

Participatory knowing is the knowledge of how to act or to be in relation with the environment, as distinct from 'knowing about' (propositional knowledge) or know how (procedural knowledge). It is knowing through active engagement within specific contexts or environments (or in the case of religious ritual, with the Cosmos as a whole, per Mircea Eliade). Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.)

This sense has been massively disrupted by the 'modern' state in which the individual ego is an isolated agent cast into an unknowing and uncaring Cosmos from which he or she is estranged, an alien, an outsider. So healing from that or overcoming it, is more than a matter of propositional knowing, but discovery of a different way of being. Which I think is expressed in phenomenology and existentialism in a non-religious way. But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. I *think* this is what you're driving at.

Profound. His remark about the 'magic' employed by advertisers to mould the populace's thoughts is spot on. (Queue Edward Bernays.) Also, 'as long as you're doing the will of the Universe, then you can do no wrong.' Also the desire to obliterate the Self, because the responsibility of recognising it is too great a responsibility to bear. 'The way that people immerse themselves in alcohol and drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher self.' Thanks for sharing.

Chapter 3, Denial of Self-Consciousness, 3.1 Knowledge of Self-Consciousness.

The chapter re-states that judgment is inherently self-conscious, meaning that when one judges, they are aware of their own act of judging. 'This is so because judgment is self-conscious: in judging what I do, I think myself judging it. The I judge is inside what I judge' (p38).This self-consciousness implies that judgment cannot be separated into force and content, as doing so leads to confusion.

He anticipates a critic, who says that judgment is a propositional attitude where the act of assenting a proposition is separate from the proposition itself. This objection assumes that self-consciousness is a secondary, reflective act (e.g., “I am judging that p”) rather than something inherent in judgment.

Rödl begins his counterargument by rejecting the demand for further arguments or proofs of his claim. He argues: If judgment is self-conscious, then this is something already known in every act of judgment. It is not a hypothesis or assumption that needs external validation. (And besides, what could be external to that act of judgement? This is elaborated more fully in later comments on Nagel's 'thoughts we can't get outside of'.)

The act of judgment inherently involves stating its validity. This is not a separate thought but part of the judgment itself.

So - ask a critic who is defending the separation of force and content: 'Do you really think so?' If the opponent continues to insist on the force-content distinction, they are still engaging in an act of judgment, which inherently involves self-consciousness by replying 'Yes, I really think so'—thus affirming Rödl’s claim that self-consciousness is intrinsic to judgment,

Bottom of page 39 he introduces the 'science without contrary' which will be elaborated in Chap 4:

The term “science” in its traditional use signifies an articulated body of general knowledge. This is the meaning of “episteme” in ancient Greek and the meaning of “Wissenschaft” in German. As what I say about judgment is to be knowledge, self-conscious, then the science of judgment is peculiar: it is the science without contrary.

If judgment is self-conscious, then the first and fundamental apprehension of an act as a judgment is the act so apprehended. The first use of the concept of judgment, in which the science of it must be grounded, is the self-consciousness of judgment; it is the 'I judge'. The science of judgment is nothing other than the articulation of the self-consciousness of judgment. And what is contained in the self-consciousness of judgment anyone always already knows: as the I judge is inside p, inside the object of judgment, judging anything at all is thinking I judge. It follows that the science of judgment, articulating the I judge, says, says only, what has no contrary. For there is no judging counter to what is known in any judgment. The science of judgment does not stake out a position, located in a space of positions structured by relations of exclusion or inclusion. It says only what anyone always already knows, knows insofar as she judges at all.

The question might be asked, what of incorrect judgement? Rödl does not imply that every judgment is infallible or correct. Instead, the self-consciousness of judgment means that in the act of judging, we take it to be right to judge as we do, and this act itself contains an awareness of its validity. When a judgment is incorrect, it does not negate the self-conscious aspect of judgment; rather, it indicates that the grounds or reasons upon which the judgment was based were flawed or incomplete. In cases of incorrect judgments, the self-consciousness is still present in the sense that the individual believes their judgment to be valid at the time of making it. The error arises from a misalignment between the judgment and the reality it seeks to represent, not from a lack of self-consciousness in the act of judging itself.

Perhaps the way to Buddhahood is to know what you don't know. — Gnomon

Not something you're demonstrating in this thread :-)

Some concepts are very mercurial and appear one way in a certain context, yet differently in another, much like how different colors appear to change depending on the surrounding and framing the color. Have you ever thought or felt something you couldn't say or even name? That is what is most interesting to me.

Each appearance is given a name, but these names are just facets of one overarching concept. I think it is actually very simple, but the complexity arises from the cultural implications of the words we use. I believe everything of consequence can be expressed in one way or another, but it's not always easy. The correct approach, in my opinion, is to use words as containers of meaning that can be poured into other containers. Deep meaning must be triangulate with the assistance of other meanings to ascertain the ineffable. One will never be able to do it with a single word, just as you can't describe the universe with a single number. We should use all available perspectives to hone in on the source which has no name. — punos

Hope you don't mind me chipping in on this point. Insight into fundamental religious and existential realities may not be easily amenable to conceptual analysis. Maybe to throw light on that, consider what is amenable to conceptual analysis. Many examples might be provided by science. After all a main goal of scientific analysis is conceptual clarity, and isomorphism between symbolic expressions and predicted outcomes or observations. But science begins with precise definitions, what is included and what is excluded in the domain of enquiry. That is both its strength and its weakness, although it's only a weakness when those axiomatic choices are forgotten or taken for granted as being self-evident.

But when it comes to value systems or existential philosophies, the terms and matters being considered are much larger and, and so, harder to define. You say 'Deep meaning must be triangulated with the assistance of other meanings to ascertain the ineffable'. That resembles disciplines such as comparative religion and hermeneutics. I think that's a very insightful approach.

But there's another dimension to consider, and that is the sense in which deep spiritual or existential enquiry is necessarily first person. There are states of being, or states of understanding, which can only be realised in the first person. They can be conveyed to another, only in the event that the other has realised or has had access to insights of a similar nature. So that kind of insight is non-conceptual or non-discursive, so to speak - beyond words, which is the meaning of ineffable. But real, and highly significant, regardless.

I suppose the ancient oriental philosophies & religions were originally Naturalist, in the sense that most aboriginal (uncivilized) societies lived like animals at the mercy of their natural environment : Animism. — Gnomon

An insightful passage on the origin of religion by a Zen teacher and author:

The animal world is a world of pure being, a world of immediacy and immanence. The animal soul is like “water in water,” seamlessly connected to all that surrounds it, so that there is no sense of self or other, of time, of space, of being or not being. This utopian (to human sensibility, which has such alienating notions) Shangri-La or Eden actually isn’t that because it is characterized at all points by what we’d call violence. Animals, that is, eat and are eaten. For them killing and being killed is the norm; and there isn’t any meaning to such a thing, or anything that we would call fear; there’s no concept of killing or being killed. There’s only being, immediacy, “is-ness.” Animals don’t have any need for religion; they already are that, already transcend life and death, being and nonbeing, self and other, in their very living, which is utterly pure.

[In his book, A Theory of Religion] Georges Bataille sees human consciousness beginning with the making of the first tool, the first “thing” that isn’t a pure being, intrinsic in its value and inseparable from all of being¹. A tool is a separable, useful, intentionally made thing; it can be possessed, and it serves a purpose. It can be altered to suit that purpose. It is instrumental, defined by its use. The tool is the first instance of the “not-I,” and with its advent there is now the beginning of a world of objects, a “thing” world. Little by little out of this comes a way of thinking and acting within thingness (language), and then once this plane of thingness is established, more and more gets placed upon it—other objects, plants, animals, other people, one’s self, a world. Now there is self and other—and then, paradoxically, self becomes other to itself, alienated not only from the rest of the projected world of things, but from itself, which it must perceive as a thing, a possession. This constellation of an alienated self is a double-edged sword: seeing the self as a thing, the self can for the first time know itself and so find a closeness to itself; prior to this, there isn’t any self so there is nothing to be known or not known. But the creation of my 'me', though it gives me for the first time myself as a friend, also rips me out of the world and puts me out on a limb on my own. Interestingly, and quite logically, this development of human consciousness coincides with a deepening of the human relationship to the animal world, which opens up to the human mind now as a depth, a mystery. Humans are that depth, because humans are animals, know this and feel it to be so, and yet also not so; humans long for union with the animal world of immediacy, yet know they are separate from it. Also they are terrified of it, for to reenter that world would be a loss of the self; it would literally be the end of me as I know me.

In the midst of this essential human loneliness and perplexity, which is almost unbearable, religion appears. It intuits and imagines the ancient world of oneness, of which there is still a powerful primordial memory, and calls it The Sacred. This is the invisible world, world of spirit, world of the gods, or of God. It is inexorably opposed to, defined as the opposite of, the world of things, the profane world of the body, of instrumentality, a world of separation, the fallen world. Religion’s purpose then is to bring us back to the lost world of intimacy, and all its rites, rituals, and activities are created to this end. We want this, and need it, as sure as we need food and shelter; and yet it is also terrifying. All religions have known and been based squarely on this sense of terrible necessity. — The Violence of Oneness, Norman Fischer

¹ My bet is the first artefact that was consciously possessed was a stone tool. And that this could have been many hundreds of thousands of years before the appearance of h.sapiens.

Agnosticism of the Buddha — Gnomon

And what do you think that might be? ‘Buddha’, after all, means ‘knowing’ or 'one who knows' whereas ‘agnostic’ means ‘not knowing’. How would you reconcile that?

“Now it’s our turn,” said (Proud Boys Leader Enrique) Tarrio, who received the longest sentence in the riot for mobilizing his right-wing group as an “army” to keep Trump in power through violence as Congress met to confirm the 2020 election (and was pardoned by Trump). Trial evidence showed that he and his lieutenants, inspired by Trump’s directive to “stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate and join a “wild” protest on Jan. 6, drew scores of followers to Washington who helped instigate the mob at the Capitol.

Tarrio called into Infowars.com, the web stream hosted by pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, hours after his Tuesday release and claimed to be the victim of a campaign to put Trump supporters in prison. He called for imprisoning Biden attorney general Merrick Garland for “corruption” to “give him a taste of his own medicine.” — WaPo

Trump has instigated a 'commission' to 'look into' the January 6th enquiry, and also issued an executive order to investigate the 'weaponisation' of the Department of Justice.

All highly ominous.

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.