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.

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.