Very true :pray:

A comment I read about the distinction between the New Left and the conservative religious critique, was 'For Adorno and Horkheimer, myth and Enlightenment are dialectically intertwined: Enlightenment arises from myth but reproduces myth’s structure of domination in a new, “rationalized” form. Thus, the way out is neither regression to pre-rational faith nor blind progress through science, but a self-reflective form of reason — one that is conscious of its limits and its entanglement with power.'

But I still sense a lack in their spiritual anthropology, so to speak. I think, for the religious, humanity has a cosmic signficance with which it seeks reconciliation. I think, perhaps, this is what Habermas was getting at in his dialogues with Ratzinger and his subsequent books.

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong. — Does Reason Know what it is Missing?

--------

I'd say maybe they are 'spiritual' rather than religious. It seems to me religion implies something more public with practices and institutions that curate a certain tradition. — ChatteringMonkey

We did touch on this theme a few posts back. It's an important point. Like many others, I set out to sort the wheat from the chaff of dogma and tradition when much younger. I believed (naively, in hindsight) that there were experiences or epiphanies which would provide first-person insight into spiritual realities outside the strictures of ‘churchianity’. (This was the 1960's, when such ideas were in the air). Why only believe, when you can see! This was associated with hallucinogenic experiences, Timothy Leary and Alduous Huxley. (There was an amusing line in a streaming comedy recently where a sub-adolescent girl was told by one of the principles that ‘you meditate so you don’t have to go to Church any more’.)

There were some real insights coming out of that. Needless to say however such experiences are fleeting and can't be stablised. But I vividly recall the realisation of an ecstatic dimension of existence, the extraodinary richness of natural beauty, and thinking 'why isn't life always like this?'

But what I failed to reckon with was the accumulated momentum of cultural conditioning and of one's own habitual pre-dispositions. They are real obstacles in the development of insight and they're deeply rooted and culturally re-inforced. I'm sure that's where many of the practices associated with religion originated - memorisation, repetition, ritual. They operate on both the symbolic and the somatic level to remove those obstacles. But then over time the original vision is lost sight of and they are repeated because - that's just what we do. That is when they loose their connection with the insight that originally motivated them.

I assume that in Plato's day they just called it Philosophy. Perhaps, you are stating the obvious, that modern versions of Platonic Idealism are not ancient. But I was referring to the general belief that A> Reality is fundamentally Mental*1, or B> that the Human mind's model of reality is as close to true reality as we are likely to know*2. — Gnomon

These are very difficult distinctions. But the point of my other thread, Idealism in Context, was that the human sense of their relationship with the nature of being has fundamentally changed over the course of history. (This is an Hegelian theme). The ancients did not have the sense we do that the world comprised material objects being driven by physical causation. Because of their religious sense, the Cosmos was seen as in some sense purposeful or as alive, in a way that is very hard for us to grasp. The way I put it in the other thread was:

The earlier philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, building on Aristotle, maintained that true knowledge arises from a real union between knower and known. As Aristotle put it, “the soul (psuchē) is, in a way, all things,” meaning that the intellect becomes what it knows by receiving the form of the known object. Aquinas elaborated this with the principle that “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower.” In this view, to know something is not simply to construct a mental representation of it, but to participate in its form — to take into oneself, immaterially, the essence of what the thing is. (Here one may discern an echo of that inward unity — a kind of at-one-ness between subject and object — that contemplative traditions across cultures have long sought, not through discursive analysis but through direct insight). — Wayfarer

So here, at the risk of sounding trite, the theme is the at-one-ness of being and knowing. Not as an intellectual construct or as the idea in the subject's mind corresponding to the object in the external world but as a way of being-in-the-world. That innate sense we possess of subjective awareness in a realm of objects had not yet taken hold. (I suppose, in some ways, this can be related to Julian Jayne's 'bicameral mind' or to R M Bucke's 'cosmic consciousness'. )

It is often said that Aquinas is a realist - which is true, but he was a scholastic or Aristotelian realist, which means something completely different to what we mean by 'realist'. For Thomism, with God as Being, reality is inherently participatory, in a way that it can't be for us. It is ecstatic realism, if you like. But as the belief took hold that the Cosmos was not an expression of the divine Intellect, then physical reality was accorded the kind of inherent reality that scholastic philosophy would never grant it. This is the origin of the 'Cartesian division' and the pervasive sense of 'otherness' that characterises the modern mind. (See this blog post on Radical Orthodoxy).

So Berkeley's idealism was a reaction against the whole idea of matter as a mind-independent substance - something which wouldn't have occurred as neccessary in earlier philosophy, as material form was always seen in combination with the intelligible idea which was immaterial as a matter of definition (but emphatically not an 'immaterial thing'! :brow: )

This is why expressions such as “cosmic mind” are inherently misleading when taken to denote some objective existent, as if it were on par with scientific concepts like fields or forces. In classical thought, the divine intellect was not conceived as an object within the universe but as the very ground of intelligibility — the condition under which being and knowing are possible at all. To interpret it as a thing among things is already to have shifted into a different ontological register. Whenever such expressions are used, we risk reifying what was never meant to be reified — trying to understand the source of intelligibility from within the subject–object framework that depends upon it.

I know that the Upanisads (for example) were described as 'idealist philosphy' by a German scholar, Paul Deussen. But the term 'idealism' only entered the philosophical lexicon with Leibniz, Kant and Spinoza. Once the term was introduced with its associated ideas, then precursors to it could be seen in Greek and Indian philosophy. But at the time, they didn't use that terminology and they didn't have the same categorical distinctions between mind, matter and idea, that modern idealism contains. "Idealism” in its systematic sense — the thesis that reality is in some way dependent on mind or spirit — only becomes a defined philosophical position in early modern Europe, with Leibniz’s monadology, Spinoza’s substance monism, and especially Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Once that vocabulary existed, scholars like Deussen and later Radhakrishnan could look back and identify idealist currents in Plato, Plotinus, and the Upaniṣads. But those traditions themselves never used the conceptual apparatus of Idee, Bewusstsein, or Geist — their metaphysical language was quite different.

The abstract noun “idealism” appears in French as idéalisme by the late 17th century and in English around the mid-18th century. The Oxford English Dictionary records its first philosophical use in 1702, referring to “the theory that external objects are known only as ideas.”

So, yes, there are ancient pre-cursors to idealism, but idealist philosophy really only appears in the early modern era. This is further discussed in the thread Idealism in Context (of which yours was the first comment.)

I'm not sure I fully understand K's "reasonable" and diligently documented update of ancient Idealism. Also, in order to maintain a philosophical line of reasoning, and to avoid getting into Religion vs Scientism diatribes, I prefer to use less dogmatic & divisive terms than "God". But Kastrup is bolder, and more self-assured than I am. — Gnomon

'Idealism' is not ancient. The term first came into use with Liebniz, Berkeley and Kant. In hindsight, it is possible to describe some elements of Platonism as idealist, but it is not a term that was used in Plato's day.

As for Kastrup, I think he's worth reading, or listening to. He's an articulate defender of idealism.

I think the pushback is the natural reaction to test someone's claims to authority. Especially religious people seem to think that they can go forth into the world, make claims to authority, and the world then owes them submissiveness. — baker

That is how quite a few here will inevitably categorise any discussion of what they consider religion. As I said upthread, I think much of this stems from the oppressive, indeed authoritarian, role of ecclesiastical religion in historical Western culture. After all, religious authoritarianism is what Enlightenment humanism so painfully liberated itself from. But on the other hand, that requires an implicit acceptance of that this is all that religion or spirituality can mean or amount to.

Consider this passage from Edward Conze, a Buddhologist who was active in the mid 20th c in his essay on Buddhist Philosophy and it’s European Parallels.

Until about 1450, as branches of the… "perennial philosophy,” Indian and European philosophers disagreed less among themselves, than with many of the later developments of European philosophy. The "perennial philosophy" is in this context defined as a doctrine which holds [1] that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned not all men are equal, but that there is a hierarchy of persons, some of whom, through what they are, can know much more than others; that there is a hierarchy also of the levels of reality, some of which are more "real," because more exalted, than others; and [3] that the sages have found a wisdom which is true, although it has no empirical basis in observations which can be made by everyone and everybody; and that in fact there is a rare and unordinary faculty in some of us by which we can attain direct insight into the nature of the Real --through the Prajñāpāramitā of the Buddhists, the logos of Parmenides, the Sophia of Aristotle and others, Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, Hegel's Vernunft, and so on; and [4] that true teaching is based on an authority which legitimizes itself by the exemplary life and charismatic quality of its exponents.

Of course, this is highly politically incorrect and I wouldn’t expect many here would accept it - but I still believe that there are such degrees of insight and understanding, and that not everyone has them by default, as it were. Of course it is also true that spiritual hierarchies have often been the source of egregious abuses of power, but they’re not only that, even if that is the only thing that some will see when they look at them.

Good work by the way pointing to the epic/etic distinction, it is something I studied in anthropology and not often noted here.

Its own dogmas become transparent (one being the prizing of multiplicity as a sort of proxy for freedom) — Count Timothy von Icarus

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed.

Yet that is the secular view of secularity, its own self-understanding. — “David Loy, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole

———

” (Sam) Harris makes it sound as if there is empirical, scientific evidence for the Buddha's normative teaching, including the ideal norm of buddhahood and the possibility of its attainment. I disagree.” ~ Evan Thompson — Joshs

I remember that passage from Thompson’s book, Why I am Not a Buddhist. Whilst I concur with a lot of what he writes in that book, I’m not so much in agreement on this distinction (not that I’m any fan of Harris, perish the thought.) I agree with Thompson that Buddhism is not the ‘inner science’ that many of its modern adherents seek to portray it as. But the question of why it isn’t or cannot be is not, I think, so clear-cut as Thompson makes it out to be. Agree that whatever evidence there might be, is not empirical in the sense of able to be reviewed in the third person. But at the same time - and this goes for religions other than Buddhism as well - there are fairly coherent and consistent schemas of (let’s say) experiential insight that aspirants progress through on the spiritual journey. Whilst not scientific in the sense that physics or chemistry can be, neither do they rest solely on the idiosyncratic expressions and utterances of their adherents (although there will always be idiosyncratic types as well). But then, on the other hand, many of its modern enthusiasts may take it to be a science in the way that is not, in lacking the deep enculturation that it’s emic adherents naturally possess.

I’m not going to get near to resolving that question here, or possibly ever. But I think there are disciplined structures, methods, and practices in these traditions that do traverse and replicate recognised states and stages in a way that popular devotional religions do not. Agree that these practices are not scientific in the third-person sense but I don’t know whether that makes them automatically and only doxastic (matters of belief).

The point that interests me is his refutation of the ‘is/ought’ distinction. He phrases it in terms of relevance realisation This revolves around discerning relevance - perceiving what features of a situation could be important in each moment. It puts questions of value, importance, significance and the sacred at the center of the ‘salience landscape’.

Why bring in ‘the sacred’? Where most cognitive scientists stop at mechanism — mapping functions, algorithms, and neural correlates — Vervaeke insists on situating cognition within the broader context of human condition: the experience of being a meaning-seeking, self-transcending animal prone to self-deception. His language of “salience landscapes,” “relevance realization,” and “ecologies of practice” attempts to harmonise descriptive science and philosophical anthropology.

Sorry Wayfarer. — Tom Storm

Not at all.

What I was going to say is that surely the whole concept of the purposelessness of the Universe, with any sense of purpose or meaning being relegated to the individual prerogative, is precisely what the thread is about. It is also what my earlier thread On Purpose was about (although there it was an effort to provide a phenomenological perspective on the question.)

I agree completely with @Pierre-Normand's Aristotelean perspective on the issue. But I also think we have a burden of responsibility. The fact that we are able to grapple with these questions says to me that we must. It is part of the burden of rational sentient being. In some ways, I think the physicalist denial of free will (a la Galen Strawson et el) really amounts to an unwillingness to face up to that responsibility. It is far easier to believe that we really have no ultimate responsibility for our fate than to face up to what having it might entail. But then, as I've already owned up, I recognise that this is the residue of the Christian concscience that my cultural heritage bequeathed me.

Vervaeke argues that normativity doesn’t need to be imported from a cosmic telos or moral law.
It’s implicit in our very capacity for rational, self-corrective cognition.

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competencies that can be exercised well or badly. “Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences.

So instead of:

facts ⟶ mysterious jump ⟶ moral prescription (the classical 'is-ought' problem)

he proposes:

cognitive agent ⟶ degrees of competence ⟶ appropriate normative orientation (“ought”)

It’s a kind of naturalized virtue ethics: to be the kind of being you are is to strive to actualize your capacity for insight, relevance-realization, and flourishing.

Furthermore, Vervaeke recognises that as rational, sentient beings, right action isn’t an optional add-on but intrinsic to the topology of our salience landscape — the way we perceive and value what matters. Acting well refines perception itself. It doesn’t require an appeal to a supernatural judge or cosmic law; it arises naturally from our capacity to discern and realise relevance more truthfully. (Which is not to deny there is a cosmic law. Me, I accept the reality of karma.)

Let's ask ourselves, where do we get these [standards]? The way [this is] asked this is how do we come up with our normative theory — not meaning statistically normal here, but normative meaning the theory about the standards to which we should hold ourselves accountable when we're reasoning. So where does our normative theory come from?

Reason has to be autonomous. Let's say I believed that my standards were given to me by some divine being, in the sense that it is commanded of me. There is some Moses of rationality, and then he comes back with the commandments for how we're supposed to reason. If we follow these just because we are commanded to do so, that is ultimately not a rational act. That is to give into authority, to give into fear...

If we follow the standards because we acknowledge that they're good and right, that means we already possessed the standards. This is an old argument that goes back to Plato. It's in the Euthyphro dialogue, right? Where normativity has to be really deeply autonomous. If something is only good because the gods say it, then the gods aren't good in saying it...

So we have to possess the standards internally. This is an argument that's crucial in Kant. Reason is ultimately autonomous… it has to be the source of the very norms that constitute and govern reason because that's how reason operates. So we have to be the standard.

Ought implies Can. … If I lay a standard upon you, ‘You ought to do this,’ then you have to be able to do it. It makes no sense to apply a standard to you that you do not have the competence to fulfill… So we are the source of the standards. People acknowledge the standard, but they fail to satisfy them. … We have to make a distinction between competence and performance. — John Vervaeke, AFMC, Lecture 40, What is Rationality?

I’d hate to associate myself with Steve Bannon :yikes: I’d much rather Charles Taylor.

I was an undergrad student alongside a fellow by the name of Harry Oldmeadow, who went on to become an independent scholar in the area of the perennialist philosophers.(He won the University Medal for his Honours Thesis. His brother, Peter, was one of my thesis supervisors in Buddhist Studies. They were both really good people, I don't know if they're still with us.) As you will probably both know, the perennial school was a kind of clique of academics and artists, notably René Guenon, Frithjof Schuon, and Ananda Coomaraswamy (among others), who extolled the 'philosophia perennis' (Liebniz' term) - that the various spiritual traditions of the classical period are diverse expressions of an underlying primordial wisdom tradition.

At the time, I was quite impressed by these scholars, although I never fully assimilated their books. But as time went on. I don't feel their ouevre has worn that well (ironic, considering the subject matter). Some of those associated with them, notably Julius Evola, became associated with reactionary fascism. (In his later years in Bloomington, Indiana, Schuon became embroiled in controversy over ritual gatherings that included nudity and were alleged to involve minors — allegations that were investigated and ultimately dismissed. It did tarnish his reputation though.)

In any case, the point I'm making is that expressed in the title of a critical book about it - Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick (his blog). I have discovered there was quite a lot of common ground between the perennialists and reactionary politics, which I don't want to be associated with. (I was also dismayed to learn that Steve Bannon used to quote Guenon.) Neverthelss, I really do understand why one can be 'against the modern world' and the way in which the post-Enlightenment project can be seen as a kind of degenerate age (the 'Kali Yuga' in the perennialist terminology, taken from a Hindu myth.) I don't necessarily agree with it, or endorse it, but I can see the logic. Guenon might be considered an eccentric, but I don't think that's all he was.

(There's something similar in some of the current French cultural critics - Rémi Brague for example - a more temperate and academically grounded critic of modernity who situates his analysis within the Western philosophical tradition itself.)

Perhaps I misunderstand 'mode', but I see 'being' simply as 'existing', which is probably not how you're using the term. To me, all these things share the same mode: they are members of this universe, different arrangements of the exact same fundamentals. — noAxioms

Which is, in a word, physicalism - there is only one substance, and it is physical. From within that set of assumptions, Chalmer's and Nagel's types of arguments will always remain unintelligible.

Am I missing something in Vervaeke's perspectives on the matter? — javra

I think you're misunderstanding the intent of that particular message. Vervaeke would not dismiss nor deprecate any of what you've said in the preceeding paragraphs. Indeed, a large part of his work is restoring 'the sense of the sacred' (e.g. this course). And he's in respectful dialogue with diverse disciplines and traditions.

What that post is criticising is the kind of buffet-style syncretism where you choose the elements you think you want from the 'spiritual supermarket' and attempt to practice them or apply them by yourself. It seems feasible, especially with the abundance of educational resources on the Internet. But this can easily become, and often is, self-centred and self-seeking. Hence the importance of others - a spiritual community or companions on the path.

Vervaeke stresses both 'ecologies' and 'communities' of practice.

Ecology:

• It is plural (practices) and integrated (they support, check, balance one another). One practice alone (e.g. solitary meditation) is not sufficient
• It is purposefully arranged (there is a “logos”, a rationale) rather than just a random aggregation of habitual actions.
• It spans domains of being: cognitive/intellectual, embodied/somatic, imaginal/creative, relational/dialogical. His program describes four “domains”: Dialogue, Imaginal, Mindfulness, Embodiment.
• It addresses what Vervaeke calls “perennial problems” (structural, developmental, functional) that underlie our meaning-crisis (e.g., alienation, absurdity, reflexiveness gaps).
• It is pragmatic and lifeworld-oriented: not just theorising, but practising, training, habituating. Compare “having” (propositional knowledge) with “being” (skillful engagement).

Community:

• Practices are done together with others in fellowship and “mutual support” (i.e., not simply individual meditation or movement but relationally embedded).
• "practice, discussion, friendship”.
• Modern isolation undermines our ability to cultivate meaning and wisdom hence the requirment for communal practice environments or 'spiritual friendship' (Buddhist kalyāṇa-mitratā)

All of which rings true for me. For about ten years I was member of a Buddhist fellowship that met monthly or bi-monthly to present and discuss themes and practices. My practice has really gone downhill since that broke up.

We seem to have a vastly different notion of what constitutes an ontological distinction. It seems you might find a stop sign ontologically distinct from a speed limit sign since they have different properties. — noAxioms

I’m not using “ontological” here to mean merely “a set of observable traits.” I’m using it in its proper philosophical sense — a distinction in the mode of being. A rock and an amoeba both exist, but not in the same way. The amoeba has a self-organising, self-maintaining unity: it acts to preserve itself and reproduce. This isn’t a mere property added to matter, but a different kind of organization — what Aristotle called entelechy and what modern systems theorists call autopoiesis.

That distinction is categorical, not merely quantitative. Life introduces an interiority — however minimal — that inanimate matter does not possess. It’s what allows later forms of experience, cognition, and consciousness to emerge. So the “list of attributes” such as homeostasis or metabolism are not arbitrary descriptors, but outward manifestations of this deeper ontological difference.

But this distinction also bears directly on the problem of consciousness. Nagel points out that modern science arose by deliberately excluding the mental from its field of study. The “objective” world of physics was constituted by abstracting away everything that belongs to the first-person point of view — experience, meaning, purpose — in order to describe the measurable, quantifiable aspects of bodies. That method proved extraordinarily powerful, but it also defined its own limits: whatever is subjective was set aside from the outset. As noted above, this is not a matter of opinion.

This means that the gap between third-person descriptions and first-person experience isn’t an accidental omission awaiting further physical theory; it’s a structural feature of how the physical sciences were established. To describe something in purely physical terms is by definition to omit 'what it feels like' to be that thing. So the problem isn’t just about explaining how consciousness emerges from matter — according to Thomas Nagel, it is about how a worldview that excluded subjectivity as a condition of its success could ever re-incorporate it without transforming its own foundations.

That’s why I say the distinction between living and non-living things is not merely biological but ontological. Life is already the point at which matter becomes interior to itself — where the world starts to appear from a perspective within it. From that perspective, consciousness isn’t an inexplicable late-arriving anomaly in an otherwise material universe; it’s the manifestation of an inherent distinction between appearance and being that the physical sciences, by their very design, have bracketed out. But that is a transcendental argument, and therefore philosophical rather than scientific.

If a biological explanation turns out to be the correct one, I imagine it will also show that most of our rough-and-ready conceptions about subjectivity and consciousness are far too impoverished — J

I've been going through a pretty dense paper by Evan Thompson, 'Could All Life be Sentient?', which is useful in respect of these questions about the distinctions between various levels or kinds of organic life and degrees of consciousness. Useful, but not conclusive, leaving the question open, in the end, but helpful in at least defining and understanding the issues. I've also generated a synopsis which will be helpful in approaching the essay.

Gdocs Synopsis (AI Generated)
Could All Life be Sentient? Evan Thompson

The physical sciences are defined by excluding subjective experience from their domain ~ Nagel

I disagree with this. Neurologists require access to that, which is why brain surgery is often done on conscious patients, with just local anesthesia to the scalp. Of course they only have access to experiences as reported in third person by the subject, so in that sense, I agree. — noAxioms

Galileo's point, which was foundational in modern science, was that the measurable attributes of bodies - mass, velocity, extension and so on - are primary, while how bodies appear to observers - their colour, scent, and so on - are secondary (and by implication derivative). That is the sense in which the physical sciences 'excluded subjective experience', and it's not a matter of opinion.

As to why neuroscientists converse with subjects, in fact there's a textbook case of these kinds of practices which lends very strong support to some form of dualism. I'm speaking of the Canadian neuroscientist Wilder Penfield (1891-1976), who operated on many conscious patients during his very long career. He reported that his operations often elicited or stimulated vivid memories of previous experiences or could induce movements of various kinds. But he also reported that subjects could invariably distinguish between effects or memories that were elicited by him, and those which they themselves initiated. He concluded from this that the mind and the brain are not identical. While electrical stimulation of the cortex could evoke experiences, sensations, or involuntary actions, it could never make the patient will to act or decide to recall something. Penfield saw a clear distinction between neural activity that produced experiences and the conscious agency that could observe, interpret, and choose among them. In his later work (The Mystery of the Mind, 1975), he wrote that “the mind stands apart from the brain but acts upon it,” proposing that consciousness is not reducible to cerebral processes alone.

As these operations showed, direct cortical stimulation could evoke experiences, movements, and memories, but never the act of will itself. Patients could always distinguish between something they themselves initiated and something induced by the surgeon. Penfield concluded that the conscious agent — the mind — cannot be identified with neural circuitry alone.

So the “third-person substrate” may be describable, but that doesn’t make it understandable in the relevant sense. Understanding would mean grasping how physical interactions, which by definition exclude subjectivity (per the above), could constitute subjective awareness itself. And that’s not an empirical gap that can be closed with more data or better simulations; it’s a conceptual distinction. A fully simulated brain might behave exactly like a conscious person, but whether there’s 'anything it’s like' to be that simulation is the very point at issue.

In short, you’re arguing from within the third-person framework while intending to account for what only appears from within the first-person perspective. The result isn’t an explanation but a translation — a substitution of the language of mechanism for the reality of experience. That’s the “illusion of reduction” you yourself noticed when you said commentators “appropriate first-person words to refer to third-person phenomena.”

When you treat the first-person point of view as something that emerges from a “third-person-understandable substrate,” you are collapsing the distinction Chalmers and Nagel are pointing out. By assuming the substrate is “understandable” in third-person terms, you've already presupposed that subjectivity can be accounted for within an objective framework. So you're not addressing the issue, but explaining it away.

As it happens, as a subscriber to Vervaeke's mailing list, his most recent missive was about 'spiritual but not religious'.

Metaphysics was at one time discovered. It wasn’t merely invented. Maybe it was partly that we discovered ‘that we invent’. We reflected on knowing/sensing. — Fire Ologist

By Kant's time, metaphysics had become highly dogmatised and he rightly criticized it on those grounds. But I've found that the neo-Thomist philosophers are still able to make a coherent case for classical metaphysics. Nearly all of them are Catholics, of course, and that's not coincidental, because it provides the experiential dimension that academic metaphysics all too easily forgets.

I agree with your point that classical metaphysics, starting with Parmenides and Heraclitus, was a critical reflection on the nature of knowing. It wasn't simply dogmatic slogans and aphorisms. (see Eric S Perl Thinking Being.) The rejection of all of metaphysics too easily throws the baby out with the bathwater (murky though that water might be).

This is not meant to refute Nietzsche or Buddha, but to recognize what they added to metaphysics and epistemology and ontology. — Fire Ologist

It is often said that the Buddha rejected metaphysics. In a way, that is true - but on the other hand, the whole basis of the Buddha's teaching, the 'principle of dependent origination', is a metaphysic, although of a completely different kind to the Aristotelian.

But again, the crucial point is that it is always connected to experiential insight rather than dogma. (I first came to Kant through a 1950's textbook called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T R V Murti, which contains comparisons between Kant and Buddhism (reference) This book is nowadays criticized for its perceived eurocentrism but became a foundational text for me as it enabled me to synthesize Eastern and Western philosophy in a practical manner.)

But if there is any such thing as the absolute at all, like the paradox, how could it truly be dismissed? The answer is, the same way it could be embraced - by an act of the subject. — Fire Ologist

There is much confusion about 'philosophies of the absolute'. On the one hand, most modern and post-modern philosophy will dismiss any consideration of it. Those philosophies that do discuss it often seem cumbersome and obscure. Again my attitude has been influenced by Buddhism, which refuses to reify (make a thing of) any idea of the absolute. Why and how it does that is probably impossible to spell out, but suffice to say that what is required is more than an exercise in rational thought - hence the central role of zazen meditation in Zen Buddhism.

the good news is, we can truly be right, but the bad news is, we can truly be wrong — Fire Ologist

Because we are free to discover, or not to discover. But this is also why an 'ecology of practice' is necessary, which will nearly always end up being religious in nature.

Hell of an interesting article you wrote my friend, indeed. As i understood the general idea of your idealism idea is that ideas (i'll stop) you are in agreement with an empirical, "self evident truth" -to call it something- that the physical reality does exist, but that the mind has "created" a reality or, rather, interpreted the physical reality to something arbitrary. — Oppida

Thanks for the compliment! The way the mind interprets or constructs its sense of what is real is far from arbitrary. It is constrained in all kinds of ways - by the kinds of beings we are, the kinds of minds and sensory capabilities we have, and so on. Also by cultural factors. But the point is that what we typically take to be outside of or independent from us, is not truly so (which was Kant's major discovery). Science typically operates so as to eliminate subjective bias, which is an important and necessary step. But even so, the role of the subject or observer remains indispensable in deciding what to analyse, how to interpret the results - what the findings mean, in short. It is all too easily overlooked or neglected in the pursuit of the objective understanding (a principle basic to phenomenology).

As this OP says, the modern idea of 'the physical universe' grew out of Galileo and Descartes division between the primary (external, measurable) and secondary (internal, affective) attributes of bodies, and the corresponding distinction between matter (res extensa) and mind (res cogitans). These divisions deeply condition the way we think and see the world. That is the key idea.

Saint-Simon’s idea of a technocratic elite managing production and social welfare was revived almost verbatim by the 1930s technocracy movement. — Joshs

In which, for the benefit of those reading, Musk’s maternal grandfather, Joshua N. Haldemann, was an influential figure, founding a political movement called Technocracy that foreshadowed many of Elon Musk’s later ideas. Subject of a lot of coverage of late, see for example this article.

Lovely story. I guess that is because, for them, the holy is still real, a source of solace, hope and wonder, in a way which for us it can't be.

I've been discussing 'reason' in another context, that of artificial intelligence (of which, by the way, I'm a dedicated user). But the point I've been trying to get at, and this is also what Horkheimer gets at, is the sense that reason 'goes all the way down' (compare Hegel 'the real is rational') . It doesn't mean that everything about existence is intelligible to human rationality - far from it! - but the sense that there are reasons for the way things are. Hence one of my favourite quotes from David Bentley Hart:

In the pre-modern vision of things, the cosmos had been seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations — for instance, the Aristotelian aitia, which are conventionally translated as “causes,” but which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy. And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries.

I notice that in Western culture the very idea that rationality pervades the natural order is regarded as a sentimental throwback to a less enlightened time (oh, the irony). Again, that it is rational doesn't mean that it's always scientifically intelligible, but that it is meaningful, on a deep level, even if that is often a very difficult faith to maintain.

If he believes that one is right I assume he would be a devout member of that religion. — praxis

Vervaeke doesn't see it that way. Maybe give some of his lectures a listen.

Yes, that's exactly how I put the question. And moreover, what needs to be done to "go beyond the boundaries," to see from the outside? Is it possible? — Astorre

The key term is the 'the unconditioned'. It is a very elusive concept, if indeed a concept it is. But you find analogies in for example, in Hegel's 'absolute spirit' and in The One of Neoplatonism. Here is an open-access essay on The Unconditioned in Philosophy of Religion although it's rather technical.

My intuitive understanding is that the unconditioned is the goal of spiritual life. One of the Buddha's aphorisms, the Nibbana Sutta, is 'there is that which is unborn, unconditioned, unmade' which represents 'escape' from 'the born, the conditioned, the made' (ref). The goal of the Buddhist path is to realise or live in the light of the Unconditioned (which in Buddhism, is not cast in theistic terms.) It can only be approached through the 'way of negation' - the negating of mental constructions (vikalpa and vijnana) and intent concentration on what is - which is the basis of Buddhist mindfulness meditation.

In my view, the absence of any equivalent to the unconditioned is a conspicuous gap or lack in contemporary philosophy. You will find it in some of the existentialist schools (perhaps Gabriel Marcel?) but in analytic philosophy it is barely considered.

Episodes 8-10 in Awakening from the Meaning Crisis are about Buddhist 'awakening', mindfulness and related issues.

What I mean to say is that Vervaeke seems to think that religions are—to put it plainly—wrong — praxis

He doesn't say that at all, from what I've read and heard, which is a quite a lot. In the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, he gives space to religious figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Tillich, to name a few - from a critical perspective, to be sure, but certainly not from the perspective of religions being wrong. If you can find anything from him which says that, I'll revise my view.

Now, "truth" has been replaced with "the capacity to predict" as the standard for knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the critique of the 'instrumentalisation of reason' - that truth is what works, what achieves the means to an end, and so on.

I had a bit of pique, but I got over it. I've been on this and previous forums for quite a few years now, and sometimes I feel I have become too habituated to it. Also that my interests are sometimes at odds with secular philosophy (although I'm not an overtly religious type) meaning that a certain kind of objection has come up again and again over this period, which got on my nerves.

But thank you very much for your words, they are very kind, and I appreciate it. I will continue to post here.

I’d be the last to deny it.

When traditions speak of “higher knowledge,” the term “higher” need not imply rank or authority - something that seems to push a lot of buttons! - but rather a difference in mode, scope, or reflexive awareness. In a psychological or developmental register, ‘higher’ can describe a more integrated or self-aware mode of cognition—what cognitive theorists might call ‘higher-order consciousness’ or ‘skilled cognition’. In a philosophical sense, it can mean a level of insight that grasps not just objects of knowledge but the conditions under which knowing itself arises, as in Plato’s distinction between opinion and understanding. That is metacognitive insight - insight into knowing how we know.

In early Buddhism, the corresponding term to ‘higher’ is ‘abhi’ This is found in abhidharma (‘higher dharmas’, the philosophical psychology of the Buddhist canon) and abhijnana (‘higher knowledge’, meditative attainment or insight.) In that context “higher” designates knowledge that is non-conceptual, direct, and liberating, escaping the ‘self-other’ dualities that underlie ordinary cognition.

Something similar can be found in phenomenology’s turn toward seeking insight into the structure of experience - Husserl’s epochē. Husserl’s wrote admiringly of Buddhist abhdharma .

However it has to be acknowledged that Buddhist (and in general, Indian) philosophy has a soteriological dimension (aimed at liberation or ‘salvation’), which is mainly absent in Western philosophy. And this is one of the reasons that any mention of ‘higher knowledge’ produces such a lot of pushback. ‘Ah, you mean religious’ And we all know that religious authority is something to be disdained. Why, it’s dogmatic!

But that reaction is also characteristic of the very division that this thread is about. It’s why I said that Western religion is one of the sources of this conflict. The emphasis on right belief or religious orthodoxy, and the exclusivism of the Western religious mind (‘no other God but me!’) has engendered these divisions at a pre-conscious level of awareness, and they condition many of the responses to the very idea of ‘higher truth’ or ‘higher awareness’. (This is one of the reasons that dharma has to be differentiated from religion, but that is for another thread.)

:100: Written in a kindred spirit, so to speak.

:pray:

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm? — Astorre

I wouldn't want to try and proscribe what is and isn't possible for others. But suffice to note that historically, at least, many religious cultures were associated with renunciation of society and 'the world'. Those that sought to integrate with society were mediated through codes and rules to maintain the distinction between the sacred and the profane (Eliade). Part of the problem with modern culture is the way it tends to level out all those kinds of differences.

That said, I think it's quite possible to become critically aware of the way we as individuals have absorbed the prevailing attitudes from the culture around us. That was a big part of 60's counter-culture, whether it succeeded or not (see Theodore Roszak).

The split between the purely private and inner (reflection) and the socially constructed (paradigm) is artificial. — Joshs

Rather a sweeping statement. Buddhism originated as one of a number of Śramaṇa movements that rejected both society and the authority of the Vedas (another surviving example being Jainism). They were deliberately 'outside' or removed from the prevailing (or any) cultural paradigms, although it is true they went on to form new paradigms of their own. Nevertheless, there is always an element in Buddhism which remains outside paradigms of all kinds (śūnyatā as neither a mental nor social construct).

Many thanks, very insightful. I could benefit by reading more of Kierkegaard, difficult though his prose might be.

Historically, such a view of man seems to flow from voluntarist idealizations of freedom and power that first crop up in theology, not secular philosophy. That was originally the whole impetus for attempting to uproot the old metaphysics, and for the resurrection of empiricism itself; absolute divine will can brook no "natures" as a challenge to its freedom in willing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is the central theme of Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, which I read just as i started posting on Forums. Especially the substitution of the physical universe for the Divine.

...how notions of reason become wholly discursive, such that by Hume and Kant's day they can basically just write-off most of past thought (Eastern as well as Western) by asserting this fact about reason definitionally (i.e., dogmatically) and no one calls them out on it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, true! I'm interested in, but will probably never get around to actually studying, those neo-thomists who grapple with Kant - they're mostly French Jesuits, as I understand it. Also Bernard Lonergan. But Jacques Maritain, for one, while respecting Kant, also declared that the 'intuition of Being' escaped him. On the other hand, there's also Ian Hunter, who says that Kant's philosophy really amounted to an alternative religion - he has a forthcoming book, The Kantian Religion.



Aristotle does have a strong element of contemplative spirituality, though. I think this is what enabled the Muslim and Christian scholars to find in him such a kindred spirit.

But if happiness (εὐδαιμονία, eudomonia) consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect (νοῦς nous), or whatever else it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizance of what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as being relatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordance with the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has been stated already* that this activity is the activity of contemplation [θεωρητική, theoritikós) — The Nicomachean Ethics 1.1177a11

Can you give an example of a religion in the pre-scientific era addressing existential dilemmas? — Janus

That's what they were about, although the term 'existential dilemma' is very much a modern one. But they sought to situate humanity within the cosmic drama, either positively (orthodox Christianity) or negatively (gnosticism). That provided a reason for why we are as we are in terms other than physical causation.

I've always sought the cosmic dimension of philosophy, which is why I lean towards some form of religious spirituality. Apropos of which:

...we may be surrounded by objects, but even while cognizing them, reason is the origin of something that is neither reducible to nor derives from them in any sense. In other words, reason generates a cognition, and a cognition regarding nature is above nature. In a cognition, reason transcends nature in one of two ways: by rising above our natural cognition and making, for example, universal and necessarily claims in theoretical and practical matters not determined by nature, or by assuming an impersonal objective perspective that remains irreducible to the individual 'I'. — The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy

Note the resonance with the above quote from the Nicomachean Ethics.

Does Vervaeke's view romanticise pre-modern culture? Wasn’t it an era of imposed hierarchies, powerlessness, and widespread pain and brutality? Was it really qualitatively better? Was it not spiritually bereft in other equally detrimental ways? — Tom Storm

I recommend having a listen. Since discovering Vervaeke’s lectures in 2022 I’ve taken most of the series in, often while working out or driving. Vervaeke’s grounding discipline is cognitive science, augmented by philosophy, psychology and a fair amount of anthropology. I don’t think he romantizes the past. His approach is very much in line with the academic discipline 'history of ideas', which is a sub-set of comparative religion.

The episodes that most directly address the topic of the OP are Death of the Universe, Martin Luther and Descartes, and Descartes vs Hobbes.

Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences. — Tom Storm

In which case, they will probably have no interest in this kind of discussion.

You can see Vervaeke kind of wrestling with religious questions - he's upfront about having been born into a fairly dysfunctional fundamentalist family and his rejection of that. But he dialogues with philosophers of religion and theologians - William Desmond, D C Schindler, many others. In his quest to articulate the meaning of 'wisdom' he does grapple with religious ideas, but from many different perspectives and traditions.

Also, what truth do you mean? do you mean a universal one or some other truth? and how does the fact that said truth, being subjective, has to have a meaning? and what kind of meaning? — Oppida

I admire Aristotle's Metaphysics, but understanding Aristotle properly is a difficult task. But there are some key ideas from Aristotle that are important to understand, as they are woven into our culture. I think anyone with an interest in philosophy has to have some familiarity with Plato and Aristotle.

As far as 'what truth I mean' - that is the big question! The general drift of the OP, is that modernity is exclusively oriented to objective facts, where objectivity is seen as the primary criterion of truth. What is objective is said to be truly so, regardless of anyone's opinion. But while that is certainly true for many subjects, it is not necessarily true for the philosophical questions of meaning, purpose and value. Modern thought tends to treat such questions as subjective or private matters, up to the individual. But then, this becomes the very divide that the OP is about - a domain of objective facts, on the one side, which exists independently of the individual, and the domain of purposes, meaning and values, which is said to be an individual matter! So there can be no consensus except as regards objective facts, or so it is said.

Perhaps have a look at an earlier thread, The Mind Created World, which tries to address this issue.

What do you think is going on for those who don't see this? — Tom Storm

I don't think the objections are coming to terms with the argument. Again, the argument is, that since the Scientific Revolution, modern culture tends to see the world (or universe) in terms of a domain of objective forces which have no meaning or moral dimension, in which human life is kind of a fortuitous outcome of chance events. Prior to that, the Universe was imbued with symbolic and real meaning, in which the individual, no matter how lowly their station, was a participant. I mean, there's been enormous literature and commentary on this fact. I attempted in the OP to try and distill it the essentials of it. Those books I cited in the OP are among the examples, but there are many more.

. But wouldn’t the meaning crisis, strictly speaking, be resolved if everyone became, say, a Muslim? — Tom Storm

Pluralism, religious and otherwise, is a fact of modernity, it's part of the dynamic. The traditional religions did address existential dilemmas, but then, they didn't arise in today's interconnected global world with all its diversities and the massive increase of scientific knowledge. The problem is, trying to retrieve or preserve the valuable insights that they arrived at. That's why I think a kind of interfaith approach is an essential part of the solution, something which Vervaeke does in his dialogues. I think religious representatives of good will are able to see beyond sectarianism without devolving into outright relativism.

But overall, the crisis of modernity is a really difficult challenge to deal with. I don't feel as though I've dealt with it at all successfully, although at least I recognise that there is a challenge.

Another of the excellent books I would recommend is by a University of Queensland scholar, Dr. Paul Tyson, 'Defragmenting Modernity'. The cover description:

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, "mere" facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and "mere" reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing?

All very important questions in my view and central to philosophy, or should be.

im inclined to say no- wether there is or not a higher truth, but from what i know, the search for a universal ruler — Oppida

Interesting, that you so easily move from ‘truth’ to ‘ruler’. That says something, don’t you think?

As to whether truth is subjective, my point is that scientific method wishes to ‘bracket out’ the subjective element, so as to arrive a view which is accurate for everyone - the so-called ‘view from nowhere’. But this is associated with the idea that humans are kind of epiphenomenal, the accidental outcome of undirected processes, whose being is really irrelevant to the way things truly are. My attitude, on the contrary, is that truth, as such, always has a subjective pole or aspect, because it must mean something, and for it to mean something, there must be an observer to whom it means something. Hence that there are no truly ‘mind-independent’ facts, in that specific sense.

I did change my mind about suspending myself again, but some of these debates do feel repetitive. In my view, this link between Galileo’s science, which, don’t forget, was the fulcrum of the Scientific Revolution, and Descartes’ mind/body dualism, are essential to what Vervaeke calls ‘the grammar of modernity’ and the sense that the world is basically meaningless. So many of the debates here, especially those about the hard problem, actually revolve around this very point. It seems clear as crystal to me.

I haven’t taken the time with McGilchrist yet, but I’ve invested a bit listening to Vervaeke. He is trying to stay within the bounds of what is scientifically credible, but also address the existential problems which modernity induces. I’ve noticed, since I discovered his lectures (in 2022), that he’s moved more towards theology, in that he has a lot of talks with scholarly theologians and exponents of philosophical spirituality. But I don’t think it’s a matter of becoming ‘Muslims or quakers’ or members of a movement. Anything of value in any religion, is only because it points to some reality which is more than just a matter of belief or personal conviction. But I shrink from saying ‘objectively true’, at the same time. That’s part of the dilemma.

Hey I’d agree with you! I’ve noticed that on philosophy forums, there is a lot of hostility towards any idea of there being ‘higher truth’. It’s like, higher according to whom? What would they know? What do you know? So there’s a lot of resistance to that.

And also our economic system thrives on the creation of artificial wants - getting people to want things, driving up demand, and then being the lucky guy who just happens to be have the supply. OK, I’m being a bit cynical there, but it’s something that definitely happens.

Higher cultures of other times and places put much more value on virtue, truth, and beauty. Nowadays economic activity tends to focus more on economies of scale against the backdrop of a utilitarian ethos.

So yes, overall in agreement with what you’re saying.

I don't know how they 'are beings' are in any way relevant since rocks 'are' just as much as people. — noAxioms

First of all, you did say you don’t know how any creature could experience anything other than itself, which I interpreted at face value. That was what I responded to. If that is not what you meant to say, perhaps pay better attention to your mode of expression.

We say of intelligent creatures such as humans and perhaps the higher animals that they are ‘beings’ but we generally don’t apply that terminology to nonorganic entities, which are described as existents or things (hence also the distinction in language between ‘you’ and ‘it’.) But the ontological distinction between beings of any kind, and nonorganic objects, is that the former are distinguished by an active metabolism which seeks to preserve itself and to reproduce. There is nothing analogous to be found in nonorganic matter.

Nobody ever addresses how this physical being suddenly gains access to something new, and why a different physical arrangement of material cannot. — noAxioms

But I am doing just that, and have also done it before. I’ve had many an argument on this forum about what I’ve described as the ‘ontological distinction’ I’ve made above.

To recap - the distinction between any organism and a nonorganic object (leaving aside the marginal example of viruses) is that the former maintain homeostasis, exchange nutrients with the environment, grow, heal, reproduce and are able to evolve. They are autopoietic in Varela and Maturana’s terms -‘systems whose components continuously produce and regenerate the network of processes that constitutes its own organization and identity.’ They are organised according to internal principles. Manufactured items such as devices are allopoietic - their organisation is imposed by an external agent, the manufacturer.

So that asserts a basic ontological distinction between organic and inorganic. Going back to Aristotle, there were further divisions - vegetative, animal, and human, each with the properties of the lesser stages, but also having attributes which the lower levels lacked. For example, animals are self-moving in a way that plants are not, and humans display linguistic and rational abilities that animals do not. Those too are ontological distinction although not so widely recognised as they used to be.

So animals ‘have access to’ ways of being that plants do not, and humans ‘have access to’ ways of being that animals do not. To try and collapse all of those distinctions to some purported lowest common denominator is reductionism. Reductionism works well in some contexts, but is inapplicable in others.

As for the hard problem, it has a clear genealogy, although again many will take issue with it:

The problem goes back to the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, particularly to the bifurcation of nature, the division of nature into external, physical reality, conceived as mathematizable structure and dynamics, and subjective appearances, conceived as phenomenal qualities lodged inside the mind. The early modern version of the bifurcation was the division between “primary qualities” (size, shape, solidity, motion, and number), which were thought to belong to material entities in themselves, and “secondary qualities” (color, taste, smell, sound, and hot and cold), which were thought to exist only in the mind and to be caused by the primary qualities impinging on the sense organs and giving rise to mental impressions. This division immediately created an explanatory gap between the two kinds of properties. — The Blind Spot,Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

So the problem in a nutshell arises from trying to apply the third-person methods of science to the first—person quality of lived experience.

red light triggers signals from nerves that otherwise are not triggered, thus resulting in internal processing that manifests as that sensation. That’s very third-person, but it’s an explanation, no? — noAxioms

As Nagel says, this explanation, ‘however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience—how it is from the point of view of its subject.’ The physical sciences are defined by excluding subjective experience from their domain. You cannot then use those same sciences to explain what they were designed to exclude. This isn’t a failure of neuroscience—it’s a recognition of the scope of third-person, objective description. The first-person, subjective dimension isn’t missing information that more neuroscience will fill in; it’s in a different category.

I started out writing this OP as a kind of valedictory, as it is really one of the main themes I’ve been exploring through all these conversations. I’m nonplussed that it was received with such hostility when I think it is pretty well established theme in the history of ideas. I’m also getting tired of having the same arguments about the same things with the same people. It becomes a bit of a hamster wheel.

Nevertheless, the ‘book of nature is written in mathematics’ (Galileo) was a radically new view of the Universe, although that is more a matter of history than philosophy as such.

A salutary reminder of why I had stopped posting on the philosophyforum. It’s plain that my interests have drifted a long way from those of others here, I shall bid adieu and return to my writing project.

I don’t disagree that education, greed, and social dysfunction are serious issues, but those are symptoms rather than the root. The “meaning crisis” I’m referring to isn’t about a loss of morality or piety; it’s about the underlying ontology of modernity — the way the scientific worldview, as inherited from Galileo and Descartes, implicitly defines reality as value-free and mindless. Once meaning is exiled from the fabric of being, everything else — from consumerism to the instrumentalisation of knowledge — follows naturally.

So the crisis isn’t a call to religion, but a call to re-examine the metaphysical assumptions we’ve inherited. Science remains indispensable, but it cannot by itself tell us what anything means. One can retain plenty of respect for science while recognising that fact, which is built into the very foundations of the method.

But then, as always, you will interpret whatever I say through your antireligious mindset, which sees any kind of appeal to transcendent values through that prism. And there's really nothing I can do about that.

Can you explain how the search for and finding of meaning could be universally shared in a world of human diversity? — Janus

Each of us has to find meaning in our own way. I think that was actually part of what phenomenology was setting out to do. And existentialist philosophy, generally. The point of the phenomenological epochē, is not that different to Heidegger's 'clearing' - it is allowing the truth of our own existence to open up, to become meaningful to us. But, where in current culture is that kind of discriminative self-awareness taught or communicated?

Again, Vervaeke's lecture series is a fertile ground for this - he's not trying to 'impose an agenda', but elucidating some fundamental existential facts from all kinds of sources, including anthropology, philosohy, psychology and cognitive science. But he presents it in terms of the salience landscape, of relevance realisation, which he sees as being more compatible with today's world and with science.

(His chapters on the emergence of the Galilean division and the advent of the modern crisis of meaning Episodes 20-22 are amongst the best in that series. )

there’s the assumption that before we “took the wrong fork in the road,” everything was fine and that if only we hadn’t taken it, we would never have ended up in this mess. — Tom Storm

I think it is conceivable that modern culture could have developed along radically different lines, although of course, that is one of those speculative issues that can never be proven. But (maybe counter-intuitively) I attribute much of the modern meaning crisis to the structure of pre-modern Christianity. Recall that prior to the Enlightenment, Europe was engulfed in seemingly never-ending religious wars. That individuals were being swept up in religious persecutions and prosecuted for heresy. The way institutional Christianity was structured resulted in many dichotomies and conflicts,with 'right thought' or religious orthodoxy rigorously defined and enforced to the point of the death penalty.

That is certainly one of the major causes of the meaning crisis that I see. Those elements of Greek philosophy that had been incorporated into theology, then became associated with the very religiious authoirities which Enlightenment science sought to differentiate itself from. So I'm by no means recommending any kind of return to an imagined religious source of morality. But at the same time, those elements of the 'perennial philosophy' that Greek wisdom articulated really do capture profound existential truths about the human condition.

When I was doing religious studies, I discovered the Gnostic Gospels and the nag hammadi writings. They were much more concerned with attaining individual insight somewhat along more 'Eastern' lines, I felt. As it happened, the 'pistic' sects of christianity triumphed over the Gnostic sects, and, as they say, 'history is written by the victors'. But had that gone a different way then it could have been a radically different world to the one we now live in. But, as I say, un-proveable.

Or do we need to use the freedoms of Western culture to find better ways of living, grounded in more pragmatic approaches to survival? — Tom Storm

Of course. John Vervaeke has set up a foundation (The Vervaeke Foundation) to explore options, and it's on the internet and streamed via youtube and other technologies. We have to call on everything we have, technology and science included. But the key point is, to overcome or transcend that sense of the Universe being fundamentally meaningless and life as a kind of fluke set of circumstances - even knowing what we know about the Cosmos, which is vastly more, and vastly different, to what our forbears could have known.

When has the world not appeared to be in some kind of crisis? — Tom Storm

it seems to me, at least, that for very long periods of time, in pre-history at least, that almost nothing happened that is remotely comparable to the crises facing current culture. Certainly there have been previous crises, the coillapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age culture was one, the Black Death was one. But I don't think you can say that all cultures have always been in crises.

The specific crisis of meaning I'm referring to, though, is philosophical and cultural. It is about the way in which our collective culture has engendered that sense of meaningless, alienation and anomie, which I think is unarguably a characteristic of globalised Western culture, and which manifests in specific ways in terms of drug dependency, depression and related symptoms.

Yes, the only possibility for a return to universally shared life purpose is totalitarian. Given inherent human diversity and creativity, why would we ever want something so stultifying as a universally held meaning or purpose? — Janus

You need to understand that the search for meaning is not a script or a dogma. It is not about returning to some imagined pre-modern utopia at all. Every time this is discussed, that is what you assume that I'm talking about, hence your mistaken depiction of me as a 'proselytizing dogmatist'.

I am unconvinced that there is a “meaning crisis.” — Tom Storm

The world is converging on a series of overlapping crises, political, economic, existential and environmental. If you can't see that, then I won't try and persuade you otherwise.

That being a different standard of measure from a golden age idea. — Paine

It is also one of the themes in Max Horkheimer's book The Eclipse of Reason'. It doesn't age that well, written as it was in the aftermath of WWII, but his basic point stands. Horkheimer traces how the meaning of reason has shifted from a normative, world-guiding principle to an instrumental faculty directed to specific ends. In the classical and pre-modern worldview, reason was understood as objective—it reflected an intelligible order inherent in reality itself. To act rationally was to conform to this cosmic or moral order, in which reason provided not only the means for action but also the standards by which ends were judged. With the rise of modern science, empiricism, and the Enlightenment’s emphasis on human autonomy, this conception of reason eroded. Rationality came to be understood as subjective and instrumental, concerned not with what is true or good but with how to achieve whatever ends are already desired. Horkheimer argues that in this transformation, reason has been stripped of its substantive and ethical content; it has become a tool for calculation, efficiency, and control. This marks the “eclipse” of reason—the point at which rationality itself becomes irrational, serving domination rather than enlightenment, and leaving modern civilization powerful in its techniques but impoverished in meaning and purpose.

This later becomes one of the main themes of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the Enlightenment.

Sure, agree. But then, the philosophy encyclopedias all register him as an 'objective idealist', something which seems at odds with your naturalist leanings, doesn't it? That phenomenological element, which you correctly say is essential to enactivism, was also a major theme of The Embodied MInd, which was arguably one of the key texts of that school.

I've been reading some of Peirce's writing, which I find quite laborious, but generally congenial to the kind of idealism I advocate.

The algebra stuff was good. — Paine

Indeed, algebraic geometry was one of his major contributions. You know the anecdote, right? He was reclining on his lounge in a tiled room, with a buzzing fly annoying him. But then he realised that the path of the fly could be represented numerically against the grid provided by the tiled wall. Voila! It becomes fundamental to all kinds of science.

But a lot of the received ideas and practices in the past also sucked. — Paine

It's not 'modernity sucks, the ancient world was terrific!' The thread is about something quite specific.

You've landed on the only speculative element in my earlier response. That speculative comment you latched on to, is mainly my attempt to provide a kind of cosmic rationale for the existence of life, rather than seeing it as a kind of fluke of biochemistry.

My specific reply to you was written in more analytical terms - about how and why consciousness (or mind) has come to being seen as so inexplicable and hard to accomodate in the scientific picture (also subject of another OP I've just published.)

I'll repeat what I see as the key passage:

So it's important to disentangle the understanding of mind or consciousness from these kinds of ideas of it being 'out there somewhere' or what kind of phenomenon it might be. What it requires instead is the kind of perspectival shift that phenomenology introduced by way of the epochē, the suspension of judgement, which is a very different thing to either analytical philosophy or the customary scientific method. — Wayfarer

The gist of this is to turn the attention to the nature of one's own lived experience, rather than wondering what must have existed 'before the big bang' or in terms of poorly-digested fragments of scientific cosmology. Basically it's a return to the Socratic maxim of 'know thyself'.

:up:

Both, I can completely relate to.