I have no problem with philosophical speculation. It operates in science in the form of abductive reasoning. The point is that it should be underwritten by science, if we are speculating about the nature of things. For ethics and aesthetics it might be a different matter―science may not have much to tell us in those domains.

How things such as matter, mind or consciousness intuitively seem (the province of phenomenology) which is determined by reflection on experience, tells us only about how we, prior to any scientific investigation, might imagine that these things are. That may have its own value in understanding the evolution of human understanding, but it tells us nothing about how the world things really are.

So I was responding to the dogmatic assertion that "linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true". I reject that as dogma because it assumes that the material world is purely a "billiard ball" world of mindless atoms in the void..

Thanks. Copy/ pasting form the comments is a tedious process. I've often thought I should write my responses in a single word document and then copy/paste to the site, but I just never seem to get around to doing that. I'm not all that concerned about it, I guess, otherwise I would have been doing that all along.

Yes, I would say connected. Everything arises from social practices and contingent factors; the possibilities of our experiencing anything, perception, our bodies, and the way we experience the world are all shaped by these conditions. But this is not my area of expertise I think Joshs is a professional on these matters. My interest/knowledge is limited. — Tom Storm

I'd say everything about human life is socially mediated, simply because language is a social phenomenon, and so I must agree with you that truths are always relative to contexts. This can be shown by asking anyone who disagrees to state a context-independent truth. Within our common life there are a myriad of contexts, and they are all nested within the human context itself, which in turn is nested within the context of biology―the context of life that we share with other animals, and even plants, fungi and microbes.

Social and cultural evolution are preceded and underpinned by biological evolution. At the most basic level we perceive the world in the way our evolved 'embrained' bodies determine. As the study of animals shows language is not necessary for perception, and it seems absurd (to me) to say that if we had not been enculturated we would not perceive the same world that we do as enculturated beings, just on account of our human physiology.

From our observations of animal behavior it is undeniable that animals perceive all the same things in the environment as we do, but we can safely infer in (sometimes very) different ways according to the different structures of their sense modalities.

Excellent argument. But it will be ignored. :grin: — apokrisis

It is an excellent argument and it will be ignored―when confirmation bias is that strong it becomes impenetrable.

As the adage, apparently misattributed to Mark Twain has it: "Never argue with stupid people―they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience".

Thanks Jamal, the projected new forum sounds great. Is there any way of exporting one's posts from the old forum as a word file?

Rational thought is simply thought which is logically consistent with its premises. People speak about premises being rational, but that's a harder things to measure. If rationality equals consistency, what can the starting premises of a movement of thought be consistent with? Tradition? Scripture? Science? Everyday experience?

I suppose I should say what I've been reading, which I usually never bother to do. I tend to read non-fiction in the morning and fiction at night, and I often have several books on the go. Currently reading Biosemiotics and Signs of Meaning by Jesper Hoffmeyer. Other books on the go Life's Ratchet by Peter Hoffmann, Beast and Man by Mary Midgeley, The Everpresent Origin by Jean Gebser, Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy.

that linguistic communication would be impossible if materialism were true. — Wayfarer

I see no reason to believe that. Perhaps you are working with a redundant model of material as 'mindless substance'. If material in all its forms were nothing but mindless substance, then of course it would follow by mere definition that conscious material is impossible. But that is specifically the "question-begging presumption" I was referring to.

Thing is, consciousness is already strictly a metaphysical conception, hence necessarily non-physical, — Mww

That would be so only on certain question-begging presuppositions.

The point is that neither idealism nor physicalism are, contrary to what their opponents like to suggest, self-refuting. Actually idealism is not usually criticized for being self-refuting, but rather for being explanatorily impotent, implausible or even incoherent in that the only forms of idealism which can serve to explain our everyday experience rely, in order to give an account of how shared experience could be possible, on ideas like God or universal mind or collective mind' ideas which themselves are not able to be satisfactorily conceptually explicated or related to everyday human experience.

Is this an infinite situation? I experience the knowledge that I'm experiencing warmth. And I experience the knowledge of the knowledge that I'm experiencing warmth. And… — Patterner

No, I'd say that's just empty playing with words.

You’d think that would be ‘nuff said. — Mww

The problem is that the idea of physicalist inconsistency is a strawman given that eliminativists do not seek to eliminate or discount the fact of being conscious (consciousness) but instead believe that it is an entirely neural, that is physical, process, and that the kind of default imagining of what consciousness is, based on the "seeming" of introspection and rationalist conceptualization, is an illusion.

Now, of course they may be wrong, and there seems to be no way to test that hypothesis, as there is no way to test the idea that consciousness is somehow (although the somehow remains obscure) non-physical.

The point I would contend is the idea on either side of the debate that their conclusions are "slam dunk". That idea only shows dogmatism, closed-mindedness.

I agree that people, as individuals, need to look after their own, and their family's, living and well being first and foremost. Christ advocated giving to the poor and needy, but of course one must have something to give, that is have enough for oneself―an excess, before being in a position to give to others. The welfare state, though is not an imposition on individuals to do the support of the sick, the vulnerable and the needy, that role is, ideally, taken care of by taxing the "haves" in order to provide for the "have-nots".

That too. It's a kind of Social Darwinism, but with a religious/spiritual theme. I find that the religious, at least the traditionalists, are far more serious and realistic about life, about the daily struggle that is life. I appreciate that about them and about religion. — baker

There is a difference, though, between individuals not giving to others because they have no excess to give, and the supposedly God-given right of individuals to accumulate as much wealth and power as they are able to without being morally required to give at all if they don't feel like it. Their right to do this is predicated on the idea of individual merit―if they have the ability to accumulate wealth and power they should be allowed to do so unrestrictedly. But this ignores that fact that individuals use the privilege and benefits of a society that everyone (ideally and if the able to) contributes to, in order to rise as far as they can on power/ wealth scale. There is no acknowledgement , in that kind of thinking, of what the individual relies on―the societal infrastructure. So, I see it as a kind if willful blindness on the part of the right―and a kind of hypocrisy.

By the religious/spiritual people themselves. — baker

Are you saying that the religious people themselves have a cynical view on what religion is supposed to be?

Look at the dates in the statistics in the link. This is recent. — baker

You're right. I didn't read it more than cursorily. It's certainly true that old attitudes to women and indigenous folk generally, which were certainly significantly driven and justified by religious beliefs, still linger on today.

For starters, overcoming the good boy scout mentality. I sometimes watch the livefeed from our parliament. The right-wing parties are the religious/spiritual people. The way they are is what it means to be "metaphysically street smart". I haven't quite figured it out yet completely, but I'm working on it. — baker

OK, I'm obviously less clear on what you mean than you are. Is it something like metaphysics-as-politics? Or, given that the political right is generally associated with the idea that individuals, their personal achievements and the merits and privilege that thereby accrue to them, are more important than social values which support looking after those individuals who "don't make the grade"; is that the kind of thing you have in mind?

How about we follow the money and suggest that what is going on is not a politization of institutionalized religion, nor a corruption -- but a correct, exact, adequate presentation of religion/spirituality.

That when we look at religious/spiritual institutions and their practitioners, we see exactly what religion/spirituality is supposed to be. — baker

Can you elaborate? It's not clear to me what is meant by "exactly what religion/ spirituality is supposed to be". Supposed by whom?

For example, for a long time, violence against indigenous women was far less investigated than violence against women of other categories. Hence initiatives like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women. — baker

Today, rape, torture and murder are generally considered to be crimes even against the "enemy' in war. That indigenous people were once widely thought of as less than human, usually on account of religious attitudes, is not relevant.

I resent I'm not as metaphysically street smart as they are. — baker

What does being "metaphysically street smart" look like to you?

The point is that we don't create our characters, we are mostly molded by genetics, family circumstance, teachers, and encounters with others. Any decision we make anywhere along the line, which might be thought to be some kind of self-construction of character is really just an expression, a manifestation of our already existing character.

"Freedom" belonging to "timeless intelligible character" is itself an unintelligible notion as far as I can tell. That said, I'm open to having it explained to me in terms that make intuitive sense. I also see Kant's conceptual distinction between empirical and intelligible causality as being without any real substance. Perhaps I don't get it, but from my perspective causation is an inference to explain what is observed (the empirical), and is intelligible only as such.

The idea that we, as things in themselves might have, from that perspective, a radical freedom just seems like a fudge, even though, although not having studied Kant intensively and knowing that he had made that very argument, but simply extrapolating from the idea of the noumenal, I once imagined the argument and used it myself.

Once I thought more about it and let go of the emotional need to believe in free will I came to see it as fatally underdetermined. For a start I would need to be fully consciously aware of and in control of that purported freedom for it to really count as such.

:up: I always liked that Schopenhauer line. To be free in the kind of libertarian sense that it seems people who believe in free will usually entertain we would need to be able to create our natures from scratch. It would be like pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps in defiance of gravity and flying. Sapolsky is good on this. An interesting debate between Dennett and Sapolsky.

:up: Institutionalized religion seems always to become politicized, and hence corrupted, coming to serve power instead of free inquiry and practice.

:up: If we had had another religion or no religion Western culture would have developed differently to be sure. The same goes for Platonism, Aristotle, the Stoics, etc., etc. As we know from complexity theory, even small differences can compound to later produce much greater differences.

"It is wrong to rape _my_ daughter, but why should I care about what happens to your daughter?!" — baker

I don't believe that is characteristic of most people at all. People are outraged at the rape of other people's daughters or sons, are generally outraged by any rape at all.

It may be neural. It may be computational - below the level of the neural, as Randy Gallistel suggests. There are some who think neurons alone don't suffice to explain mental activity, hence proposals like Hameroff and Penrose who speak of microtubules. — Manuel

I would think that since computation can be done on physical machines, we would have little reason to think that neurons are not capable of doing it. If mind is computational and computation is a physical process then it would seem to follow that the mental is really a function of the physical. That seems most likely to me, but it remains an opinion.

There's also the linguistic component discussed by Chomsky a very intricate unconscious model which we can tease out into consciousness to discover its form. — Manuel

Not being familiar with Chomsky's work, I have nothing to support a comment.

But unless you want to say something, I enjoy talking with you, I think your use of mental is not problematic, as I said it's a caveat, and I mention it because I feel hesitancy to create more distance than there is between the mental and the physical. It's more monist issue. — Manuel

I also enjoy your input and perspectives. Difference is good―I don't think we want this place to become an echo chamber. I also agree with you on not wishing to create a substantive difference between the mental and physical, even though I think the distinction is useful in some of our thinking practices.

It's not so much the brain (though of course if we lack it, we might not be thinking in high quality), more so what comes alongside consciousness and thinking, which is an obscure apparatus - we cannot introspect into how we do what we do with the mental. But this is just a quibble — Manuel

I'm going to respond with another quibble. You are again referring to what we cannot introspect as "mental", whereas I think it most plausible to consider that what we cannot introspect is 'neural', and that it is precisely it's character as non-mental that makes it impossible to introspect.

I don't understand what you mean by structure on these levels. Are we speaking of the seemingly concrete nature of rocks, or that certain food seems to be liked by many animals? — Manuel

No, I was referring to the different ways different animals' sensory organs are anatomically structured. For example, we know dogs see limited colour compared to us (mostly blues and yellows) due to their lack of red sensitive cones in their eyes.

Yes, normal moral intuitions can be countermanded by religious or political ideologies. It usually takes the form of "offering" it seems.

Yes by and large, but i don't think they come to these convictions by reasoning or considering evidence. — ChatteringMonkey

Right, and I haven't anywhere said otherwise.

Edit: "offering" should have been "othering". Damn spellcheck!

I generally agree, but not for moral beliefs because those are not or at least not easily verifiable with evidence. How many people do actually change their minds about those when confronted with evidence or rational argument? — ChatteringMonkey

Isn't it the case though, that almost everyone already agrees about what is morally right when it comes to the really significant moral issues such as murder, rape, theft, exploitation, torture and so on?

As to how many people change their minds, have you ever heard an argument to support the position that murder, rape, theft, exploitation or torture are morally permissible?

Not rosy, I realise how the people were controlled with brutality. But at least the rulers realised the benefits of the ideological stability provided by the church. — Punshhh

I'm not arguing that it didn't benefit the rulers.

I think religion, in various forms is still a very significant part of modern culture. I also think it is natural, once someone starts thinking for themselves, to require evidence for beliefs.

The nervous system is then a component of a system of which the brain is a part of. — Manuel

Of course. In all organisms there is no actual separation between parts of the system. But I think there are good reasons to think of the brain, just as we do of the heart, the lungs and other organs as functional systems in themselves.

What about language use? We literally do not know what we are specifically going to say prior to saying it (or typing it.) Clearly we have a vague meaning, which we can express through propositions, sometimes expressing what we wanted to say, sometimes we just get approximations. — Manuel

I think what you say here supports my view. What we say is preceded, it seems most plausible to think, by neuronal processes, brain processes of which we cannot be aware. So I don't think it is right to refer to them as mental processes, given that I think the term is most apt when applied to what we can be conscious of.

Yeah we have been stuck on this point before if I recall correctly. I am skeptical that they do. Not that they necessarily experience things COMPLETELY differently from us in all respects, but in some respects they do. Dogs with olfaction have access to a world we barely imagine. Mantis shrimp have 16 color receptive cones which renders the experience they have of the world very different from what we see. — Manuel

You seem to be misinterpreting me to say that other animals see things in the same way as we do. I'm not saying that at all―I'm saying they see the same things we do but in different ways according to the different ways their sensory modalities are structured.

On the other hand, if I say what remains is brain or a nervous system, then I am smuggling in what I am trying to show exists absent me.

We can, without going too speculative reasonably imagine that some intelligent alien species may carve out a different kind of organs (or parts of organs) and call that a brain.

As for the definition of mental- that's very hard. I think what you say is how it's used. I'd add unconscious processes to this, but this would make me idiosyncratic. — Manuel

I wouldn't say that what remains independently of human perception is merely the brain, but is the manifold of sensitive body, nervous system and brain plus the environment which acts up it, such as to produce perception amongst many other things.

I am not understanding what you are wanting to say with your 'alien' example. I think neurophysiology clearly shows us what reasonably counts as brain and what does not.

I guess we'll have to disagree on what would be the most reasonable scope of the term 'mental'. The idea that some process could be mental and yet be impossible for us to be aware of in vivo, so to speak, just doesn't seem tenable. On the other hand I think it is fair to say that we cannot be directly aware of any neural process in its neurality, so to speak.

Something exists absent us but calling it a "brain" assumes that what we are carving out is a "natural kind", that is the way nature carves itself absent us. This seems to happen in physics, in biology the different framing of other creatures arises, I think. — Manuel

I think science shows us that there are functional organic systems in nature, and I would say the brain is clearly one of them. I mean it is the one without which we wouldn't be having this conversation or experiencing anything at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the different framing of other creatures". Other multicellular organisms have sense organs, organs of sight, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling just as do, even though their organs may not be configured in just the same ways as ours. We also know that other animals visually detect the same structures in the environment as we do―it is evidenced by their behavior.

Forget the moral or ethical challenges―given all the physical challenges humanity faces, do you believe human life will look anything like it does today in a couple of centuries? I mean do you believe there will still be a huge population, technological societies, preservation of historical culture, religion?

The problem is that religion asks people to believe things for which there is no evidence. That works as long as people give lip service because they are cowed by fear of punishment, as was the case in the Middle Ages, or as long as they are illiterate and impressionable, which was also the case for most of human history, or as long as they are not capable of critical thought.

So what do you propose? A return to imposed beliefs, theocracy?

This along with a strong moral code, reinforced every Sunday in church, enabled us to pull through the dark ages into the enlightenment without falling back into warring tribes, or corrupt competing kingdoms.
In a sense, Christianity enabled the enlightenment, by engendering a moral stability. — Punshhh

The stability of feudalism was imposed by a combination of church and aristocratic rule. The people were illiterate―so we have no way of knowing what their real thoughts were. They were compelled to give lip service or be punished. I think your view is rosy and simplistic.

I'm not convinced. I see people uniting into all kinds of groups. Organised religion, in my view, is a particular worldview, imposed if not by force like in totalitarian systems and the churches in the Middle Ages, at least imposed by indoctrination. Is that what you'd like to see?

At minimum, 'idealism' implies (A) that brains are 'not mind-independent' and (B) that (a priori) 'minds are substances' rather than what brains do. — 180 Proof

Yep, I think this is exactly right.

It may be more than merely a mental construction, but it is at least a mental construction, or we would have no way to perceive or model it. I presume you know Russell's quote on this topic, and he was not an idealist. But what he says is factual as far as I can see. — Manuel

If the brain is more than merely a mental construction then it is a mind-independent existent. If it is not more than a mental construction then it is not a mind-independent existent. Our perceptions of the brain ( not our own, obviously, because we do not perceive our own brains) could be said to be mental constructions, but it would depend on what is meant by "mental construction". We are not aware of how our perceptions are pre-cognitively constructed. The predominant neuroscientific view seems to be that our perceptions arise as the kind of "tip"―the part we can be conscious of―of the "iceberg" of neuronal process. When we refer to something as mental, is it not usually a reference to things we can be aware of? If so, 'mental construction' as opposed to 'brain process' or 'brain model' might seem inapt.

Who ascribes these functions? We do. What does a brain do? It produces consciousness, but it does many things which are unrelated to consciousness which are equally important. Why privilege consciousness over many of the other things brains do? — Manuel

I'm certainly not privileging consciousness over the unconscious brain functions. In fact what I say about the term "mental construction" is precisely based on my disavowal of any such privileging. The point is that if the brain is doing things we cannot be mentally aware of, then that would seem to indicate that it is a mind-independent functional organ or structure.

It is true that we, on the basis of neuroscientific study, ascribe the functions, but it doesn't seem to follow that those functions are not real independently of our ascriptions. In fact the obverse seems more plausible.

You have mentioned structures several times. I can understand epistemic structural realism in physics, but above that, say in biology and so on, I don't quite follow what you are saying.

At least you are framing something which can be discussed that materialism means mind independent structure and that idealism denies that. That's a big improvement over usual conversations on these topics. — Manuel

What about ontic structural realism? It's true that we rely on our perceptions to reveal structures to us, so we know them only as they appear to us. This does seem to leave the question as to what they might be absent our perception of them. That question cannot be answered with certainty, but then what questions can? To my way of thinking it is more plausible to think that our perceptions reveal things about what we perceive, but that there remain aspects which we are incapable of perceiving. So, I don't see it as black and white―I don't see it as being the case that we can know nothing about things in themselves.

Maybe one could just say that is fine, people can make up their own minds. But as I alluded to earlier I doubt that is true, maybe for the philosophical types it is, but not for most.

I think a lot of people learn by mimicking and copying others (children certainly do), hence the success of all these influencer types today. And so if you don't have organised religion anymore and the state is supposed to be secular and value-neutral... the only ones left with enough resources can almost only be commercial actors, who end up molding the minds of people, for their interests. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree with you that many, if not most, people are not philosophically reflective and/ or do not have a good grounding in critical thought. The influence of advertising and the transnational corporations is certainly problematic, perhaps mostly significantly so when it comes to politics and unnecessary consumerism.

I disagree with you that the state is "value neutral"―the laws of the state reflect the most significant moral injunctions. So, what is missing according to you? Are you advocating something like the "noble lie" when it comes to instilling religious belief in children?

I don't see why we would need a transcendent authority (God) as lawgiver, when we already have the state as lawgiver, and I think it is arguable that most people do not think murder, rape, theft, corruption, exploitation and so on, are acceptable. So just what is it that you think is missing?

For my part, I think ethics should be taught in school as early as possible.

Yes, Streetlight in particular was a genuine intellect. I always saw Harry as an annoying contrarian.

Personally, I am content to ignore when it seems necessary, and I'm like apo in not being concerned by the "knockabout" character of this site, but I can also see that I may well feel differently if I were the creator and financial sustainer.

I think you do a great job in providing an enjoyable resource Jamal.

Most all religions not only address what the point of life is but also why one ought to live life ethically. I say it would be nice to address these same topics without all the religiosity traditionally implied. — javra

I agree with you. Religions give general, purportedly universally applicable, answers to these questions and others. The problem, as I see it, is as to how we could ever universally agree on any answer. The religions certainly don't agree except in regard to the most significant moral questions, and the answers they give condemning murder, rape, theft, and so on, can easily be understood to be the answers best suited to communal harmony and flourishing.

Though here posed as if mutually exclusive, they in fact are quite amiable to being readily converged: most anything out there can be warped for the sake of authoritarian purposes. — javra

Right, but I was referring more to the "spiritual" answers―the answers that posit a transcendent realm of value as distinct to the immanent pragmatic needs of communities and individuals. So Christianity, for example, might say that murder and the other sins are wrong because God says so, and Buddhism might say they are wrong because if you commit them your rebirth will not be favorable, whereas a secular ethics can simply say they are wrong because they are detrimental to both individuals and communal life.

And in today’s world, save for traditional religions, what else speaks to these same issues with any sort of authority (not specific to “authoritarian authority” but also applicable to things such as the authority of reason)? — javra

I don't see ethics as an authoritarian problematic because people are free to accept or reject authority, even if to reject it will entail punishment. I take the ethical sense to be a function of education and normal human compassion. The pragmatic ethics that evolves out of the need for communal stability, harmony and flourishing I see as being supported by practical reason. I also think that pure reason gives us no rationale for favoring one person over another―any favoring is driven by individual preference and agenda and is not supportable by pure reason. Some contextual favoring may be supported by practical reasoning, but nonetheless there can be no pure reason not to treat all human individuals as being equal before the law, and entitled to equal opportunity regarding education, medical treatment and so on.

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. — Wayfarer

You frame it one way and I would frame it in another way. I would say religions sought to impose ideas about how humanity was situated within the cosmos. As you say they "provided a reason" instead of allowing individuals to work it out for themselves or to be informed by science. And that is why the predominant religions in the West opposed any finding of science which contradicted their central dogmas.

I have no problem with your "leaning towards some form of religious spirituality"―that may be right for you, but it doesn't follow that it's right for everyone. Your leaning is merely one of personal preference, just like the different leanings of others.

Well in Europe that's probably more the case than in the US. Most non-muslim Europeans are secular nowadays. — ChatteringMonkey

Not according to this site:

Europeans who consider themselves atheists are a small minority, except in France and in Sweden, where about 20 per cent say that they are atheists; a vast majority of all Europeans nominate themselves as religious persons.

:up: :up:

What is this supposed clash? Is the mind not coming out of a brain? Is the brain not a mental construction based on sense data? — Manuel

My criticism here is that If materialism is true, then the brain is not merely a "mental construction" even if our models of it, and perhaps even our perceptions of it, are mental constructions (idealism) or brain generated models (materialism).

According to materialism, there would be some mind-independent functional structures which appear to us as brains, and what we experience as thoughts are on the level of the physical brain, neuronal processes.

On the other hand according to idealism, the brain is merely one among all the other ideas which are taken by materialists to be mind-independently real functional structures, but are really, through and through, mental constructions..

The issue between the two is one of metaphysical fundamentality, and if the idea of metaphysical fundamentality is a coherent one, then the incompatibility between the two views is not merely verbal.

The idealists collapse epistemology and ontology, claiming there is no substantive distinction between the two, while the materialists maintain a substantive distinction.

The other point is that when you say that the problem which can be meaningfully posed is the "problem of the world"―the question regarding how much of the world is a construction of the mind (or a brain generated model) just is the salient question the answer to which precisely distinguishes idealism from materialism.

As usual you say a lot, and drop a lot of names, in your critical (and I would say one-dimensional) characterizations of modernity and modern thought, but you never say what you think the solution or alternative to the purportedly problematic nature of modernity is.

I agree. We need to check our sources if we are to be rigorous in our thinking. The good things about AI is that it can help you find sources you might not have otherwise, or at least would have had to spend more time searching. AI uses all the same sources that are available to us. One danger is that AIs may start using material created by AIs and perhaps very quickly the net may become flooded with this material. We can always ask an AI to reveal the sources of its responses.

Nor do I. I believe I already have those things... conceited bastard that I am....

Anyway I think we all desire and/or need different things in order to cultivate wisdom, have a sense of the sacred and feel connected to life...there is no one size fits all...

I think most religion is more about feeling connected to the possibility of an afterlife than about feeling connected to life.

Also I watched about 30 of Vervaeke's lectures a few years ago and found myself waiting for something concrete which didn't arrive, so I gave up. I couldn't discover just what he was proposing.

This leads to a question: is it possible to believe that religions are all not wrong, without believing that they are all right? Or is the idea that they are neither wrong not right, but are merely helpful or unhelpful stories? Then we might ask how a religion could be helpful or unhelpful.

Yes, but it doesn't imply present retrieval of unchanged past information. Things are always changing. Studies have shown how unreliable memory actually is. It consists of part plausible inference and part confabulation.

Right, but it is not as though religion, as opposed to theocracy, has been "done away with" (in the West).I think that what the OP complains about...the disenchantment of Nature due to a supposed decline of reverence for nature is a furphy, a strawman.

There is a tendency in all transcendence-based eschatalogically motivated religions to disvalue this world as the source of suffering, the veil of illusion or the vale of tears in favour of an imagined perfect realm.

So it is not really a case of the disenchantment of Nature, but of the disenchantment of the transcendent accompanying a return to nature. This begins with Aristotle...think of Rafael's painting 'The School of Athens'...Plato points to the heavens and Aristotle points to the ground
.

[quoted="Tom Storm;1022700"]I’m not convinced that consumerism or the instrumentalisation of knowledge wouldn’t still be dominant even if the West had remained committed to Christianity.[/quote]

"And Man shall have dominion..."

If habits are the result of patterns of neural networks established in response to present information (established when the past was present) then memory might not be a resurfacing of the original information but rather an inference manifesting, driven by, the current neural traces of the pre-established patterns.

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. — Wayfarer

Can you give an example of a religion in the pre-scientific era addressing existential dilemmas? Did religions really address the needs of the common folk or was it mostly the needs of the elites? I would like to see you at least attempt to address such serious questions instead of viewing them, on account of their difficulty for your thesis, as hostile.

In the modern era, wherein religious tolerance has greatly increased it would seem that the primary existential need religions have served is the need for community.

Of course, there are still tensions if not outright conflicts between different religious communities.