only good critical thinking need be applied to various metaphysical postulations insuring against logical inconsistencies. — kindred

And the multiplication of entities?

Hence, the top tier of Maslow's hierarchy, self-actualization of personal potential, is inherently a meta-physical "fiction" that we tell ourselves to provide non-physical motivation. That "need" is self-understanding ; including the relationship of the Self to the non-self world. Not just to experience the world, but to "understand the experience". — Gnomon

Or is it merely a shift in consciousness, in feeling, away from the neurotic need to understand, that leads to the deluded belief in the possibility of understanding, the relationship of the self to the non-self world in any way beyond, or more perfect than, the ordinary everyday?

I’d go as far as to say, beyond merely taken for granted, fundamental understandings are not even within Everydayman’s conscious considerations; that is to say, he hasn’t slowed himself down enough to figure out that he has them, and to know what they are.

And while it may be true you make that case for yourself alone, given that all humans are intellectually and morally equipped in exactly the same manner, it follows any other of congruent rationality may come to the same conclusion. I mean…look….you convinced me, so…that ya go. — Mww

Yes, I think that's true of "Everydayman". I also agree that all humans are intellectually and morally equipped in the same manner, but I find myself unsure of the degree. Degrees—agrees, disagrees—should I be aggrieved?

Drop the requirement of proof and take it as a "hinge" proposition, not to be subject to doubt. — Banno

:up: Yes, I think I do, but some are not satisfied with being unable to attain the unattainable.

I am. — creativesoul

I also feel absolutely certain that solipsism is not the case, but since it cannot be proven to not be the case, I cannot be absolutely certain.

↪Michael I wonder what more Janus wants? What more could he want? — Banno

That's all I want, and since it seems incoherent to want something unimaginable, you might also say it's all I could want.

They tell us how to make sense of how things appear to us. Whether or not we are ordinary humans or Boltzmann brains is the very question being considered. — Michael

If Boltzmann brains are random fluctuations, it begs the question as to how anything like that could make sense of anything, and thus how they could (in concert?) construct the whole edifice we know as science.

Also, if, as Boltzmann brains our remembered past histories are illusions, whence the shared memories that humans routinely experience? Can you make sense of that? How far back into the memories of the past before we, as Boltzmann brains, encounter illusion? Years, months, day, hours, a few seconds. The whole idea seems, however it might be supported by (the mathematics of?) some theories, absurd. Are not all theories interpretations? Are our memories of what we have learned of science and mathematics also illusions? If so, then how can we justifiably use them to support any conclusions at all?

It is a fact that our current scientific theories entail that we are more likely to be Boltzmann brains than ordinary humans. — Michael

No, it is a fact that some interpretations of our current scientific theories entail that we are more likely to be Boltzmann brains than ordinary humans. It pays to remember that scientific theories, and science generally, only tell us how to make sense of how things appear to be to ordinary humans.

That still does not defeat solipsism, what I said before to Banno applies to language too:
In the case that I think there is no world, it follows that I believe that everything around me is merely a projection of my mind (or simply is my mind). If I also believe that I am here discussing for a purpose, it could very well be that I believe that I am interacting with the very contents of my mind — Lionino

Solipsism cannot be defeated with certainty, but it is defeated by plausibility. You say, "in the case that I think there is no world", but no one or almost no one thinks that due to its implausibility. The issue of solipsism only gets raised because we cannot be, as with many other things, absolutely certain it is not the case.

Yes, I would say that discussion performatively, if not logically, presupposes the existence of a mutually experienced world external to the body. We all believe in such a world, so why give any air to faux-doubt about it?

"intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest." — Pantagruel

The usage of 'esoteric' relevant to this thread is in connection to religious or spiritual teachings and metaphysical claims, not to disciplines like quantum mechanics and relativity; the latter are disciplines that yeild predictions whose obtaining or failure to obtain are observable.

You seem to be, whether willfully or not, muddying the waters.

Again, I don't see where you are qualified to make that judgement for anyone but yourself. You claim to be capable of acting in the absence of a deep commitment, fine, I accept that. I think that most people care, and that care about what they do is indicative of values, in other words, beliefs. Propositional knowledge is just "facts." The most important decisions in life are value-laden. Some of the most stirring events in human history involve people acting in a counter-factual way, symbolically, based on belief. Bottom line, you can't turn ethics into propositional knowledge. You can express it propositionally, but you can't found or reduce it on propositions. — Pantagruel

I don't see evidence of "deep commitments" commonly at large in the human society I inhabit. I don't deny that most people care about things—notably mostly themselves, their families, close friends and their property and possessions.

In any case I haven't been arguing against values and beliefs, but against the idea that those constitute propositional, decidable knowledge, so I agree with you that ethics cannot be turned into propositional knowledge.

That said, I see ethics and morals as pragmatic matters—if people wish to live harmoniously with others, then they are best served to have a sense of honesty, justice and fairness. On the other hand, many people, according to my experience, will do unethical things if they believe they can get away with it undetected; I see evidence of that all the time.

I don't see any evidence that those extreme forms of esotericism are what is in question here. — Pantagruel

So, what do you think counts as esoteric knowledge then? Or can you give an example of what you would count as an esoteric tradition?

Difficult physics and math subjects are not esoteric in my book, they are just difficult.

That the discussion in this thread pressuposes a belief in a real world outside our minds, my comment is a rebuttal exactly to that claim. — Lionino

I would say that it might not logically presuppose the existence of a world, but that it does pragmatically presuppose it. No one really believes they are the only person or that there is no external (to the body) world; and anyone who consistently behaved as though they believed those things would likely be scheduled and put on medication for the protection of themselves and others..

I don't recall where esoteric knowledge became infallibly divine revelation in this discussion. That's a straw man by me, and not reflective of how I view intuitive knowledge. — Pantagruel

Esoteric knowledge is usually claimed to be knowledge by revelation or enlightenment, and hence.
by implication, to be infallible. The very concept of gnosis, direct knowing, exemplifies this character.

Of course people can deceive others, and even themselves, about what it is they truly believe. I haven't claimed there is not more to belief, in the psychological sense, than propositonality.

I don't believe that many people actually have "deep personal commitments", but even if they do, they are just that, personal, subjective, and they are beliefs, and hence don't count as knowledge in the intersubjective sense.

I don't deny that people make decisions based on intuitions: I do myself all the time. But firstly, I don't believe any intuitive (or propositional for that matter) knowledge is infallible, or context-independent, and secondly such "knowledge" is by its very nature personal, subjective.

Those two conditions are what the "afficionados" do not wish to acknowledge in relation to so-called "higher" knowledge, if not in relation to personal intuitions.

I don't see any evidence anywhere that this is the case. I accept your avowal that this is true of yourself, but what evidence do you have that people betray their own fundamental understandings as a matter of course? — Pantagruel

Fundamental understandings are just what is taken for granted given the empirical nature of our lives and the necessity of the notion of causation in order to make any sense at all of our experiences (even animals show this basic disposition), so I am not referring to those, but to religious and metaphysical worldviews.

I don't see many Christians living up to Christ's ethical teachings. We can only generalize from what we have personally experienced, and my personal experience is that I don't often see people living up to their professed views.

I acknowledge that your experience may be different in that regard and that any of us can only personally experience the tiniest fraction of humanity, but nonetheless I would remain skeptical if you were to claim that your experience has differed in that regard.

It is the knowing of things that by their nature or current status resist propositional knowledge. The fact that you reject this kind of knowledge in favour of propositional is perhaps the problem. Since that's the gist of the OP I'll just reiterate my response. — Pantagruel

If you are not merely referring to know-how or to belief and the fact that our worldviews may to some degree change the way we actually live and perceive and judge the world, can you give me an example of such non-propositional knowledge?

I don't know what "problem" you are referring to: is it perhaps the fact that I apparently disagree with you?

Just to be clear, I don't favour the propositional over know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, or the ways in which our conceptions and beliefs may condition our experience and judgement, my argument all along has merely been that there is no intersubjectively decidable knowledge apart from the empirical and logical; the rest is subjective.

Afficionados of esoterica generally don't want to admit that, though.

It is not that denial of an external world, or solipsism, is logically contradictory, or else those views would long since have been put paid to. The question, as @Banno has indicated, concerns plausibility.

So, when everything we ordinarily think, do and say flies in the face of those views, then holding to them by mere lip would be a performative contradiction, not a logical contradiction.

Well, the circularity of your "metaphysical belief", sir, begs the question. Besides, Christians mostly do not "actually live" Christ-like or miraculous "lives" even though 'Christ & miracles' are explicit "metaphysical beliefs" (e.g. Thomism, Calvinism) just as atheist materialists mostly do not "actually live" purposeless "lives" even though 'the purposelessness of material existence' is an explicit "metaphysical belief (e.g. nihilism, absurdism). Under existential-pragmatic scrutiny, sir, your espousal of Collingwood's absolute idealism does not hold up. — 180 Proof

:100: That most people probably just pay lip service in the actual living of their lives to their basic assumptions about the nature of reality is a telling point. And this goes for scientists' practice too: as far as I know there is quite a range of different metaphysical worldviews among scientists, as you mention, Christians and atheists, and no doubt Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims and other more personal worldviews. I don't believe these worldviews generally interfere with, or significantly impact the quality of, the practice of science at all.

I read Maxwell years ago and found myself disagreeing with his thesis that science is neurotic because it fails to acknowledge its metaphysical assumptions, The way I see it science consists in observation, imagining possible explanations for what is observed and then further observations to see whether what is predicted by the explanatory hypotheses obtain. No assumptions about the metaphysical nature of reality are needed. Some say causation is a metaphysical assumption; I disagree with that, since I see causation (understood in the broadest sense not merely as efficient causation, but also global relational conditions) as being the only way that events can be understood by us at all.

Science makes metaphysical assumptions, within which it does its thing. — Pantagruel

It seems more accurate to say that science makes pragmatic, that is methodologically determined, assumptions.

What facts or metaphysical truths can it guarantee? If you think there are such facts or truths, how does it guarantee them?
— Janus

Perhaps the challenge is knowing in the face of uncertainty, in other words, belief. For me, the notion of spirituality aligns precisely with the noumenon-phenomenon (mind-body) problem and is to that extent "de-mystified", although it is still mysterious. Yes, we can have some certainties of the material world, which are in a sense trivial. These form the framework of our human existence, the stage whereupon we live our lives. And those human truths are not so easily acquired or proven. And of course, when human knowledge has reached a high level of sophistication, we begin to discover that the so-called simple truths of the material world are not themselves straightforward, when we finally reach the horizons of the quantum and the cosmic.

In the human body, muscles work in opposing pairs. And the ultimate strength of any muscle is always limited by the weakness of its antagonist partner. I conceive the mind (spirit) matter dyad to be like that. Indeed, all knowledge. Hence the power of dialectic.

Such understanding ranges from the comprehension of the babblings of children to Hamlet or the Critique of Pure Reason. From stones and marble, musical notes, gestures, words and letters, from actions, economic decrees and constitutions, the same human spirit addresses us and demands interpretation. (Dilthey, The Rise of Hermeneutics) — Pantagruel

I missed this response of yours earlier.

In your first sentence you seem to suggest that belief is, or at least can be, knowledge. I can see a sense in which belief might be thought to be a kind of knowledge: our beliefs constitute lenses through which we experience and understand, that is, know, the world. But that is the knowing of acquaintance, familiarity, not the kind of propositional knowing I had in mind when I asked the question.

It's not clear to me on what basis you think the noumenon-phenomenon "problem" is equivalent to the "mind/ body problem". For me the former just represents the limits of our knowledge and as such is not a problem, but a demarcation or delimitation.

The absolute nature of things is an intractable mystery in one sense, but in another it can simply be seen to be closed to us as a matter of definition: that is that we cannot by mere definition see beyond our perceptions, experience and the judgements that evolve out of those. Anything that we project into that "absolute" space must be confabulation.

"The simple truths of the material world" and "the quantum and the cosmic" are all of them firmly in the domain of the empirical and the logical; they cannot transport us beyond the realm of our own experience and imagination.

Of course we can, via imagination and dialectical reasoning, conceive of matter and spirit in various ways, but none of that constitutes intersubjectively decidable knowledge.

Probably everything above is nonsense and I look forward to being told why — AmadeusD

Said the flypaper to the fly.

You must take us to be fools! :rofl:

If I don't have certainty of my own experience I can't very well have certainty about anything else, since anything else will always be an aspect of that experience. — Pantagruel

It depends on what you mean by "being certain of my own experience". Perhaps there is no absolute certainty anywhere to be found, but you can be certain as you can be that you are looking at a tree if you are looking at a tree, or that 2+2=4, and a plethora of things that are usually classed as "general knowledge:".

As far as being "reliably trained," you oversimplify. Not everyone can be reliably trained, it requires at least some aptitude — Pantagruel

I assumed that it would be taken as read that aptitude would be required.

Conversely, for people with the appropriate aptitude, the contention is that they are being educated with spiritual knowledge, whose broadened awareness is the practical result. Knowledge of the human spirit evolves right along with civilization. Some people even think that is what civilization is. Hegel, to name one. As well as the hordes who have tried to follow in his footsteps. — Pantagruel

What is spiritual knowledge though, beyond being in an altered state of conscious or "broadened awareness"? What facts or metaphysical truths can it guarantee? If you think there are such facts or truths, how does it guarantee them? That "some people" think or "Hegel" thinks something is no guarantee of its truth, is it? How could it be?

Sure, things that are trivially true are usually trivially evident. But some things are not trivially evident. And to people who lack the ability to comprehend the basis of organic chemistry, for example, there is a whole lot of determinate knowledge that is not clear. — Pantagruel

People can be reliably trained in chemistry and other scientific disciplines, such that things will be evident to them. This is not so in music, art, poetry or mysticism: people cannot be reliably trained to be able to alter their consciousness to achieve excellence in these fields. They can be reliably trained to understand the techniques involved in any discipline, but this does not guarantee success, even in mathematics and science there is a creative aspect that cannot be taught but is down to personal talent.

I assume that you are classifying privileged internal mental states as empirical observations then, since I know and experience the truth of my own experiences. — Pantagruel

You may or may not know "the truth of your own experiences" whatever that might mean. Assuming for the sake of argument that you do know, the point is that you are the only one, so such knowledge can never be intersubjectively corroborated.

Tell me this is not a factor in these discussions. :lol: — Wayfarer

You obviously think it is a factor. This is one of the quotes you regularly post. I don't agree with that passage: I am not afraid of religion. I would not want there to be a god of the kind present in the OT. I am not afraid of eternal life; an eternal life of bliss and constant learning would be great as far as I am concerned. I am not afraid of heaven; reuniting with my loved ones in eternity would also be great. Obviously, I don't long for Hell, but I am not afraid of it because I have no reason to believe it is real. So, it is not a factor for me, at least, and I am not going to do a Nagel and speak for others.

Nagel doesn't specify what kind of God he does not want to exist. And he is unwarrantedly projecting his own psychology to others.

purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. — Thomas Nagel

How can they be fundamental features of the world when there is no evidence that they are? Christians think there is a fundamental purpose, meaning and design, Buddhists not so much, as far as I understand it. People can for sure believe there is a fundamental purpose, but this is, as the name suggests, fundamentalism, one of the greatest curses humankind has brought upon itself or had brought upon it by authorities wishing to control the masses.

Of course, both human and animal life are replete with purpose meaning and design, but these purposes, meanings and designs are as diverse as the animals and humans who have and exemplify them.

Do not agree. If you replace 'assumption' with 'inference' then, yes, that is where i stand. I think this is where science actually stands. I do not think 'evidence for evolution' is the factual, undebatable schema it is claimed to be outside its competition with other theories — AmadeusD

I am not aware of any competing theories. And as I have already acknowledged scientific theories are never proven; it is always the case that they may be wrong.

I'll repeat this once more because I don't think you have grasped it: the distinction between the things in themselves and phenomenal objects is not meant to be a claim that there are two worlds: the world for us and the world in itself.

If we are affected by things via the senses, then in that connection we have access to them. We know how they appear to us. The dialectical development of that realization is to say that while we know, that is have access, to things as they appear to us, we do not know, and do not have access to what and how they are in themselves. It's really not that hard to understand.

In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the outrage I provoke in the advocacy of philosophical idealism. — Wayfarer

Humility or no humility, you really are deluded it seems; in that you apparently can't but interpret mere disagreement as outrage.

Exactly where that line gets drawn that you call "determinate knowledge" is a function of innate ability, expertise, and experience. — Pantagruel

I think it is fairly clear what is determinate knowledge and what is not. Scientific hypotheses or theories in general are never definitively proven or certainly known to be true, the observed phenomena they predict that may warrant their veracity can certainly be confirmed or disconfirmed. Only basic empirical observations and mathematical and logical truths are known to be true.

Is String Theory a scientific theory or a metaphysical speculation? That is a different question, and I don't know the answer to that. Apparently, String Theory is woven out of some very elegant mathematics; whereas what we usually term 'metaphysical speculations" are not, so does that tell us anything about ST? Maybe, I'm not mathematician, so I don't have an opinion about it.

The same goes for DM and DE. Current astrophysical theory suggest that they exist, but of course it could be wrong due to some factor(s) that are not currently known. Science doesn't yield absolute truths, and nor does it purport to; it is always and only ever a work in progress.

Experiencing altered or heightened states of consciousness is of course possible, and I know that from my own ample stock of such experiences. The point about these states is that they do not yield determinate knowledge of anything, unlike empirical investigations and logic/ mathematics.

The ability to bring about such states is akin to expertise in music, art or poetry, and what is known is akin to aesthetics, not science or logic. So, to go back to previous examples I have given, the existence of God, karma, immortality, heaven and hell and so on cannot be demonstrated in any way analogous to how scientific knowledge and mathematical truths can. Similarly, aesthetic quality, beauty and sublimity cannot be demonstrated, they can only be felt or not.

Getting this clear is important because failing to understand the difference between determinable knowledge and intuitive feelings and faith leads to the possibility of fundamentalism and abuses of the gullible by those who seek to deceive for gain, or those who deceive themselves into believing they have some kind of special access to transcendent absolute truths or ultimate knowledge to offer.

I'd be surprised if most scientists did not believe that the universe existed before humans appeared on the scene.

Convenient cop out...why did you bother to respond to my post in the first place if that's the way you feel? I think you are either trying to deceive me or deceiving yourself, because you are loath to admit that you have no argument, but it's not my problem anyway, so...

one as consciousness does not perceive owns own consciousness. — javra

"One as consciousness"? One is not consciousness; one is either conscious or not, and one can indeed perceive that one is conscious when one is conscious. I know I can, although I suppose I cannot speak for you.

You sound victimized. Let's refresh. — javra

More projection—I don't feel victimized at all because I am not subject to your prescriptions or proscriptions, even though it seems you would have me be so. You were erroneously making out that I am seeking to dictate what others should think, rather than recognizing that I am merely exercising my right to question and critique what others are asserting and asking for arguments to back up those assertions. If you don't want to play you don't have to—I don't mind either way.

You view this as "an argument for what you believe" whereas to me it is nothing more and nothing less than an emotively expressed authoritarian assertion: one which wants to disallow me from thinking freely. — javra

That's nonsense—I don't care what you think, but if you present thoughts on here, then I think it is fair to ask for justification of those thoughts. So, if you think we can know something about whatever lies beyond being, then explain how we might do that. I'm asking because I can't see any way to do that, and if you can't explain how you could do that then I will continue to believe that you are either bluffing or simply deceiving yourself if you continue to assert that such a thing is possible..

What I quoted was not an argument, but an angry denunciation. — Wayfarer

Bullshit, more projection, I felt no anger when I wrote it—it simply presented my thoughts on the matter.

Again, you're just singing from the positivist playbook — Wayfarer

:lol: It would be laughable if it wasn't so lame—instead of argument you seek to dismiss what I say by characterizing it as being representative of one of your bogeymen. I don't agree with the positivists regarding verification, nor do I think that speculative metaphysics is worthless.

Even if what I've been arguing was an example of positivist thinking, so what? If you disagree with it you still need to provide some argument for your disagreement if you want what you are doing here to be more than merely expressing your opinion or presenting your favorite passages which are themselves nothing more than mere assertions. When are you finally going to come up with an actual argument?

If you lived in a culture, such as India or China, where reincarnation was part of the culture, you might have a different view of that. And I suggest you're not interested in any 'coherent philosophical investigation' of such matters because you're pre-disposed to reject consideration of them. Hence your self-appointed role as secular thought police, which we see on display here with tiresome regulariy. — Wayfarer

Thought police! A nice case of projection! What a joke; it is you who are saying I am not allowed to argue for what I believe to be the case, so who's the thought policeman? :roll:

The truth of spiritual ideas cannot be either empirically or logically demonstrated and hence cannot be rationally argued for. The arguments are always in the form of authority, the idea that there is some special hidden knowledge available only to the elect.

If you have an actual argument that could demonstrate the contrary, I'm all ears; but you always run away when I challenge you, which makes it plain that you have no such argument. Your modus operandi is to act as the pedagogue quoting the same tedious passages over and over as If they are somehow authoritative. Your whole mode of thinking seems to be mired in notions of authority.

I have been thinking about these issues since I was about sixteen, and for some time I thought as you do, until I found that I could see no cogent ground for such thinking to stand upon. That religious thinking has no ground is my honest, considered opinion after a very long time of reading and thinking about these kinds of issues. And here you are trying to cast me as a thought policeman instead of engaging in any actual discussion of what I actually say. It seems to be a typical reaction of the defensive, of those who feel they have a position to protect but lack the means to rationally justify it. I'm happy to be proven wrong, so go ahead and do so, if you can.

So, again, please demonstrate how, as you claim, 'the established facts of evolution and cosmology are as "equally compatible" with idealism (i.e. antirealism) as with physicalism'. — 180 Proof

:up: Don't hold your breath: Wayfarer seems to be here to issue dispensations of authority, and confirm his own biases, not to question and subject his beliefs to the rigors of argument.

:up: I have no issue with philosophical poetry; insights do not always come in the form of rational arguments. I think those kinds of poetic philosophical insights speak more to the human condition, to the limitations of human knowledge than to anything determinate or transcendent.

Those who believe in esoteric or hidden knowledge don't want to accept this limitation. I see all attempts to argue for substantive gnosis as being stillborn from the start, as being examples of the human tendency to confabulate on the basis of what is wished for. I think the spiritual leader or guru phenomenon has been with humans all along, and that it consists in charismatic individuals convincing themselves and others that they have some special knowledge of the unknowable.

That said I have no doubt there have been good teachers of techniques designed to help in loosening the bonds of the ego and the miseries attendant upon clinging to ideas of the importance of the self, but those teachings are entirely pragmatic, this-worldly, more to do with ethics than with metaphysics.

This is not to say that certain metaphysical ideas have not gone along with such self-transformative schools and practices, but they are merely aids to practice, and do not ever constitute any determinate knowledge of any transcendent truth. Such ideas vary enormously from school to school, and I guess these differences reflect the dominant cultural worldviews in different eras and societies.

As just one example among many, consciousness is "something outside the range of human perception". Yet to proscribe philosophical investigations of consciousness seems a bit authoritarian. — javra

I don't think consciousness is outside the range of human perception; you perceive yourself to be conscious, no? Note, I count proprioception, somatosensory awareness and self-reflection as forms of perception...what else could they be?

What then do you make of value theory in general? Ought it not be philosophically investigated? Meaningful tests regarding, for example, the very validity of dichotomizing intrinsic and extrinsic value are certainly not yet available, if ever possible. Does this, according to you, make the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value something that "cannot coherently function as a claim"? — javra

Humans have values; there is no conceivable way of determining the existence of value outside of the human realm. The closest we could come to that would be understanding purpose in animals. Human valuing is intrinsic to humans, or rather I would say the pragmatic necessities that drive value-forming are intrinsic (in the sense of being necessary) to human social life.

Sure, we can investigate philosophically the human phenomenon of value-formation; this would be an aspect of phenomenological and/ pr anthropological inquiry.

Critique regarding what should and should not be philosophically investigated — javra

Am I not allowed to argue for what I believe can and cannot be coherently philosophically investigated? I don't believe things like God, karma, rebirth, heaven and hell can be coherently philosophically investigated on account of the fact that I have never encountered any coherent philosophical investigation of such matters, I have only encountered dogma regarding those and like subjects. And believe me, I have looked long and hard. I am not alone in this assessment: "that whereof we cannot speak,,,"

That said of course the human phenomenology of belief in such things can also be investigated, but this is not the same as investigating the things believed in.

Though we disagree in some respects, ↪Fooloso4 beat me to it in the example he provided to the contrary. — javra

I read what @Fooloso4 wrote and did not interpret what he said as being contrary to my position on this.

BTW, if you tack on questions to me after you've made a post, I might not see them. But maybe you already knew this? — javra

I don't understand what you are saying here. My questions were in the post. As to the quote from Plato, It is fragmented and out of context (from Wikipedia) so I don't want to comment on it.

And how are any of the examples you've given "beyond human judgement"? Plenty of people judge these notions all the time. Some favoring these notions and others opposing their validity. — javra

"Beyond human judgement", as I use it, means beyond decidable judgement. Of course, people may have opinions, but those opinions cannot be informed opinions if what they are about is something outside the range of human perception.

Many who will uphold religions and essoterica will of course disagree with the dogma that they are "arbitrary imaginings". You seem to have some superior knowledge to the contrary. Care to share? — javra

As implied above, I count them as arbitrary imaginings if they do not refer to anything intersubjectively corroborable. So, it is not dogma, but presents a valid distinction between what can be tested and what cannot. And no, I have not said that ideas that cannot be tested have no value, but that they cannot coherently function as claims if there is no way to for the unbiased to assess their veracity.

I'm against any proscription of thought regarding reality. Hope that's blunt enough. The thought-police ought not prevent others from thinking freely as they will. As far as I see things, the ideas which result thereof can then be in part judged by natural selection. — javra

Where are the thought police? All I'm seeing is critique, not suppression.

Yea. Any suppression of free thought regarding any existential topic will serve as an example of "unjustifiabley proscriptive". Scary to me to think otherwise. But repressive regimes are not unheard of. — javra

Again, where is the "suppression" you speak of? Is disagreement and critique not allowed in your ideal world?

Dude, knowledge of what a sublimely aesthetic experience is felt to be shall often enough be ineffable ... other than by saying something like "the beauty of that there is beyond words".

But that aside, why should attempts at effing the heretofore ineffable be off limits? — javra

"Effing the ineffable" is the job of art and poetry, not rigorous philosophical discussion. Poetry may be evocative, but it presents no arguments. That which cannot be tested empirically or justified logically is outside the scope of rational argument. That doesn't mean it has no value, so don't mistake me for saying that.

I agree and very well said.

:up:

Given an example of such "necessary ignorance" which should remain off limits to investigation? — javra

Anything that is beyond human perception and judgement...that is anything purportedly "beyond being" or transcendent...God, rebirth, karma, heaven, hell...need I go on.

Ha. Scientific hypothesis are "made up shit in the face of the unknown" which can be empirically tested for. — javra

Scientific hypotheses are not arbitrary imaginings but are abductive inferences as to what, consistent with the overall body of canonical human experience and judgement, might be the explanation for this or that observed phenomenon. This is an entirely different kettle of fish to religious dogma or esoterica.

See my first question. If we are necessarily ignorant of X than there is an implicitly affirmed proscription of thought, debate, and investigation as pertains to X. — javra

OK, now you seem to be speaking as though that proscription is a right and good thing. I had thought you were railing against it. So, which is it?

Funny. All I have are opinions of various strengths, some of which pass a threshold beyond which I term these opinions fallible knowledge — javra

I meant an example of someone being unjustifiably proscriptive as to what others are allowed to think.

Where have I affirmed "ineffable knowledge" in any of this debate? — javra

I haven't said you affirmed any ineffable knowledge...I mean, how could you? But some do affirm that those who are thought (by themselves and others) to be enlightened are capable of ineffable knowledge. So, I am trying to understand whether you are one of those who affirm such things. The other question, even if you do affirm such a possibility, is whether you think it can be part of philosophical discussion.

The esoterica of the gaps.... — Tom Storm

I like it!