I'd be interested in seeing someone try to crystallize what this looks like in practice. Whenever I read Tillich or others, the reasoning seems diffuse and it's difficult for me to get any traction on it. — Tom Storm

I read The Courage to Be about 40 years ago and i remember getting something out of it. As you probably know I am an atheist (in the soft sense of lacking belief in God as traditionally understood; i.e. the 3 Omni divinity). Anyway with all the theological discussion lately I thought I'd return to Tillich to see if I can glean any new understanding.

I'm just beginning on the project, so I can't say anything much as yet, except to say that it seems Tillich thinks of God as being inextricably bound up with mystical and religious human experience. I'm not sure if he thinks any definitive claim about the nature of God can be justified on the basis of human reports of religious and mystical experiences. I mean how would we know whether it was not rather an aspect of the nature of the human that is being revealed in such experiences?

This post seems to highlight the various ways of "understanding" the world : a> Science, in terms of objective matter, and b> Theology, in terms of unknowable divinity, and c> Secular Philosophy, in terms of direct human experience. — Gnomon

An unknowable divinity would seem to be useless to us. I don't believe religious folk are looking for an unknowable divinity―that would indeed be a performative contradiction. It seems to me the only place God is to be found is within. What 'God' means in this context is totally ambiguous―it depends on the person as to what 'God' means to them.

I find this passage from the introduction to Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology Volume 1 quite apt:

Attempts to elaborate a theology as an empirical-inductive or a meta physical deductive "science," or as a combination of both, have given ample evidence that no such an attempt can succeed. In every assumedly scientific theology there is a point where individual experience, traditional valuation, and personal commitment must decide the issue.

This point, often hidden to the authors of such theologies, is obvious to those who look at them with other experiences and other commitments. If an inductive approach is employed, one must ask in what direction the writer looks for his material. And if the answer is that he looks in every direction and toward every experience, one must ask what characteristic of reality or experience is the empirical basis of his theology. Whatever the answer may be, an a priori of experience and valuation is implied.

The same is true of a deductive approach, as developed in classical idealism. The ultimate principles in idealist theology are rational expressions of an ultimate concern; like all metaphysical ultimates, they are religious ultimates at the same time. A theology derived from them is determined
by the hidden theology implied in them. In both the empirical and the metaphysical approaches, as well as in the much more numerous cases of their mixture, it can be observed that the a priori which directs the induction and the deduction is a type of mystical experience. Whether it is "being-itself" (Scholastics) or the "universal substance" (Spinoza), whether it is "beyond subjectivity and objectivity" (James) or the "identity of spirit and nature" (Schelling), whether it is "universe" (Schleiermacher) or "cosmic whole" (Hocking), whether it is "value creating process" (Whitehead) or "progressive integration" (Wieman), whether it is "absolute spirit" (Hegel) or "cosmic person" (Brightman)-each of these concepts is based on an immediate experience of something ultimate in value and being of which one can become intuitively aware.

Idealism and naturalism differ very little in their starting point when they develop theological concepts. Both are dependent on a point of identity between the experiencing subject and the ultimate which appears in religious experience or in the experience of the world as "religious." The theological concepts of both idealists and naturalists are rooted in a "mystical a priori," an awareness of something that transcends the cleavage between subject and object. And if in the course of a "scientific" procedure this a priori is discovered, its discovery is possible only because it was present from the very beginning.
This is the circle which no religious philosopher can escape. And it is by no means a vicious one. Every understanding of spiritual things (Geisteswissenschaft) is circular.

But perhaps we can agree that it neatly explains why science and religion cannot conflict, doesn't it? I'm happy with that conclusion, and it seems that many people feel the same way, because they are both believers in a religion (ideology) and pursue science. — Ludwig V

Yes, I see no reason why science and religion must conflict. The important point for me is intellectual honesty on both sides. Science cannot answer all questions about human life because many of the questions most important to us cannot avail themselves of strictly empirical means to drive knowledge.

I have referred to phenomenology, analytic philosophy and philosophy of language as "quasi-empirical" in that they reflect, within their specific spheres of interest, on human experience in general and attempt to abstract its most general and necessary characteristics. The results cannot be as rigorously intersubjectively corroborated as the results of the natural sciences can.

It seems to me that when it comes to metaphysical speculation and mystical or religious experience it becomes an even more personal matter. I have my own metaphysical and mystical leanings, but I see them as matters of taste just as aesthetic judgements are. Many religionists and religious philosophers do not seem to be satisfied with this conclusion and yet they seem to be unable to argue cogently for their objections.

I doubt that there could be strictly empirical evidence to guide us in answering these questions, because the decisions in question will affect how we interpret our experiences. But there is a common denominator - whether we can make our way through ordinary life without causing undue mayhem or causing our own misery and death. — Ludwig V

Right, it comes down to the old maxim "you cannot derive an ought from an is". Empirical evidence shows us in ways that cannot be unbiasedly denied how things are (and I mean here how they are as they present to us, not in any fabulous absolute sense), but it cannot show us how they ought to be.

Well, I don’t understand it, so there’s that. :razz: Logical fallacies aside, I suppose my intuition is that we understand some things. We’ve learned to make things work; we’ve developed remarkably effective models, tools, and narratives to account for what we observe. But does that amount to genuine understanding? — Tom Storm

I'm making a modest claim that events make sense to us―that they are intelligible within the general frame of causation. What more could we expect? The question as to why things are the way they appear seems to be either a scientific question to be investigated under the scientific rubric of causes and conditions or else unanswerable, unless you count flights of imaginative intuition answers. And even in the latter case such answers can be in turn questioned as to why the conditions they paint are the way they are.

I hear you. There are still many unanswered questions that I’m unsure how certain we can really be about what we call scientific knowledge. We don’t know precisely what consciousness is, why there is something rather than nothing, or what the ultimate nature of reality is. We also don’t fully understand how life first began, or what dark matter and dark energy actually are. Science has achieved a lot, but it still leaves many of the deepest questions unresolved. That makes me cautious about treating scientific knowledge as the final word on reality. — Tom Storm

I think there are far more answered questions in science than unanswered ones. And expecting science to answer "ultimate" questions seems to be unreasonable. There are no definitive answers to such questions, and it even appears likely that there could be no definitive answers to such questions. Maybe such questions are the result of "language on holiday".

As to so-called "dark matter" and "dark energy" science may be able to say what they are at some time in the future, who knows? Or the theoretical need for them may be dissolved.

Science would seem to be the only game in town when it comes to understanding how things work. "The final word on reality" may simply be a malformed, misplaced idea.

Are there many serious people who would make such a claim? The main conceit of science seems to be the idea that the world is understandable, which is a metaphysical position. — Tom Storm

The world as it appears to us is obviously understandable. That is not so much a conceit of science as a fact of human life and science. When it comes to the understanding of the world based on observations in physics and chemistry (and forgetting about unanswerable questions such as, for example, why the elements combine invariantly in the ways they do as formulated as the Periodic Table) does it really seem plausible that all that could somehow turn out to be wrong?

Scientific theories may turn out to be wrong, but observations? Take evolution―it seems unarguable that evolution has occurred, so it would seem that what might be revisable are only the particular details―descriptions and explanations of the processes of evolution.

People often say that the history of science shows that all our current scientific theories will most likely turn out to be wrong. Counter to that, it is a well-accepted fact that past events are not a good guide to future events, from which it follows that that is an underdetermined conjecture.

I wonder whether anyone can come up with a good example of a past understanding which has been completely overturned. The idea of a flat earth that is the centre of the cosmos would seem to be the paradigm example, but that view was based on inadequate capacity for observation, and was later corrected by more sophisticated observations, which were themselves enabled by technological advances based on science.

I came across this interesting passage regarding the nature of faith, in a Wikipedia entry about Paul Tillich:

Faith as ultimate concern
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Tillich believes the essence of religious attitudes is what he calls "ultimate concern". Separate from all profane and ordinary realities, the object of the concern is understood as sacred, numinous or holy. The perception of its reality is felt as so overwhelming and valuable that all else seems insignificant, and for this reason requires total surrender.[80] In 1957, Tillich defined his conception of faith more explicitly in his work, Dynamics of Faith.

Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence … If [a situation or concern] claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim … it demands that all other concerns … be sacrificed.[81]

Tillich further refined his conception of faith by stating that, "Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It is the most centered act of the human mind ... it participates in the dynamics of personal life."[82]

An arguably central component of Tillich's concept of faith is his notion that faith is "ecstatic". That is to say:

It transcends both the drives of the nonrational unconsciousness and the structures of the rational conscious … the ecstatic character of faith does not exclude its rational character although it is not identical with it, and it includes nonrational strivings without being identical with them. 'Ecstasy' means 'standing outside of oneself' – without ceasing to be oneself – with all the elements which are united in the personal center.[83]

In short, for Tillich, faith does not stand opposed to rational or nonrational elements (reason and emotion respectively), as some philosophers would maintain. Rather, it transcends them in an ecstatic passion for the ultimate.[84]

It should also be noted that Tillich does not exclude atheists in his exposition of faith. Everyone has an ultimate concern, and this concern can be in an act of faith, "even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God"[85]

It seems to me that the "ultimate concern" of any life governed by self-reflection is the basic ethical question "how should I Iive?" Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question?

It seems obvious that there is a difference between a person who can act on their knowledge and the person who cannot. The salient question would seem to be whether the difference is on account of some external constraint or not. What other kind of constraint could there be on a person who knew something and yet was unable to act on that knowledge?

Personal experience and cultural mediation are the basis for all beliefs, aren't they? So why do you distinguish between false religious beliefs and true beliefs, as, for example, in science. There must be an additional element that isn't taken account of in this model. — Ludwig V

Science begins with everyday observations about which we could all agree. Observations can be accurate or inaccurate, so science is correctable. Religious beliefs are not like this―because their correctness or incorrectness cannot be demonstrated.

Science begins by examining things as they present to us. The basic appearance of things in our environments is not culturally mediated, and they are present to all in a shared context so it is not a matter of merely personal experience, as it is with religious experiences.

Well, I would debate some of that, but the outline is clear. The relevant question is what do you mean by saying that induction "works" and "successful"? I would be inclined to take that as some kind of pragmatism. (?) — Ludwig V

Science which is based on inductive reasoning has evolved into an immensely complex and coherent body of understanding, a cohesive picture of the nature of the world which has produced a great many effective technologies.

What can be said is a start. What can be shown might be more important. That's part of what is problematic about mysticism. If it is showing stuff rather than saying stuff, it's not actually false. But when it says stuff, it is almost invariably false. — Banno

When it says stuff is it false or merely inapt?

I still prefer "How do we use the word real?" — Banno

The word is used in many ways obviously. Usage presumably cannot determine whether something is real, but rather whether it should be counted as real. A theist might say "God is real", does it follow that God might be counted as real, as opposed to, say, imaginary?

If the whole ambit of philosophy is human experience and judgement then is it not always a matter of "what can (coherently and consistently) be said? So, the Op question reframed would be not "how do we know what is real?" but "how do we decide what counts as real?"

I see you are taking the epistemological actuality of our predictive limitations as a guide for your disbelief in determinism. I, on the other hand, take those limitations to be, given what we do think we know about things, inevitable.

But since the truth or falsity of determinism is epistemically unobtainable I prefer to reserve judgement, while noting that most things in the world of physical processes are very successfully modeled in deterministically causal terms. Which means I lean towards determinism, and tend to view the idea of libertarian freedom as a fantasy.

That said, disagreement is not a negative in my view, and I can understand why you think as you do, without feeling inclined to follow that path of thought myself.

To my mind that begins to look like a ghost -- we can explain it, but we can't say it's certainly the case.

For instance -- Spinoza has an explanation for determinism, but another explanation for thinking we are free is we're born free and so know it as well as we know our bodies, and we can't predict everything because some events are connected by chance rather than necessity. — Moliere

Insofar as we are able to understand them events on the macro-level do not seem to be connected by chance. Events on the micro-level may be or it m ay just be that we cannot grok them in our coarse-grained macro outlook.

To be sure we can't know whether one or the other explanation is certainly the case, but in the final analysis that seems to be the case with most everything in human life.

But it wasn't intended as an empirical theory. It was intended as principle which was to be used to identify what was or was not in principle an empirical theory. — Wayfarer

And the same can be said of the verification principle. Anyway you failed to notice my point that reflection on and analysis of human experience and our ways of knowing and judging are quasi-empirical investigations, as with phenomenology.

You also failed to notice the point that it is not all about theory it is also about observation. Observation reports are both verifiable and falsifiable. The thesis "there are no black swans" is not verifiable, obviously, but it is falsifiable. On the other hand the thesis "there are black swans" is verifiable but not falsifiable.

And if Hume is right, while true that it's paradigmatic, it's also just a habit unjustified by logic. — Moliere

Yes, not strictly justified by logic, since there is no logical necessity that events must have causes, or that particular causes or conditions must of logical necessity give rise to particular effects.

So, it's not a matter of pure reason supporting the idea of causation, but of practical reason giving us good reason (it almost always works) to think causally. In fact it seems arguable that there is no other way to understand physical phenomena. The whole of science is based on the idea of energy doing work, and causation is understood not merely as Humean "constant conjunction" but as 'energy exchange'.

I'm more tempted to inverse this -- How can we believe in universal causation (determinism) when we know we are free and can't predict everything? — Moliere

Sure you can invert it. I think we believe in universal causation because that seems to be what we observe everywhere, and we also have coherent understandings of why we think we are free (because we cannot be aware of all the forces acting on us, as Spinoza noted) and why we cannot predict everything (because very slight variations in initial conditions amplify to create great differences in outcomes when it comes to the complex systems whose behavior we are not so good at predicting).

That is, if you can show how psychological or economic models (for example) fail to offer consistently, predictable results, then that counts for me as a substantive blow against positivism as opposed to just an analytic attack on the self consistency of the theory. — Hanover

The thing is that the positivist conclusion comes form reflection on human experience, knowledge and judgement, so it is , like phenomenology, not strictly empirical.

So, claiming it is a performative contradiction is lacking a bit of nuance. By the same strict argument Popper's idea of falsifiability eliminates itself, since it is not itself strictly falsifiable.

Reflecting on our experience, though, we can see that there is much in human life in the way of simple claims about what is the case that are indeed verifiable by observation. It is more relevant to theories than it is to basic observations, to say that they cannot be definitively verified. It is also arguable as to whether theories can be definitively falsified.

Sometimes. And sometimes it's given "the shrug" -- "Idk, because there are too many possible causes" — Moliere

Right―too many possible causes. Don't anomalies that are not understood invite investigation in terms of causal thinking? I'm finding it hard to think of examples of such anomalies.

But every once and again they are discoveries, so unexpected consequences that teach us something. — Moliere

That seems right. So we investigate the causes of anomalies, and once they are understood they are no longer anomalies, and we go back to finding predictable results, until the next set of unforeseen unusual conditions comes along.

It seems that, except when it comes to human and some animal behavior, causation is the paradigmatic mode of thought. With animals and humans thinking in terms of causality may be supplanted by thinking in terms of intentionality.

The puzzle there is how intentions which are themselves understood to be the outcome of brain processes, and which are themselves outside of the animal or human ambit of awareness, can really be free of causation.

Much of the time they do -- but not always always. That's why it's still a science. We get it wrong sometimes, in the details. — Moliere

When they do not behave in the way we have predicted is it not due to unforeseen conditions which when discovered causally explain the anomaly?

So if I flip a quarter then 50% Heads 50% Tails. — Moliere

Over a very long series of throws we will tend to get a 50/50 distribution of outcomes, but i see that as an observation not a causal explanation. A causal explanation might tell us why we get that 50/50 distribution.

Can you give an example of a stochastic cause?

Maybe it's a professional hazard, but "invariance" is not what I see in chemistry or electrical explanation. — Moliere

So chemical elements do not always combine in predictable ways? In the absence of understandable faults and unusual conditions electrical and electronic components don't always function as predicted?

What reason? — Moliere

The observed invariance of chemical and electrical processes, which are what constitute everything we observe.

I'm still thinking that if we accept determinism then the PSR is easy to establish, but cuz of stochastic events the reverse does not hold cuz we can explain events stochastically. — Moliere

We explain events causally not stochasitically.

Genes and the pachinko machine appear stochastic, as does the coin toss, but I think we have reason to believe they are not really stochastic, and merely appear so to us due to our inability to model all the conditions in play.

Actually the question in the OP was whether the idea of the PSR is inextricably bound to the idea of determinism . The OP specifically stated that the concern is not with the truth of the PSR and determinism.

It depends what you mean by observation. I don't want to over-generalize, but many religious people do claim that their faith is based on experience. Some of it is mystical, some not. Religions are a way of life, a practice based on a way of looking at - interpreting - the world. So they govern how experience is interpreted. That's partly why arguing as if the questions were simply empirical is a waste of time. — Ludwig V

Right, religious faith is based on personal experience and culturally mediated interpretation of that experience. My whole argument is that personal experience and cultural mediation are relativistic and so do not constitute good evidence for the truth of propositional beliefs, although of course they do motivate and condition beliefs.

The cognitive content of emotions is fundamental to all emotion, not just religious emotion. — Ludwig V

Of course it would be foolish to disagree with that.

In one way, of course, you are right. But there are descriptions and images of hell in plenty, and they are drawn from experience. As for God, the ideas about God do seem to me to be drawn from experience. God as Lord and Master, God as Father (or Mother). Your criterion of coherence seems to me to be unduly restrictive. The idea of a unicorn or dragon, or even of heaven and hell may nor may not be coherent in some sense. But there is sufficient coherence to enable people to react to them emotionally. — Ludwig V

Right, all our descriptions and images of hell and gods are drawn for experience in the sense that they are cobbled together from images and associations gleaned form everyday experience. When I say they are no coherent or cogent I mean that they are fictions, since we can have no idea whet the real hell or god looks like, even assuming that they existed.

To be sure, authority can be, often is, wrong. But much, or most, of what we know is based on it. I feel a bit like Hume recognizing that induction doesn't provide a sound basis for knowledge and recognizing that we are going to continue to use it anyway. — Ludwig V

I think Hume was merely pointing out that inductive reasoning is not like deductive reasoning in that conclusions necessarily follow from premises in the latter, but not the former. We have good reason to trust inductive reasoning because it works almost all of the time and we have a vast, exceedingly successful and coherent body of knowledge based on it.

The determinism we witness in our macro-world may well be the result of stochastic processes at the quantum level, or what appears stochastic to us may appear so on account of our limited knowledge. Does it really matter?

So why believe it? — Moliere

We live in a world of process, where all kinds of processes seem to invariantly give rise to other processes. We actually don't know of exceptions, so why not believe in it?

Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply determinism? — flannel jesus

If the PSR is interpreted to state that every event must have a cause, then it would seem that the PSR does imply determinism. Is that how you are interpreting it?

I'm afraid I was not very clear here. My immediate point was that dialogue between believers and non-believers cannot take place, or cannot take place productively, if each side digs in to its own position and exchanges arguments in the way that has become traditional in modern times. — Ludwig V

I don't know what a productive discussion between religionists and secularists could look like. My only aim is to get a clear idea of what kinds of things we can know we have good reason to believe and what we cannot know we have good reason to believe but may believe simply on the basis of faith.

The difficulty for some religionists is that they don't seem to want to acknowledge the obvious―that there can be no substantive evidence for belief in the existence of what cannot, even in principle, be observed.

So, I have no argument with believing just on the basis of faith (or feeling, or intuition) ―and the best outcome I can imagine in a dialogue between religionists and secularists would be agreement on the
epistemology.

Perhaps the weakest link (although it may seem entirely normal to many philosophers) your move from "without determinable content" through "without conceptual content" to "may have affective content". — Ludwig V

Perhaps I should have said 'without coherent conceptual content". Anyway you haven't explained as to what you think are the weaknesses in the argument. I think what you offer below is something of a strawman.

Fear of COVD, for example, is a reaction to various facts/truths about COVID; it is a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive content (which rests on values or needs). More than that, fear is more than a matter of feelings, but is about certain kinds of behavior - it is about how one reacts to the facts. So I do not see why affective content does not count as determinable content or even as conceptual content? The existence of some god is not just a neutral fact, but requires a reaction. For those reasons, I'm afraid I can't attribute any content to the "feeling of believing". — Ludwig V

Covid is a bad analogy because it is something real that could kill you. Take as example fear of eternal suffering in hell―the content there is based on ideas which cannot be distinguished from fiction, because we have no way of deciding rationally whether hell exists or not. So, to be sure the fear has conceptual content, but there is no coherent concept, in the sense of something drawn from actual experience, of what hell could be. Same obviously applies to God.

The phrase "beliefs determined by faith" sounds as if faith is somethiing separate from belief, but surely what you mean is (roughly) "beliefs not determined by evidence"? I would agree that there is a spectrum there, from conclusive evidence through partial evidence. I think that beliefs based on authority are diffeerent in kind. In a sense, of course, authority can be regarded as a kind of evidence, but it is a rather different kind of evidence - being, as it were, evidence that the source is trustworthy. — Ludwig V

By 'faith" I mean 'feeling'. I can believe something simply because "it feels right" or "it rings true". That is what I think faith is.

I don't think authority is good evidence for the existence of anything unless it is based on sound observations. Scripture and the church tell us that God really exists, but that telling cannot be good evidence because people saying something about something they cannot know cannot count as evidence in the way people saying something about something they can know does.

Surely, philosophy does require that the questions whether God exists or Religion is a Force of Good need to be suspended. I don't mean that actual scepticism is required. I understand that the Buddha said that the question of the existence of the gods is "undetermined". That seems to me the only possible basis for anything that might count as a philosophical discussion. — Ludwig V

Right, the unseeable is totally indeterminable. So, believing in the unseeable is believing in the indeterminable, which means the belief itself is without determinable content, which is really the same as saying that it is without conceptual content, but may have affective content, which is to say it is nothing other than feeling. So believing in the indeterminable is merely the feeling of believing.

faith is evidence based knowledge
— Janus
I can't see that, in the context of philosophical discussion, there is any clear meaning attached to this slogan. I really don't know where to begin with it. It seems pretty clear, though, that faith is not simply evidence-based knowledge. If it were, there would be no particular philosophical interest in discussing it. — Ludwig V

If you look again at the context "faith is evidence based knowledge" you will see that I was not agreeing with that, but disagreeing with it. I see beliefs determined by evidence and beliefs determined by faith (or feeling in other words) as being on a continuum, with beliefs about the unseeable as being entirely lacking substantive evidence unless they are determined by inference from what is seeable, in which case they might be classed as somewhat evidence based, but in that case the evidence/ belief relation is not clearly determinable, and the games of habit and plausibility come into play.

You don't defend your views with argument, rather you quote those you consider authorities, constantly presenting (often the same old) excerpts which echo your biases.

Anything which raises some difficulties for your standpoint or asks you to present arguments which show that religious or metaphysical, or even aesthetic, ideas can be validated by observation or testing or logic, and you immediately jump to the invocation of the bogeyman "positivism" even though the view you are attempting to dismiss is not unique to positivism at all.

In fact it is usually not so much a view as a request for you to back up your claim that there can be substantive evidence for metaphysical or religious views. It is a request for a descriptive explanation for the kind of evidence you presumably have in mind but apparently cannot articulate.

Positivists say that metaphysical ideas have no value, and I don't, and have never said that. But you apparently have no ear or eye for nuance.

Someone doesn't have to be a positivist to disagree with your ideas. — Apustimelogist

When @Wayfarer is presented with arguments that refute his ideas and which he has no answers to he resorts to labelling them as "positivist" in an attempt to discredit and dismiss them. If you disagree with his ideas he can only assume that you do not understand them. He is not an intellectually honest interlocutor, I'm sorry to say.

To agree democratically to abolish democracy seems like a performative contradiction. When I elect a party different to the one you want I haven't taken away your freedom, and your party can always win the next election. But a democratic vote to abolish democracy, if it were not supported by everyone, would illegitimately abolish the freedom of those who opposed it. If absolutely everyone agreed to abolish their freedom then it might be okay, but then what about those yet to reach voting age?

Thanks for the 'nothing' reply. Even if you incorrectly interpret my comments as positivistic, that doesn't excuse you from addressing the arguments, which you make no attempt to do. It seems we're truly done. I won't waste any more time attempting to discuss anything with you.

Phenomenology's ambit of inquiry is human experience and as such it says nothing about metaphysics, unless you mean that the metaphysical possibilities we can imagine are part of human experience which of course they are.

So Kant's reflections and analysis concerning the conditions which always accompany experience and without which we cannot imagine experience are again only concerned with human experience and judgement and not with anything beyond that.

Sure, consciousness is always directed at something; that is almost a tautology because to be conscious is to be conscious of something, but again that tells us nothing about any reality beyond consciousness if we deny that what we are conscious of is not what is, and so on that assumption it tells us nothing about metaphysics, since metaphysics has always purported to be about reality as such and not merely reality for us.

As far as I know the truth is that we cannot tell how "being meaning and world" come to consciousness, we can only tell how being, meaning and world seem to us. We have good reason to believe that something is going on which is completely prior to cognition, but we have no way of discovering what is, if we do not allow that the discoveries of science are showing reality, because any discovery would be within cognition not outside it. The only guide we have to such matters is cognitive science―the science of perception, since we are, in vivo, blind to whatever is prior to or happens outside of cognition.

I know very well what positivism is, and I don't agree with it in toto, as I've said many times, so what kind of response is that? Is it another attempt to dismiss what I say by insinuating that it is merely positivism? If so, you should know that is not the way to conduct a discussion.

Knowledge claims in general, if sound, are backed by intersubjectively corroborable evidence that the unbiased should be convinced by. I have no problem with people adhering to religions even though they are not being backed by such evidence, provided they have the honesty to admit that they are not backed by such evidence.

I believe that Jackson Pollock is a much better painter than Andy Warhol, but I don't pretend to be able to provide evidence for that. The situation with aesthetics is similar to the situation with metaphysics, and by extension, religion. I believe that the arts are capable of evoking altered states of consciousness, but I have only my own experience to back that belief, so I would never presume to argue for it, because arguments demand evidence and without it they are empty.

I do think that phenomenological analysis carries weight, even though it does not provide strictly observable evidence. We can reflect on our experience and generalize its characteristics, and I see linguistic philosophy as a kind of phenomenology based on reflection and analysis. But I cannot see how any phenomenological analysis provides any evidence for metaphysical claims.

Fair enough―I do agree that he has far more integrity than some...and he's a good fellow to boot.

Regarding Armstrong suggesting that humans are objects. In his ontology, they are. That doesn't mean they're JUST objects
— Relativist

But it does. That is exactly what it means. His profession of respect for religion is out of civility. But, he says, understand that it is subjective, comforting for those who believe it, but not true. — Wayfarer

This raises an interesting point. If Armstrong says religion is not true, which one is he referring to, or is he referring to all of them? By true do you think Armstrong means literally or objectively true or something else? There are many different metaphysical pictures offered by the different religions―can they all be literally or objectively true?

I don't even claim that none of them are literally or objectively true― for all I know one of them might be, even though it seems most plausible. My claim is merely that religious beliefs cannot be demonstrated to be true, that there is no evidence for the truth of any of them, unless you were to count authority as evidence, and we all know that arguments from authority are invalid in a philosophical context.

Of course. A large part of philosophy about managed disagreement. I've learned a ton from disagreeing with contributors here. — Wayfarer

Acknowledging disagreement is not the same as claiming that others who disagree must not understand. So, I said "elitist cop-out", and in the case of our disagreement, all the more so since you know I once agreed with what you still argue.

Didi I understand it then when I agreed with it and now somehow lost that understanding, or did I apply critical evaluation and realize that what I thought I understood was based on invalid reasoning?

On the proviso that their disagreement is coherent and well defended, and that they talk to the criticisms presented. As indeed, you do. — Banno

I'm sorry but I find it hard to believe you really think that, at least in the context of my discussions with @Wayfarer.

In some possible world, water has none of the characteristics it has in our world. — Banno

Okay, but if that is so I have no idea why we would say it is water and not anything else.

Atheism for me is simply a lack of belief in God or gods. As far as I am aware you are not a theist yourself. In any case you didn't answer my question about universal mind―are you an adherent or not? If not, as I said, your position is simply totally unwarranted and implausible instead of being merely implausible ( in my view of course, since there can be no precise measure of plausibility).

Or, a philosophical perspective that you can't fathom. — Wayfarer

The condescending elitist cop out.

Cheers, all that is interesting, and I haven't got to the article yet, but it still leaves me wondering whether we can coherently say something is water in some logically possible world if we were to remove its defining characteristics. I mean how many of its descriptive characteristics can we do without while still claiming it is not something merely called water, but something that actually is water?

By calling them pure forms of intuition, Kant is emphasizing that space and time are structural features of human sensibility, not features of reality as it is in itself. They are not merely psychological or subjective in the personal sense, but transcendentally subjective—conditions without which we would have no coherent experience at all. ( You could credibly use the term 'transpersonal' in place of 'transcendental' in this context i.e. 'true for all subjects'.)

Bottom line in all of this is there is no time without mind. If you sputter and gesticulate and point to the 'vast aeons of time that existed before sentient beings came along', there is still mind there. — Wayfarer

That space and time are merely structural features of human sensibility does not follow from their being structural forms of sensibility ― it simply does not follow that they are not features of reality in itself. If we define reality as it is in itself as being completely apart from human cognition, then the only valid conclusion is that we can know nothing at all about reality as it is in itself. And that means that we have no warrant to claim that it is the human mind alone which produces space and time.

Your last sentence is nothing more than a tendentious interpretation of the situation. It doesn't follow that what is real can only be what we experience and think, even if we accept that what is real for us can only be what we experience and think. Your reasoning here is invalid.

In any case science shows us beyond reasonable doubt that much existed prior to humans, so the conclusion that without mind there is no time and space (which amounts to saying there is nothing) is an unwarranted and indeed a very implausible claim. You say "there is still mind there"―perhaps you meant there was still mind there because the observation that there is mind there in all our sayings and doings is a trivial truism, and is irrelevant to what we are discussing.

If you are claiming there was still mind there are you suggesting the existence of a universal mind or "mind at large" as Kastrup would have it? If you were suggesting that, then at least your position would be coherent and consistent, if not plausible. Without that it amounts to hand-waving.

I wouldn’t say that space and time are “entirely mind-dependent” in the sense of being subjective or personal. I’m not saying they’re imaginary or arbitrary, nor that they vary from person to person. What I’m proposing is in line with the Kantian (and later phenomenological) insight that space and time are conditions of appearance—they are the framework within which any object can appear to us at all, not features of things as they exist independently of experience. That is the sense in which they're not mind-independent. — Wayfarer

You are making an unwarranted leap here. The fact that things always appear to us in space and time, that space and time are, in Kantian terms, "pure forms of intuition" does not entail that they are merely forms of intution.

Kant makes this leap when he refers to space and time as "pure" forms of intuition. The tendency of his thinking is shown in the "pure". Why not merely the 'forms of intuition'?

Kant says we perceive things, and that this requires that there be things to be perceived or as he calls them "things in themselves". Why not then space and time in themselves?