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?

faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions.
— Janus

Sounds like religion is bad. Like other ideological persuasions are bad.

Still sounds like a contradiction with “faith is neither good nor bad.” — Fire Ologist

How many times do I have to say that I am saying that thinking faith is evidence based knowledge is what is bad? That kind of thinking is what people use as a justification for inflicting their beliefs on others. In case you haven't noticed ideologues, and not just religious ideologues, may be prepared to kill for what they believe in. If they acknowledged to themselves that what they believed was not the Absolute Truth but merely an expression of their own predilections, then they might understand that others need not share their beliefs.

Trust in one's abilities may be blind faith or it may be based on past success, so it is not a good analogy in the latter case at least. We do put our trust in other sometimes, and in life or death situations, someone must lead lest there be chaos. In that situation people do not trust their leader then there will also be the danger that order will break down into chaos, or 'every man for himself"―and that would obviously not be a good strategy for survival.

There's a logically possible world in which water ≠ H₂O. But there is not a metaphysically or physically possible world in which water ≠ H₂O. That water=H₂O is a metaphysical fact, not a logical fact. It should be apparent that once we agree that water=H₂O, we rule out the possibility that water ≠ H₂O. — Banno

The Stanford article from which I stole the image has more on this sort of thing. It takes tome to grasp these ideas, however the result is a consistent picture of nested possibilities and impossibilities. — Banno

Cheers, I will take a look at the article. The question I have right now (which may be resolved after reading the article) is this: if we want to say there is a logically possible world in which water is not H2O, on what other basis could it be said that it would count as being water?

A nice summation. In the context of metaphysics the answer to "what is real?" would seem to be 'what is actual, as opposed to what is imaginary or merely an idea'. But now the question will be 'what is meant by 'actual'?'. Is it what exists, what acts or something else? @Wayfarer is constantly saying that 'what is real' is not equivalent to 'what exists'. The paradigm example is numbers―they are said to be real but not to exist. So the question becomes 'in what sense are they real then?'.

Numbers may be merely ideas, I think of number as real and existent. We don't see actual numbers, but we see number or plurality everywhere. It is not an individual entity or thing, but it exists just as space and time do. For me that solves the supposed conundrum.

The same goes for universals―they are not real or existent in some platonic sense. I prefer the less loaded word 'generalities'―I see generalities in observed regularities, patterns and similarities that also exist, but obviously not as individual entities.

Fundamentalists treat articles of faith as if they were empirical, evidence based facts, and that is where the trouble begins. If, instead, intellectual honesty prevailed and the faithful acknowledged that their faith is for them alone, between them and their God, so to speak, then they would not be arrogant enough to commit heinous acts purportedly in the name of God.
— Janus

Don’t you see how none of what you just said addresses what I asked?

All of what you just said contradicts “faith is neither good nor bad” because that all sounds bad. — Fire Ologist

I've already made it clear that faith is not confined to religion. It is to be found in ideologues of all persuasions. Facts are supported by evidence, faith is not. By 'evidence' I man 'what the unbiased should accept'; that is what being reasonable means. I don't mean 'what the individual finds convincing' because what convinces one individual may not convince another, and that it what should be expected in matters where there is no clear evidence.

We all hold beliefs for which there can be no clear evidence. To do so is not irrational, but those beliefs are nonrational, not in the sense that no thoughts processes are involved, but in the sense that the thoughts are not grounded in evidence.

You say that what I said about faith all sounds bad, but that was not about faith as such, but about faith not being acknowledged as such.

There's a lot in this. An ideology is another example of a belief that is not to be subjected to scrutiny. — Banno

That's right. That is the other key hallmark of faith-based beliefs. If a belief is not based on evidence then it is not open to question (for the believer, obviously), because there is no evidence to be critically examined.

Except for Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other counterexamples to your assertion that it's always religion. — Leontiskos

Right, I wouldn't say it's always religion, but it's always ideology, which includes religion. Ideologies are like religions in that they are faith, not evidence, based.

But if, as we both now agree, faith is neither good nor bad, why is it that everything else you bring up about faith has to do with fathers murdering their children and fools acting without evidence or reason? Or theism? Because that doesn’t sound “neither good nor bad” to me. — Fire Ologist

I'm not presuming to answer for @Banno but I couldn't resist giving my take on this. When faith is taken to be fact, then we have fundamentalism. Fundamentalists treat articles of faith as if they were empirical, evidence based facts, and that is where the trouble begins. If, instead, intellectual honesty prevailed and the faithful acknowledged that their faith is for them alone, between them and their God, so to speak, then they would not be arrogant enough to commit heinous acts purportedly in the name of God.

Imagining impossible worlds is an interesting idea―I have no doubt a physically impossible world could be imagined, but I wonder whether it is possible to imaginable a logically impossible world.

So this

It's the thing we were discussing. If water was not H2O in Aristotle's day would this mean that being H2O is neither essential nor necessary for water or that water itself changes? Or could heat be caloric? might be a similar sort of question (or was it?) — Count Timothy von Icarus

raises a question for me:

Is there a possible world in which water is not H2O? if there is, what would make it count as water in such a world? Presumably since water was not understood to be H2O in Aristotle's time, people of that time could have coherently imagined a possible world where water was a black opaque liquid (because the god's could have made it so, say), but can we coherently imagine such a world if water must be H2O and H2O cannot possibly be a black opaque liquid?

If we said we could imagine it what would make it count as imagining water? Mere stipulation?

What about imagining a world in which there are round squares? We can say 'there is a possible world in which there are round squares", but would that count as imagining such a world? Would it count as coherently imagining such a world?

Deflective bullshit Leon. Your level of intellectual honesty is atrocious.

Yep. And there is the additional problem of their never quite explaining what an essence is, at least not in a way that is anywhere near as clear as "A property had by a thing in every possible world in which it exists". — Banno

I've long thought that possible world semantics is simply an exploration of what we can coherently imagine. That said, I haven't looked into it much. In light of my perhaps limited understanding of it I would reframe your formulation―" A property had by a thing that we cannot imagine it existing without".

.....hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures.
— "
The secularist will not do any of that. But won't miss it. — Ludwig V

The secularist may do the same thing with a different object of worship, though.

"Hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom and beneficence of Nature; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, appropriate to the ends they were designed for, Nature's glory, and the sustention and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures".

Cheers, it seems we agree― I don't have anything further to add.

All well and good, except the world possibly contains things that make no sense, in which case the reduction to an intelligible world is irrational, or, the intelligible world of sensible things for some members of it, is not the experience of others, in which case the reduction to an intelligible world is merely contingent. — Mww

Right, it's not as though we can claim that the world is absolutely intelligible―to claim that would be to claim that we know everything there is to know about the world. We could never reasonably claim that, given that we could never know that we had got it all.

As to others interpreting things differently, I think that is understandable given that the world of things is more complex than we can imagine, offering an almost infinite variety of things to be noticed and understood. In other words there are many ways to make sense of things, and to make sense of things is to make them intelligible.

I don't buy the idea that that is an arbitrary process entirely governed by the mind― it seems far more reasonable to think that the things constrain our ways of making sense of them as much as the nature of our brains does, and that we are blind to both of these constraining influences. This is what I have referred to as the pre-cognitive conditions that govern our cognitive sense-making.

And when you consider the fact that, for us anyway, there is but one world of things….period, and there is only one single method available for making sense of it….period, it seems pretty bold to say the one is intelligible when it’s exactly the same method in play by which things make sense on the one hand, and, conceives the reduction of the manifold of sensible things to a descriptive world, on the other. — Mww

Where do you get the idea that there is only one single method available for making sese of the one world of things? I'm not even sure what that means, but if you can say that there is but one world of things it would seem that you have made sense of it. As to there being but one single method available for making sense of things, I don't think that is supportable. I mean, what is this purported method?

Also, if I understand what you are saying correctly, you seem to be conflating method with world.

But, hey, just between you ‘n’ me ‘n’ the fence post, the internal subjective, empirical content of consciousness can’t be extracted, which makes the conceived reduction to an intelligible world….you know….tautologically superfluous. — Mww

Do you believe there is an internal, subjective, empirical content of consciousness? I don't know what that even means. How could you know about such a thing?

I don't think it's that complicated―it just seems undeniable that we find ourselves in a world which makes sense to us, by and large―not completely, to be sure―we are not omniscient.

Of course something is, independently of our perception of it. But precisely insofar as it is independent of any possible relation to perception or thought, it is beyond all predication - hence, also, not really 'something'! Nothing can truthfully be said of it—not that it is, nor that it is not, for even non-existence is itself a conceptual construction. — Wayfarer

You've contradicted yourself. Non-existence may indeed be merely a conceptual construction, but when it comes to existence, it is the idea of existence which is a conceptual construction, not existence itself. This is where you confuse yourself.

I can’t get behind the notion of an intelligible world, is all. Just seems tautologically superfluous to call the world intelligible, or to call all that out there an intelligible world, when without our intelligence it would be no more than a mere something. — Mww

To say the world is intelligible just is to say that intelligences can make sense of it; which they patently do. Something can be intelligible, even if there are no intelligences to make sense of it, just as something can be visible even if no one sees it.

I am not claiming there are no sound inferences from religious experiences to religious beliefs or metaphysical positions; I'm saying that I can't see how there could be and I'm asking for someone who believes there are to explain how such purportedly sound inferences are supported by something that could count as convincing evidence to the unbiased. I am yet to see such an explanation.

You are not answering the question. If the "signs and milestones" constitute evidence and are not mere handwaving you should be able to explain how they could be counted as evidence.

So I reject this 'belief without evidence' dogma, as that is what it is. For those prepared to pursue these paths, there is plenty of evidence, albeit not of the kind that positivism will acknowledge. — Wayfarer

How could you know that if you haven’t successfully completed the journey yourself? Seems like it must be down to faith. If you want to claim that that faith is supported by evidence then tell us what the evidence consists in.

Some cryptic answers there! Regarding the Berkeley quote, I see no reason why the secularist cannot appreciate the order, the beauty and so on and leave God out of it. So I don't see it as a case of, "the secularist will never miss it" if that means that there is an experience of awe, wonder, beauty or whatever that they don't have, and that they don't miss it because they simply don't know about the possibility of such feelings. On the other hand if you mean that they don't miss it precisely because they have it just as the religionist does, then I agree.

On the latter interpretation then, we are still left with the question as to waht the secularist doesn't have in the life experience as opposed to the religionist (other than the obvious beliefs in God and immortality, and whatever comforts they bring, of course).

What did I miss? — Wayfarer

'Can be read as' does not equate to 'used the term'. I already explained that I am not claiming that Spinoza thought precisely in modern materialist terms, but that his philosophy is not inconsistent with modern materialism.

Materialism in the form I favour is the position that there is nothing beyond the material universe we find ourselves inhabiting and that the mind and body are not separate things. Spinoza said: "The mind is the idea of the body" and he saw mind and the body as one and the same thing conceived in two different ways: under the attribute of thought and under the attribute of extension.

Spinoza equated God with the Universe, the whole of Nature and thought God was the one and only substance, infinite, eternal and self-causing. The same could be said of matter, so his view is consistent with materialism. He denied there was any afterlife, or anything transcendent of the Universe. That is also obviously consistent with materialism.

I'm not responding to you again if you fail to address the actual points I've made or try to dismiss what I say by labelling it as this or that.

Material states in this sense cannot be cognition. A materiel state is given by that it exists (mode of extension), never by how it appears in cognition. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Material states can be extended and/ or they can be cognitive. The body is a material state, or preferably process, and it is cognitive, so...

It's as though you don't read what I've written. :roll:

I never claimed that Spinoza thought in such modern terms, but merely that his philosophy is not inconsistent with that modern conception.

:up:

I am not going to disagree, except to say that we have what seem to be coherent conceptual distinctions between reasons and causes, distinctions which nonetheless may not be based on anything other than our naive intuitions, and which indeed may come apart at the seams under the pressure of analysis.

I don't agree. Spinoza can be read as thinking that material substance has the potential for both the attributes of extension and cogitation. Your "modern reductionist materialist" and "a material with uniform qualities" is a straw man, because no one denies the fact of cogitation or that matter has many attributes and diverse forms., just as Spinoza's God has infinite attributes and modes; they are facts to deny which would be ridiculous. The materialist simply says that matter in certain configuration can feel and think just as matter in certain configurations is measurable.

I think not, but it's far from clear. The traditional distinction is that we're supposed to understand things in the human sciences and explain things in the physical sciences. Where does this kind of experience fall? — J

I have nothing further to add in response to the rest of your post, but I'm wondering when you say that we understand things in the human sciences you mean that we understand human behavior in terms of reasons not causes. If so I agree. But can this also apply to experiences?

Reasons for behavior seem to be understood to be intentional and it's not clear to me that we could understand someone having a mystical experience in terms of them intending to do so unless we think in terms of practices designed to elicit such experiences such as taking certain drugs or practicing meditation.

What the implications and explanations are of the fact that taking drugs and other practices may elicit mystical or religious kinds of experiences is not clear, and I wonder whether it ever can be made definitively clear.

Yet you presume to tell others that you know what they have or haven't read. — Wayfarer

I seem to remember that you said you had not studied Spinoza, and were not familiar with his work. You have never quoted him directly as far as I recall. If my assumption that you haven't read his works is incorrect then I'll own that.

In the Ethics (which I did study as an undergraduate) Spinoza finds lasting happiness in the intellectual love of God, which is the vision of the one infinite Substance (which could equally well be understood as Being) underlying everything and everyone. This is not the love of a subject in the personal sense, but the joyous recognition that all finite things, including our own minds, are expressions of the one infinite reality that is. — Wayfarer

Perhaps Spinoza's substance could be understood as being if being were understood to be natura naturans or nature naturing. In the Ethics Spinoza writes: “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Now 'being' in its basic meaning simply refers to existence or the attribute of existing, so you would need to qualify the concept as Spinoza does in that sentence in order to make it fit.

And the other point is that Spinoza's God is not separate from nature or transcendent of it, but is wholly immanent. There is no transcendence for Spinoza, no eternal life for mortals, no afterlife and no personal or caring God. Spinoza was a determinist: he believed free will to be an illusion and even denied that God has free will. If God is being for Spinoza it is infinite, eternal, necessary being, and it is only mortal creatures who experience anything, and the only immortality to be hoped for is to be an idea in the eternal substance.

What you wrote could just as well apply to a materialist (and I believe Spinoza was a materialist). It is not a being underlying everything or everyone in the sense of being separate from or greater than materiality (as I read Spinoza at least), but a being immanent in everything and everyone, and that is an important difference. If we say that 'substance' means to stand under, I think that should be read as referring to the hidden constitution, otherwise transcendence might be evoked since to be what is understood to separately beneath might equally be understood to be separately above, and I don't believe that was Spinoza's intention at all.