If a function of the body is impaired somehow, we can get some ideas about how it works or how it could work through the way we try to overcome the impairment. For example, ideas for what people with onset dementia can do in order to make up for their memory troubles.

Not sure where a tautology comes in. — GraveItty

We can see because we have eyes. Our eyes are sensitive to light of different wavelengths. That's how we can see.
Of course, we can go into a lot more detail about types of cells in the eye, visible wavelengths, etc. etc. but nothing is eventually gained by that in explaining how exactly it is that we see.

Now how useful is that?

If the attitude is, we’re lost and the governments can’t do anything, then we’re lost. — Wayfarer

Neither optimism nor hope can defeat facts.

What I want to emphasise is that the things folk find impossible to contemplate giving up are very very recent necessities, that many people have done without for many centuries and many people still live without. — unenlightened

Oh, but the ego, the ego, the hurt to the ego!!

To say nothing of the logistic nightmare that would result due to downsizing, saving etc. What could help is have people live close to their place of work, or that all employees of a company live in the same place, so that transport can be organized for all of them efficiently. But that would require of people extreme levels of mobility and living minimalistically.

If it takes 50 years (a more manageable period for massive global change) we will end up far overshooting the deadline when helpful changes could be made.
— Bitter Crank
Well Bitter, I think you are the age that remembers the 1970's quite well.

A lot has changed in the World since the 1970's, so a lot can change also in the next 50 years. Even more quicker. We likely won't be seeing the 2070's, but I'm still optimistic. In general. — ssu

It's Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

If you plan x time for doing something, it will take x time (and then some) to do it.

For starters, let's wait until your next tootache, or gastrointestinal viral infection.

Research has shown that people with a high EQ tend to be more successful than compare to others who have a high IQ. So if a high EQ is the key to success why focus on Epistemology? — TheQuestion

If you formulate it in terms of virtue epistemology, then it makes more sense.
The basic idea is that it takes virtue in order to know something.

Roughly, EQ overlaps with virtue.

So what is a memory? — GraveItty

A natural function of the human body. There is a point from which on explaining the natural functions of the body becomes impossible or meaningless, and eventually tautological.

Comparison does play a role, though: For example, if you notice that one day, a woman has a beauty mole on her face, and a few days later, she doesn't, that's a recognition of difference based on a comparison.

By NOT preventing the future person's suffering, one is overlooking the dignity of the person being born.
— schopenhauer1

You don't respect someone's dignity by deciding for them whether their life, and whatever they find of value in it, is worth the suffering they endure for it. — Srap Tasmaner

Exactly. The concern for the diginity of those who will never be makes for a nonexistent concern for diginity. It's like caring about the dignity of a character in a novel.


EDITED for spelling and grammar.

Sure, I guess. As I've said several times in this discussion, I think attention to the world has to come first, before the philosophy, i.e. the words, explanations, theories, reason. To me, that's the difference between western and eastern philosophies. Western philosophies are about reason. Eastern philosophies are about attention and awareness. — T Clark

What you seem to be talking about is "bare attention". A very popular term in popular "Eastern" spirituality, but highly controversial within the actual Eastern traditions themselves. See the passage I quote above from Buddhism.

I think it is possible to philosophize alone with no texts. — Tom Storm

What do you mean? By having no texts immediately in front of you?

It's impossible to have "no texts". Leaving aside the special case of those who were born blind and/or deaf, everyone works with some texts, either by having them physically present (such as a book, or an audio) or by retrieving them from memory.

I see why you would say that but I think this misses something. The OP is very clear about the need to pay attention. This is not easy to do. I would venture to say that there are those who have been immersed in Kant or whoever without ever having thought to pay attention (a kind of critical reflection of experience and upon what can be noticed, about others, things, self.) and thereby missing a level of critical engagement with lived experience. The OP may resent this but it seems to me closer to a mystical tradition of the contemplative. — Tom Storm

And if people want to go off and be mystics, by all means, mysticize away. But don't say that you sat in a room writhing for an hour and now you're a philosopher. I also think this 'attention' business is a MacGuffin. I have no idea what it means. A plumber pays attention when he fixes pipes. A CEO pays attention when she cuts staff for the sake of efficiency. — StreetlightX

The Buddha never used the word for "bare attention" in his meditation instructions. That's because he realized that attention never occurs in a bare, pure, or unconditioned form. It's always colored by views and perceptions — the labels you tend to give to events — and by intentions: your choice of what to attend to and your purpose in being attentive.

/.../

So it's important to understand that there's no such thing as bare attention in the practice of the Buddha's teachings. Instead of trying to create an unconditioned form of attention, the practice tries to create a set of skillful conditions to shape and direct the act of attention to make it appropriate: truly healing, truly leading to the end of suffering and stress. Once these conditions are well developed, the Buddha promises that they will serve you well — even past the moment of Awakening, all the way to your very last death.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/foodforawakening.html

n Socratic fashion, I moved the discussion from stating to defending a particular opinion, to an inquiry into the unstated premises and assumptions that extended beyond the specifics of the topic to more general assumptions about opinions and truth.

Out of a class of thirty, twenty declared philosophy as their major. — Fooloso4

Prospective lawyers.

I love reading your posts just for the syntax. :starstruck:

As a child, I tended to believe what the adults in authority said. — hanaH

Are you still a child?

I've been harassed by manic street preachers. I tend to ignore them, because I don't respect them enough to want to talk to them. I also consider 'that' kind of religious person to be 'beyond logic' (they aren't going to address objections but simply return to their vomit.) Recently, though, I couldn't avoid an especially eager fellow who spoke of the hellfire that awaits the unsaved. So his spiel was directed at me personally, as a stranger lost to the deceptions of science, dogmatic in my skepticism.

You seem to have a very general understanding of "personal".

Can an outsider spot a fraud, — Manuel

No.

or do they camouflage themselves well?

It's not clear it has to do with camouflage. The idea that religious/spiritual people would knowingly pose and try to present themselves as more religiously/spiritually advanced than they know they are seems implausible.

I think people just go along with what seems easiest, most comfortable, what they like (and sometimes, this means going for whatever brings them a rush of adrenaline).


I don't understand this obsession with figuring out who's a phony or a fraud, and who's genuine. I think this distinction is only relevant for those who try to operate in blind faith.

So a person claims to be a guru, a spiritual master, claims that he has found The Truth. So now what?

In some religions/spiritualities, the standard answer to the above is "It takes one to know one".
— baker

So then it is evident to someone who's on the outside when a "fake" is speaking to someone who is enlightened?

Or do you need to be around such people to tell? — Manuel

"It takes one to know one" means that in order to recognize an enlightened person, one must be enlightened as well. Only an arahant can recognize another arahant.

An outsider definitely cannot recognize an enlightened person.

I'll put it this way: I don't think that having children can solve one's existential problems. It can and often does make them worse; other times, it just perpetuates the status quo.

I am inclined to agree. I think 'that special something' is actually what 'conversion' means. — Wayfarer

But conversion doesn't apply with people who were born and raised into a religion (which makes for the majority of religious people). They never formally converted. If at some point, such a person were to "become more serious about their religion", this still cannot count as conversion because they have been immersed into their religion from the onset, and so have no notion of what it is like to not have said religion as a background, whereas conversion requires a major change from having no affiliation with a religion to having one.

But I don't think that many of those who adhere to faith blindly are self-aware enough to understand that they're actually pretending to it. They may take themselves and their supposed 'faith' with seriousness that borders on fanaticism without any inkling that they're delusional. I think people can lie to themselves. (I guess atheists would consider all professions of faith in that light, but I don't agree.)

What you seem to be describing applies to people who "converted" at a time of personal crisis (it can be a health crisis, a financial crisis, a relationship crisis, etc., or a general existential crisis). I think such people are a special category, because their "conversion" and their commitment to the (new) religion are driven and maintained by their personal crisis, and not by some deep study and practice of religion. Technically, they can be said to have "blind faith", but given the role that their personal crisis plays in their religiosity, I wouldn't apply that term to them. I also wouldn't describe them as "lying to themselves"; lying requires intention to deceive, and these people aren't trying to deceive themselves, no, they're looking for hope.

Sure. But were you in particular ever promised anything by a religious/spiritual person?
— baker

Are you serious? Of course. Promised and threatened. Not only as child but quite recently by a stranger with a megaphone. — hanaH

But why did you take that promise or threat seriously (assuming you did)?

And how personally was that promise or threat made? To you, by your name, or just in your "general direction"?

Because when you look at them more closely, religious/spiritual threats and promises tend to be made in general terms (such as when a text say "we promise our reader that ..."). They aren't as specific as "I promise to pick you up at the airport this Saturday at 5 PM" or "Your house will become property of the bank if you don't pay back the loan by the end of this November."

Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern
science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples
of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to
brain. But philosophers share the general human weakness for
explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms suited for
what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different.
This has led to the acceptance of implausible accounts of the
mental largely because they would permit familiar kinds of
reduction. I shall try to explain why the usual examples do not
help us to understand the relation between mind and body
why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what an expla-
nation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon would be.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf

But does this accomplish much more than change the language without altering the problem? — Tom Storm

Phenomenology can be a stepping stone toward Buddhism.

If you search https://pathpress.org/ by the keywords phenomenology, phenomenological, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, you'll get many finds.

I've always found Nagel's intuition pump (Dennett) "what is it like to be a bat" to be incoherent. The problematic "like to be" presupposes a comparison, but to what? No one, Nagel or any of us, can aptly say what it is "like to be" a human being since each one of us only has a single data-point: a human being, like a bat, does not "know" what it is like to be other than what is, so there's no comparison, or differentiation, from the inside-out, so to speak. — 180 Proof

But that's just it: Ordinary people have no trouble imagining and taking for granted what it is like to be this or that. (It's what usually passes for "empathy".) It's why Nagel wrote the essay -- to address precisely this popular notion and show how problematic it is.

By that formulation wouldn’t having children count as negligent? — khaled

Yes.

Why would it be permissible then?

With negligence, there is no issue of permissibility; negligence "just happens". We wish it wouldn't happen, but it does.

It is, of course, possible to speculate about the reasons and motivations for negligence, but that brings us into a highly ideologically specific discussion.

You'll need to be more specific.

Because if not, then how can a "actual" enlightened subject ever recognize another one? If there is no way to tell, then everyone is only pretending to have something they in fact do not. — Manuel

In some religions/spiritualities, the standard answer to the above is "It takes one to know one".
The enlightened ones can recognize eachother. And the unelightened are a dozen a dime anyway, so it's not like anyone really cares about them.

My experience was, I believed that through meditation, a state of insight would spontaneously arise which would melt away all my negative tendencies and weaknesses. — Wayfarer

I never had that. My approach to religion/spirituality was all about finding The Truth, the How Things Really Are (and at first, my quest was conceptualized as trying to answer the question "Which religion is the right one?"). I was sure that once I'd figure out what The Truth is, everything else would fall into place.

But I also wasn't very concerned about my behavior to begin with, because as someone who had no trouble not smoking, not drinking alcohol, not doing drugs, not being promiscuous etc., the things that people usually struggle with when they approach religion/spirituality didn't apply to me. (Later on, I actually had to teach myself to swear and to use lowly language because even that didn't come naturally to me.)

And I went to a Buddhist youth organisation conference around that time, and sadly realised that I thought a lot of well-intentioned Buddhists were also phony. — Wayfarer

I rarely think that anyone is phony. But then, of course, my basic assumption is that people generally act strategically.

But nobody ever told me I didn't have what it takes, I figured that out all by myself.

With most of the religions/spiritualities I looked into, I started off by reading their books, getting familiar with their doctrine. It was only if and after I had felt comfortable enough with those and hopeful enough that I went to meet "the people". That was always a "culture shock" that nothing in the books I read and the talks I heard prepared me for. Often, it was like highschool all over again, with all the popular people, the cliques, the misfits, the games. Or the social dynamics were like those between rich and poor people. I thought being either of those ways was a waste of time, but found myself alone in that opinion.

Unlike you, I was always at the bottom of the hierarchy, I never made it up to some position of any relevance. No matter how long I lasted in a group, the members there always felt comfortable to look down on me, like I'm an imbecile or a domestic animal. (I'm surprised to this day that nobody actually patronizingly patted me on the head.)

Although through all this, something inside has definitely shifted, even despite my many typical middle-class and middle-aged failings. I guess at the end of the day, I have to acknowledge that I really do have faith in the Buddha, even though the western intellectual side of me doesn't want anything to do with 'faith'.

I guess I do have faith in the Buddha as well. It kind of has a life of its own, regardless of what I do.
But unlike you, I have no Western intellectual qualms about having faith.

Just reread the conversation.

If you did have what it takes - what is it you are meant to have? — Tom Storm

In hindsight, I think where I was most different from the religious/spiritual people is that they were authoritarian to the core, while I was not. Specifically, right-wing authoritarianism appears to be the personality trait which is of such importance that if one doesn't have enough of it, one cannot be religious/spiritual.
(Why do you think religious/spiritual people tend to affiliate themselves with right-wing political options?)

In order to be religious/spiritual, one needs to be willing and able to destroy others, in every way, psychologically, physically; one needs to see oneself as the arbiter of another's reality, one needs to be able to say, "I am the one who decides what is real for you. I define who you are."

If one isn't like that, one won't be able to keep up with the religious/spiritual people.

Is my philosophy half-assed? — T Clark

Why are you calling it philosophy? Can you explain?

I don't think any of us on this little forum would win it. — Janus

How dare you! :death:

hair colour... — Tom Storm

Several have told me that I lacked faith.

I actually used to hope that they would teach me how to have faith -- but no, they didn't.

No brownie points, but it did make me laugh. If you did have what it takes - what is it you are meant to have? — Tom Storm

How could I possibly tell you if I don't have it?

Spiritual types tend to say that they have the real thing while others are fakes. To secular outsiders this is one of the turn-offs of the spiritual hustle. In the end many of us just don't think there's any secret worth bothering too much about. — hanaH

Oh, I still think there's a secret. I've just mostly given up on it.

My general view is that modern liberal culture normalises a kind of aberrant state. Whereas traditional cultures make moral demands on the individual, that has been reversed in the ascent of liberalism, whereby the individual, buttressed by science and economics, is the sole arbiter of value, and individual desire is placed above everything else. Nihil ultra ego, nothing beyond self. — Wayfarer

There are two trends within individualism: expansive/entitled individualism, and defensive individualism. The former is in roundabout what you describe above. Defensive individualism is what being left to oneself and being solely blamed for oneself looks like. Defensive individualism is a reaction to the decay of society.

Peer-review and exposure to criticism lets inferior ideas die by exposure. — hanaH

Or not. Consider virtue epistemology: It was popular with the ancients. Then it pretty much died out. And then it resurfaced again in the early 2000's, picking up pace.

What, by the way, do the self-anointed compete for? — hanaH

That's their circus, their monkeys. Not mine.

I think there's a kind of performative contradiction at the intersection of critical philosophy and elitist spirituality. The trans-rational elitists often can't help offering reasons that they deserve more recognition by plebeian rational humanists. "Can't you see that my spiritual genius is invisible?"

What did they expect when they told people "You don't have what it takes"?

Look around and see the profusion of healers and gurus and visionaries now available without leaving your home. I doubt that the world has ever offered such a spiritual buffet to the average person, along with the lifespan and leisure to enjoy such things. — hanaH

No, those are just the torments of Tantalus. All those "goodies" might indeed seem like they are at your fingertips -- but when you reach for them, you can never reach them, or they disappear altogether.

The "tyranny" that troubles some may be the absence of tyranny, namely the freedom of others to be unimpressed by their claims of spiritual status or insight.

They reap what they sowed.

But that doesn't obviate the critique, although I don't know if I want to try and spell it out in detail right at the moment.
— Wayfarer

You and baker both seem to be echoing Nietzsche's disgust with the last man. — hanaH

Not Nietzsche's. While I'm no fan of consumerism, I don't agree with Nietzsche either.

The Last Man is the individual who specializes not in creation, but in consumption. In the midst of satiating base pleasures, he claims to have “discovered happiness” by virtue of the fact that he lives in the most technologically advanced and materially luxurious era in human history.

But this self-infatuation of the Last Man conceals an underlying resentment, and desire for revenge. On some level, the Last Man knows that despite his pleasures and comforts, he is empty and miserable. With no aspiration and no meaningful goals to pursue, he has nothing he can use to justify the pain and struggle needed to overcome himself and transform himself into something better. He is stagnant in his nest of comfort, and miserable because of it. This misery does not render him inactive, but on the contrary, it compels him to seek victims in the world. He cannot bear to see those who are flourishing and embodying higher values, and so he innocuously supports the complete de-individualization of every person in the name of equality.

Awww, typical right-winger lamentation, "Oh, poor übermenschen us, that we have to endure being accosted by the untermenschen!"

Devoid of a share, single sense perhaps, but rife with many different senses of over-arching purposes. We have the leisure and freedom to explore and discuss such things. Frankly I don't trust what I see as a kind of nostalgia. Sure, we have hot water, air conditioning, Novocain and plenty of food, but we are "condemned to be free" when there "ought" to be a kindler, gentler theocratic hand at the helm. — hanaH

Are you sure? Right-wing political options are on the rise, and so is poverty.

Imagine a person who tried various spiritual fads and classics in their 20s and found them all wanting.
— hanaH

When I was young I spent 15 years respectfully trying to understand revealed wisdom and higher consciousness, spending my time in the company of theosophists, self-described Gnostics, Buddhists, devotees of Ouspensky/Gurdjieff, Steiner, etc. What I tended to find was insecure people obsessed with status and hierarchy who had simply channeled their materialism into spirituality. There were the same fractured inter-personal relationships, jealousies, substance abuse and chasing after real estate and status symbols that characterise any secular person. — Tom Storm

I used to be a "seeker" (god, I hate the word). I looked into several major and minor religions. I was always told, in more or less (usually less) polite ways that I "don't have what it takes".

And while even some religious/spiritual people themselves told me that what looks like materialism, insecurity etc. among the religious/spiritual (and that I should thus dismiss it as faults, imperfections), I've never been convinced by that. Instead, I took a different route: What if the way religious/spiritual people usually are, actually is precisely the way a religious/spiritual person is supposed to be? Why ignore the obvious? So, yes, by these criteria, Donald Trump is a deeply religious/spiritual person. Yes, I know this isn't going to earn me any brownie points. That's what they get for telling me that I don't have what it takes.

Precisely, because 'deep down Im a vulnerable little child who needs to be seen to dominate became healthy relationships are beyond me and I am afraid.' — Tom Storm

No, this doesn't occur to me. The everyday reality is that if one appears poor and weak, people tend to interpret this as "This person must be destroyed, they're asking for it. It is morally right to destroy the weak and unfit." It's how there is a culture of blaming the the person who is worse off (sometimes this coincides with blaming the victim, but not always).

I was merely noting that TPF is usually not very "accepting of personal confidence as evidence of truth".
— Gnomon

Why not? Distrust?
— GraveItty

Nah, assumption of equality of people. — baker

What evidence for what truth are you talking about? — GraveItty

You're asking why is it that TPF is usually not very "accepting of personal confidence as evidence of truth". You suggested the reason for this was distrust.

I'm suggesting that it is the assumption of equality of people that leads those who assume such equality to not accepting personal confidence as evidence of truth.

If we're all equal in some relevant way, then why should I accept your personal confidence as evidence of truth, notably when you differ from me?

Equality implies intolerance/rejection.

Throwing yourself into making money and working out are often about deliberate transformation - to project a view of yourself as powerful and desirable when you feel anything but. We used to call it compensation. — Tom Storm

Nah. I see displays of wealth and health as a matter of setting boundaries and putting up signs -- "Don't even think of trying to fuck with me, because I will destroy you! You can see that I have the power to destroy you!"