Still no brilliant moves, guys. Let's see some magic!

Do you think abstract thought is possible without language? — Janus

I'm tempted to say that all thought is abstract, especially in light of this 'non-dual' awareness that you mention. Are there really separate things or is it just that our minds separate things? If our minds didn't separate things then we wouldn't be able to 'see' anything, right?

For example, if I spoke to you in a language that you've never heard of before you wouldn't be able to pick out any words. It would just be continuous gibberish. You couldn't 'see' any words even though you possess the concepts of language, words, letters, etc. Similarly, if you didn't know anything about trees or plant life in general, if you lacked those concepts, the first time you saw a tree you wouldn't know what you were looking at. It would be one thing until you analyzed it and broke it down into distinct parts. Your concept of 'tree' could become more robust the more you learned about trees.

Animals form concepts the same way and manipulate them in order to fulfill their needs, without language, or rather without language like ours.

I gather it's like the Trinity. Not anything to do with number. — Banno

:lol:

The beauty of it is that if you can project sufficient authority you can say pretty much anything and the faithful will hang on your every word and hold it as precious truth.

Human experience is mediated by abstract thought. Consequently, we understand the world in dualistic terms. It is possible to let that whole machinery go, and you seemed to be claiming that if we did that we would experience nothing at all. So I asked you about whether you think animals experience nothing at all. — Janus

I think we're merely capable of more abstract thought than animals, because of our relatively large cerebral cortex. You'll need to be clearer about what "machinery" it's possible to let go of. I've already agreed that people can have a hyperactive default mode network or 'monkey mind' and that deactivating it can reduce any anxiety produced by the hyperactivity.

So I too can develop a giant ego like Leary and crew? No thank you.
— praxis

Your unexamined attitudes are a laugh! You don't know what you are missing. — Janus

I'm glad that your imagination has a good sense of humor. I do wish that Leary and his contemporaries had more thoroughly examined their attitudes toward it. Perhaps without their deluded visions of grandeur, it may not have turned out to be classified as a Schedule I substance.

Animals, I imagine, live in the eternal present, in a non-dual state of awareness. — Janus

We all live in the present, actually, though that present is often lost in thought, and all that thought may have a tendency to cause undo anxiety. Animals may suffer maladaptive anxiety nevertheless, though not caused by overthinking. The good news is that we can think our way out of it, unlike animals.

It's just that the other posters here presumably don't have much of a grasp of non-dualism — Wayfarer

Whoever has a solid grasp of it, please, explain away. :lol:

I suppose it may be possible to take the neural activity of dreams and somehow convert the signals into a visual display. Then you could see recordings of your dreams.

I asked if you see things in your dreams, not if you see dreams.

You asked where a visual representation of a tree appears and I suggested that it appears where all visual representations appear.

Where does this visual representation of a tree appear? Who or what is looking at it? — NOS4A2

Basically the same place as the visual representations in your dreams. You see things in your dreams, right?

I haven't said anything about sin as vice or the opposite of virtue. I explicitly stated that I was talking about sin in terms of "missing the mark". Missing the mark in this context means being caught up in views and failing to see things in their numinous light. — Janus

I can't help thinking that nothing could be more "caught up in views" than seeing things in their numinous light. Given enough exposure, even the most wonderous spiritual experiences become ordinary and we cease to be caught up in their reverence. The sacred has a nasty habit of becoming mundane, in other words.

The best you can do may be reducing anxiety, and that is a necessary beginning, but you have no warrant for believing it is just the same for others. — Janus

It appears to be the same. I do understand the grasping desire for pleasant experiences to persist and remain unchanging though.

Of course there is always a linguistic overlay to our seeing, but that can be put in abeyance with practice. — Janus

To be clear, you're not talking about seeing visually but a particular kind of brain state. Modern people tend to have a hyperactive default mode network or so-called 'monkey mind'. A common problem with this hyperactivity is that it may cause undue anxiety. Reducing hyperactivity can reduce anxiety, generally speaking. Not to undervalue wonderous numinous light, of course. That's super cool too.

Maybe try some psychedelics to get you started.

So I too can develop a giant ego like Leary and crew? No thank you.

Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all?

I think it's counterproductive to conflate vision and abstract thought.

I don't believe animals parse experience in terms of subject/ object. — Janus

They have an internal model of their bodies just as we do, as well as a model for everything else they know, just as we do. They can develop maladaptive responses to situations that cause them undue anxiety, just as we can. We have an advantage in that regard because we can use our reasoning to overcome our conditioning, to some extent at least, as with cognitive behavior therapy for instance.

To see non-dually is to see without the discursive overlay. Distinguishing things is not disabled by that. I can see a tree without thinking in terms of a tree/ not-tree duality. I don't have to separate a tree from its surroundings in order to see it. — Janus

That's an odd thing to say, that you don't have to separate a tree from its surroundings in order to see it. If you mean to say that our minds, and the minds of animals, automatically distinguish things like trees and you don't need to consciously focus on a tree to see it then yeah, that makes sense.

Animals do not deploy dualistic language; do you think they do not see at all? — Janus

They see in essentially the same way as we do. To see non-dually would mean to entirely lack the ability to distinguish anything. A tree, for instance, couldn’t be distinguished from the ground or the sky or any part of its surroundings. There could be no tree/not-tree duality, right?

I see ignorance as consisting, not in holding one view rather than another (except in the empirical context) but in being wedded to some (necessarily dualistic) view or other. For me sin, or "missing the mark", consists in not seeing the world non-dually. — Janus

Being wedded to the view that duality is sin and non-duality is virtue is extremely dualistic, and unrealistic, isn’t it? The best we can do is merely reduce anxiety by quieting our minds. To see non-dually is to not see at all.

:grin: I meant to say juggling. Could be any skill, like swimming or even walking.

Anyway, what model do we learn from? We learn with our own models (such as a model or concept of a ball) to learn or improve particular models, like juggling. Of course, we can learn from other people's models as well, through instruction or just observation.

Nothing interferes along the route and nothing is made up because there is no end state or product of perception in the body. There is no model, no modelling, and nothing analogous to it occurring in there. There is no perception, sense data, bundle of sensations. There is no hypothesizing, constructing, inferencing, predictive processing occurring anywhere between the perceiver and the perceived, nor any in the perceiver as well. — NOS4A2

If there’s no model or prediction then how can we learn a skill like juggling, for instance, and eventually learn it so well that it requires little if any conscious attention?

From the wiki page on New Atheism:

Roger Scruton has extensively criticized New Atheism on various occasions, generally on the grounds that they do not consider the social effects and impacts of religion in enough detail. He has said, "Look at the facts in the round and it seems likely that humans without a sense of the sacred would have died out long ago. For that same reason, the hope of the new atheists for a world without religion is probably as vain as the hope for a society without aggression or a world without death." He has also complained of the New Atheists' idea that they must "set people free from religion", calling it "naive" because they "never consider that they might be taking something away from people."

If this were a sincere criticism it would have to define exactly what the social effects and impacts of religion are, what exactly is ‘being taken away from people’, and explain why only religion can deliver it. But it’s not a sincere criticism and no explanation is possible because it isn’t true.

Hanover avoids the fork, threatens with a pawn on h5.

You know things are not going well when a pawn takes the lead. But perhaps it’s merely a diversion from a deeper sinister plan.

Rooks would fit nicely into those open D & G columns.

My money is on black at this point.

Getting more suspenseful now.

If I lose it’ll be because of I’ve died of old age. — Mikie

:lol:

Indeed, no machine mind could predict the best move against a mind like Hanover mind.

Hmm, no brilliant moves yet. Let's see some brilliant moves, guys.



I know, what you need is the perfect cheer.

Why don't you take issue with the strongest arguments against theisn made by principled atheists (like me or other disbelievers I can name if you can't find them), son, rather than just lazily picking the low-hanging fruit of 'contrarian rabble rousers' as representative strawmen to torch so smugly? — 180 Proof

He just wants it to be known that he's well above the din. I'm grateful for it personally, because it has allowed me the opportunity to use the expression 'above the din' which I didn't realize until now would be so satisfying.

I wasn't talking about intentional mischaracterization. I think many atheists don't think twice when they say things like that. — T Clark

I'm afraid only a theist can correct a mischaracterization of their ideas, particularly if it's unintentional. They can be rather odd and unintuitive.

I agree that there are atheists who intentionally mischaracterize religious ideas out of prejudice. There are also theists who intentionally mischaracterize atheist ideas out of prejudice. Basic tribalism really. Not everyone relates to those they disagree with on that level though, you know.

If I'm wrong why you don't try to clarify what you mean?

And that's what atheists reject. The ineffable doesn't need great big piles of filigreed stonework, or Indian converts, or red letter days to glorify it. — Vera Mont

Yes.

@T Clark seems to be claiming, unless I'm misinterpreting him, that believers only believe in the ineffable, not anything particular, and not the words that are preached to them. Atheists come up with the particulars, all the words, the so-called 'boxes'.

That doesn't seem true, of course.

The only reason that religion works is because God is ineffable and requires some sort of **special access** unavailable to the common folk. Do religious authorities present God or the ineffable? How can they if it is beyond words and mundane experience. Followers must rely on faith. They must have faith in the words (strawmen) of their leaders.

Indeed. I include that in what I said earlier. Perhaps an unintentional straw man argument. — Tom Storm

The problem is that they're all strawmen. Every God ever preached about is a strawman and not the REAL God. God is a boxed-up strawman. Atheists question these boxes of strawmen. They don't question what is beyond the boxes when questioning theistic claims, and they don't make up their own boxes of strawmen.

TC seems to be saying that atheists twist ideas of god into distortions and then use those distortions as evidence that God is a problematic idea. In other words, it's a variation on a straw man argument. — Tom Storm

Now that I think about it a bit more, I think Clark may be saying something different. Basically that God is ineffable so any dumb atheist that comes along with their boxy reason will be invariably off the mark. God cannot fit in a box. The believers know that. Atheists are too clueless to grasp this wonderous truth.

Is that about right, @T Clark ?

You have misunderstood and misused my metaphor. — T Clark

That's a serious accusation and being so deserving of an explanation.

Atheists don't make up religions. Religious leaders do. They box up God, Gods, or whatever. Atheists question these stories or 'boxes'.

Atheism forces God into little boxes and then complains when the boxes don't stack neatly. — T Clark

Rather, atheists complain about the untidiness of the boxes that religious leaders put God into.

We’ll all be DEAD before we finish this game… — Mikie

I’m beginning to think that that’s his basic can’t lose strategy.

Nah, at this pace it'll be just a few short years.

@Hanover

The perfect countermove is for Hanover to kingside castle. Do it! :point:

Oho, Hanover blocks the castle.

In The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit Of Capitalism, Weber believed that the Protestant ethic was the driving force behind the mass action that led to the development of capitalism. Importantly, even after religion became less important in society, these norms of hard work and frugality remained, and continued to encourage individuals to pursue material wealth.

For example, part of the meaning of modern atheism are the unsustainable life-styles we associate with consumer-capitalism, life-styles that Baby Boomers in particular often justify on the basis of their metaphysical belief that "you only live once" . Atheism both drives, and is driven by, consumer capitalism, e.g. retailers preaching to us that we must live this 'one' life to the fullest.

If my opinion is correct, then the rise of sustainable environmentalism throughout the world will be correlated with a rejection of today's widespread atheistic beliefs for metaphysical belief systems that give moral incentive for individuals to live sustainably. — sime

:lol: That's not how it works, actually. When you abandon reason things can get rather counterintuitive.

Better known for their high-dollar political spending, the billionaire Koch brothers have also poured millions into Catholic University’s business school to promote a free-market orthodoxy sharply at odds with the teachings [earthly stewardship] of Pope Francis. — https://prospect.org/culture/koch-brothers-latest-target-pope-francis/