Would you draw a connection between the notion of these 'unanalyzable concepts' and ineffable truths relating to states of higher consciousness?

Re-reading that, I am unsure it makes entire sense, or adequately captures what I'm thinking. Cest la v'ie lol. — AmadeusD

It makes sense and I have no great answer given that my view is that language begins as sounds we use to try to 'give voice' to the prelinguistic and to codify feelings. Once we get any deeper than this we are in a land of baroque Derridean self-reflexivity. I think.

All words are reductive, but concepts don't need to be. I think Bob is trying to ascertain the word-resistant concepts we all accept prior to language.
Comfort and discomfort probably fit here. — AmadeusD

Yes, I was thinking along these lines. I'm not certain these pre-linguistic concepts are 'word resistant' as such - are they not in a sense foundational for later vocabulary?

But I would go further and suggest that "absolute certainty" is a nonsense formed by concatenating two otherwise innocent words. — Banno

Yes, I hinted at this myself earlier.

I don't count "elevated experience and understanding' as being demonstrably more than a feeling. In other words I don't think we can know what the implications of such experiences might be. The guru thing might be helpful for some people, personally I dislike the smell of it. — Janus

Got ya. Fair point.

I see the psychologist Jon Haidt's notion of elevation as having a lot of support, and fitting well with my experience: — wonderer1

Interesting. New one for me but I guess I've felt this intuitively.

The advice is not to talk about such things, but to enact them - whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can do. — Banno

Ha! Yes. Apart from this place, I spend almost no time talking or reading about such matters and am almost entirely a creature of doing.

Perhaps the problem is not, not being able to find "absolute certainty", but the framing of these issues in terms of "absolute certainty". Garbage in, garbage out. — Banno

Could be. Certainty seems to be a kind of pragmatic continuum. I am certain Bob Hawke was a Labor Prime Minister in the 1980's. I am not certain if he was a good prime minister. That kind of thing. But as soon as we get to questions of gods or metaphysical extravagances such as 'enlightenment' or mystical experiences, certainty seems absent.

I believe that it is an altered state of consciousness that seems generally to carries with it a sense of elevated experience and understanding — Janus

That's intriguing. Especially the 'elevated experince and understanding' part of it. What would be an example of this? Are you thinking enlightenment... gurus and such?

I'm saying that someone who would aspire to be an alcoholic would be being a fool (and thus shouldn't want it). But wouldn't be doing anything immoral by being an alcoholic. — fdrake

Got ya.

But the trouble: ethics so elevated now has the status of being written in stone on a mountain top. It is, in its essence, non contingent, absolute, indefeasible. — Astrophel

Yes, I see the problem. Transcendent ethics almost seem to be an ethics of the gaps to me.

For me 'absolute knowledge' refers to knowledge which is true independent of any and all contexts. I don't believe such knowledge is possible, so I am not confusing ordinary knowledge, which is knowledge relative to contexts, with that.

If you cannot be certain what the probability of something being true is, then you would be operating with a mere belief to support your conclusion that your original belief was justified. An infinite regress ensues.

Absolute certainty is possible within contexts. I can be absolutely certain of what I am doing and experiencing right now. If I look outside and I see that it is raining, I can be absolutely certain that it is raining, or if I see a caterpillar climbing a tree, I can be absolutely certain that there is a caterpillar climbing that tree while I am seeing it. But all of such certainty is within the context of the collective representation we call "the world", it has no application beyond that. — Janus

I've also generally held that there is no absolute certainty. And no realm where certainty or truth lives (in the Platonic sense). But I sometimes wonder what is served by adding the word 'absolute'. Isn't certainty finally just a human word, an artifact of language use and convention which can mean various things depending on context?

There are things we can call true because to deny them would result in catastrophe - eating arsenic, jumping from a plane without a parachute, etc. Which unfortunately for my antifoundationalist tendencies suggests that truth (certainly in some instances) is not merely a product of human construction but is grounded in an objective reality that exists independently of our beliefs and perceptions.

On the positive side, having a definition of knowledge or truth is of almost no use in my day-to-day life, so there is that. All I need to know about truth exists in convention, usage or domains of intersubjective agreement.

Cool. I was just wondering which behaviors associated with 'alcoholism' you were referring to. It is possible to use alcohol habitually and at harmful levels but for there to be virtually no impact on your life or that of your family. A lot depends on your level of wealth and how you behave when intoxicated.

A person who wants to be an alcoholic behaves in a manner that intentionally sustains and potentiates their dependence on alcohol. — fdrake

I'm not sure what your intention is in saying a person 'who wants to be an alcoholic'. Do you mean this literally, or do you take it as the implication of their behavior? Many problem drinkers don't want to be this way and others don't even know they are problem drinkers. But I get your boarder point.

Yes. Alcoholism. — fdrake

That's an interesting one. What do you mean by alcoholism? Alcohol use disorder includes a broad range of behaviours.

Wise and witty. Thanks.

It's not really a case of anything. Intuitively, like 90% of people, I feel as if there are non-physical properties to my experience (and the world). I have never seen an adequate explanation of how many things are physical. I have no reason to commit to either, but I have plenty of reason to lean against physicalism, as it is. Its mild. Possibly insignificant. — AmadeusD

Ok. That's reasonable.

Who saysit is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows?
— Tom Storm

referred to two different ideas,
— Tom Storm

Oh, no you don't. Hehe. — AmadeusD

Oops, you're right. I misread my own comments. Apologies. But can't I say that something might seem open ended now but who knows, in time it might not be?

For sure. But my pressure, such as it was, was trying to get you to commit to this as it would require you to basically claim ignorance on everything. — AmadeusD

I do claim ignorance of many subjects - origin of the universe, idealism, gods, consciousness - 'I don't know' seems reasonable to me. Pretty sure no one on this site knows either.

But this;

Who says it is open ended?
— Tom Storm

but who knows?
— Tom Storm

Oh my guy, come on now. — AmadeusD

-referred to two different ideas, so shoving them together seems unfair.

Back to my question, however.

Is your position not a case of a fallacy from ignorance? It may not be, but it seems so. Are you not essentially saying, 'I can't explain consciousness via physicalism, so it must be non-physical.'? Are you a dualist?

non-physical (apart from concepts).
— Tom Storm

Seems like a plain contradiction to me ;) — AmadeusD

Fair enough.

It is said to be the etymological origin of the word 'sin'
— Wayfarer

Ah! Interesting, thanks for that Wayfarer. It is a pleasure to learn something new. :smile: — javi2541997

What Wayfarer also points to is that Christianity (like most faiths) can be made to argue anything at all - it's in the interpretation you choose which may have nothing to do with what the religion may in fact stand for or have originally intended. Many people torture themselves here on earth out of fear of the judgements of god and a self-created violation of holy order.

You're essentially asserting a no true scotsman here — AmadeusD

How so? I'm saying it could be more 'a woo of the gaps' situation, or a fallacy from ignorance, perhaps?

While this is obviously nominally true, It cannot be the case that an open-ended "well something is likely prove it wrong, sometime, somewhere, for some reason" is a valid argument, or defeater. It is self-effacing speculation. — AmadeusD

Who says it is open ended? It might seem that way to you now, but who knows? Actually I am open to the postion of mysterianism which argues we may never know. Open ended ignorance also seems possible.

Or can we - demonstrate - that certain things are almost certain, despite further discovery clearly being able to debunk that position? — AmadeusD

Well, it is the case that science provides reliable but tentative models which are regularly the subject of revision, so there's a sense in which we never arrive at absolute truth.

Otherwise, I don't think anyone saying they have a clue is being honest with themselves so i largely refrain from even speculating. — AmadeusD

I'd can't say either way, although I am skeptical that there is such a phenomenon as the non-physical (apart from concepts). 'Seems' like it isn't enough for me.

They are non-physical properties of experience, even if there is a correlated brain-state. This does not demonstrate that the experience is physical. — AmadeusD

But are you satisfied that it demonstrates the experience is non-physical? How would we demonstrate that conscious experience reflects a non-physical reality? Isn't it an inference based on a lack of data or knowledge?

That is, unless you take the entirety of phenomenal experience as an evolutionarily-required post-hoc sense-making program — AmadeusD

Perhaps that is the case. I have no idea, I'm not an expert on the nature of consciousness.

Anyway - all that aside - what is your explanation of consciousness? Are you a dualist, or more of an embodied cognition guy?

Qualia are experienced as non-physical. — AmadeusD

Is anything we experince non-physical? Can we demonstrate there is anything outside of brain states, physical processes? Asking for a friend.

Ok, but this is really missing the point. Saying "different things can be good or bad for different," people doesn't even require perspectivism, let alone the claim that "good" reduces to simply "I prefer." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your example of heroin didn't make your point for you. That's all I am saying. There are a range of interpretations or perspectives available to us about this (and so many human behaviours) that I hasten to apply terms like good or bad or harmful or harmless to them.

Other than that I’m not really sure I’m arguing for anything in particular, just skeptical about what seems to me to be a reification of ‘good’.

On the broader question of relativism, what I wrote was that I am 'open to it' which is not the same as saying that I am an absolute relativist and that 'I prefer' is the only frame. I agree that some things can be demonstrated to be harmful to health or harmful to human flourishing.

My problem is that this doesn't necessarily imply any oughts or ought nots (other than pragmatically) and I have not heard a convincing argument addressing why we should consider a reification like 'the good' to be more than a pragmatic notion tied to how we achieve our goals.

I've been dipping into some of David Wong's work - he defends moral relativism, but frankly I lack the time or patience to get into this in depth.

Not sure. I guess courage, honesty, etc, are always relative to some criteria of value and a perspective. I think we all tend to imagine that our own take on this is correct. I had a chat with an American friend of my father who said that in his view Trump is one of the most courageous, virtuous men in America right now. Now our take on this will obviously be that this is absurd. But he made his case rationally. I just think his reasoning was bogus.

I mean I find that I don't want to associate too closely with those who seem to be cowardly, deceitful, inconsiderate, dishonest, unreliable, duplicitous, devious, self-serving and so on. — Janus

Oh, I get that. But isn't it interesting that from the perspective of many deceitful, dishonest and devious people, they are courageous and enlightened. And even their 'allies' (for want of a better word) will see courage where you and I might see self-serving. That's what I mean.

[

This seems to be an important question to me. I don't think it helps us at all to think of ethics as transcendental. I don't think ethics is transcendental except in its connection to aesthetics. Beauty is transcendental, and virtue ethics seems to connect virtues with what is generally attractive to humans. Courage is attractive, cowardice is not. Kindness is attractive, cruelty is not. Consideration of others is attractive, disregard of others is not, And so on. — Janus

That's interesting. I haven't thought of virtue ethics this way, but it makes sense. I often find myself using aesthetics as prism for viewing much of my experince.

On the other hand, we could ask why these things are attractive, and we might give pragmatic reasons for their attractiveness. The virtues promote social harmony and the vices (those that consist in behavior towards others at least) may lead to social discord. — Janus

Yes, and that seems like a reasonable next step. Thanks.

Do you subscribe to virtue ethics yourself?

Much of this would seem to be perspectival, 'virtue' perhaps being somewhat rubbery.

:up:

I am a little bewildered at how often I've heard versions of this in response to submissions that God either doesn't exist, or if It does, is beyond good and bad, right and wrong, (and all other dualisms arising only to a species like us who have constructed difference.) — ENOAH

I guess it is a vested interest of many religious views to imagine that only the right god/spiritual belief can provide morality. Of course religious folk, just like secular folk, have no access to an objective morality. Morality is always an act of either interpreting or creating what we believe to be right.

This was the point of the reference to the drug addict. Not that "heroin is an objective bad," but rather that someone whose drug problem has ruined their life can claim, with good warrant, "it was not good for me to begin doing drugs." — Count Timothy von Icarus

And the person for whom the drug has made it possible to continue living by making life bearable has a differnt perspective. I don't think its so easy to avoid from the perspectival nature of most matters.

There are some very good studies on the phenomenology of truth, the basic aspects of experience from which the notion emerges. Good metaphysical explanations of truth then need to explain this, to explain this adequately, which is easier said than done. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have no metaphysical explanation of truth. Truth seems to be an abstraction and clearly means quite different things in different contexts.

I personally believe that every sin, lie or bad action has consequences — javi2541997

Why? What demonstration of this do you have? This sounds more like an odd compulsion.

That is what it is about... Suffering from the anxiety of being aware that I had done terrible things. How can I heal this? — javi2541997

There's nothing to heal. You have chosen to view it like this.

Because without God everything is permitted' as Dostovesky would say... Well, I would say: Without a spirit, everything is permitted. — javi2541997

But as Zizek points out, believers in god commit unspeakable atrocities in its name. Dostoevsky (if he wrote this) is wrong. It should be: 'If there is a god, then anything is permitted.'

Of course Dostoevsky didn't really put it like this, Sartre did in a paraphrase of Dostoevsky. In Dostoevsky the line closest is in The Brothers Karamazov a character asks: “But what will become of men then?” I asked him, “without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?”

If I lied to my parents is due to trying to flirt with a woman. Nature surpassed my innocent spirit. — javi2541997

I often found it useful to lie to my parents. It made life easier. I have no regrets and now they are dead. Game over. :wink:

An atheist background would affect me in the sense of denying the existence of a spirit. — javi2541997

What is spirit?

Remember too that some atheists believe in reincarnation, ghosts and other supernatural stories. Atheism is just about the god belief.

I remember when the song came out. I forgot about that particular shooting.

Do you not like Mondays? — AmadeusD

I hate Mondays. But I'm a cunt most days... :wink:

That's funny. I live near the site of an almost forgotten mass shooting back in the 1980's in Melbourne. I was there yesterday and talking to a friend on the phone. The guy shot 13 people, killing 8 and he finally jumped from the building, plunging to his death. 'You never hear of a disgruntled 22 year-old woman doing this kind of shit,' my friend observed dryly.

I don't knwo a single person who hasn't grown out of Nietzsche once they get a job. Literally none. Though, half of them decided Zizek was the next guy, so it's probably that I went to High School with idiots. — AmadeusD

That's very amusing. Good quesion however - who covers the same space in philosophical thinking in more recent times? I suspect you hate the postmodernists, but I'd say this is where Nietzsche's type of project (perspectivism and antifoundationalism) landed. Rorty was big on him - Deleuze, Adorno, Derrida...

Could be. If people find Peterson helpful I don't have an issue with that. There's plenty of things that don't work for me that work for others. Here's the thing. I'm around Peterson's age, a little younger. But I wonder what I would think of him if I were a young man today, say aged 20. Many of my friends at that age were seduced by Nietzsche, copying his prose style and making similar sounding declarations as though they had thought them up. Would Peterson, if he had been available to me then, appealed? Would I have started spouting Peterson's? I have no idea.

Both show him in a very different light and use his work as jumping points, rather than just political stuff. — AmadeusD

I've seen them. The GQ interview is my favorite of his that I've seen. I've watched at least 30. I've also watched around 6-10 of his podcasts and seen some of his early lectures. His comments on Dostoevsky often dismay me as I dislike him as a writer, apart from the Gambler which is a rare terse and targeted accoutn of an issue (in this case addiction) which so undermined D himself.

Churches have always been (and they still are) a place where people feel they belong to. — javi2541997

It might be better to put it: where some people feel they belong. There are probably just as many people (perhaps more?) who find churches cold, intimidating, unremittingly vulgar or simply unsafe on account of having been abused (or know people abused) by religious clerics and laypeople. Just saying. :wink:

We all have to make a decision. It's quite possible that we'll make a wrong decision, that goes with the territory. — Wayfarer

:up: True that.

I think you're conflating a few things about him here. HIs demeanor is not anxious at all. He's quick-tempered. Perhaps you're seeing that? He usually sits laid-back, laughs through responses and concentrates adequately when it's required. — AmadeusD

Sure, I might be wrong - I'm just describing what I see. I have worked in the area of mental health for 34 years, so I'm not flying blind. I just looked him up - seems like he had a significant addiction to benzodiazepines for anxiety. So there is that.

I have seen him interviewed many times but not for a couple of years or more. I have no useful view of his work.

Spoken from the true secularist perspective! — Wayfarer

Is that an attempt at a slight? As in - 'What would you know, you're a secularist?'

I think my position on faith is fairly robust. What approach do you have to demonstrate which person's faith is correct and which one is not?

You also have conscience. — Wayfarer

Consciences are relative. :wink: Pretty sure those South Africans slept well at night with a clear conscience.

And your statement is incomprehensible as well. If we are not motivated by perfection, by truth; ideas which are synonymous, then what is the source of these motivations? It cannot JUST be internal. There has to be resonance with the external. I would likewise say it cannot just be external. — Chet Hawkins

I have long suspected that we embrace ideas which appeal to us aesthetically and emotionally but we take them as facts. Sounds like you relish notions of perfection and objectivity, two ideas I don't find convincing. I recognize that humans love their absolutes and their god surrogates. No point arguing further since there's no common ground. :wink:

What I meant was, for those who know, belief is no longer necessary, but that up until then, it has to be taken on faith. — Wayfarer

The problem with this is there is nothing which can't be justified with such an appeal to faith. I remember sitting down with South African whites in the 1980's (they were sincere Christians). They told me that I didn't understand apartheid and that it was god's will, in fact they had it on faith that apartheid was good and that 'the blacks need it'.

Now while this is clearly racist bullshit, where do we draw the line between a legitimate appeal made to faith and one which is dubious? Could it be that all we have is reason after all?

Do we not have good reason to fear those who claim to 'know' but can only justify this knowledge based on some version of ineffability or transcendence?

Seems like you don’t understand the point made. No matter. I can’t speak for him but Josh’s does not subscribe to notions of ‘objective truth’ and I would be sympathetic to this. I certainly don’t believe in perfection.