For example - Arthur Schopenhauer is regarded as a textbook atheist. — Wayfarer

I think of him more as a classic crank (in the Orwell use of the word).

I mean, I'm not even going to argue the point, beyond saying that I would have thought it better to be part of a plan than part of an accident ;-) . — Wayfarer

Fair enough, but you see I prefer the notion of accident. And I think this is a question of taste. I happen to like the random, the unplanned, the enigmatic.

But you seem to have red flags about whatever can be called religious. — Wayfarer

Fair point. I'm not a big fan of any meta-narratives in general. I think I dislike social media and pop music more than religion if that means anything. :wink:

Anyway let's move on. Thanks for your continued nuanced contributions.

Are secular humanists unable to be hateful bastards? No, they are able. — BC

Sure - my little joke was, can we name the secular humanist equivalent to the Westboro Baptists? Former Baptist, now public atheist, Matt Dillahunty often says that the Westboro mob are far more faithful to the Bible than progressive Christians. Maybe. Of course secular humanists are capable of hate. All people are.

The point I'm labouring in all this, is the philosophical one - that (true or false) religious philosophies provide a framework within which to situate humankind in the Cosmos, and not just as the accidental collocation of atoms (Bertrand Russell's phrase) - which seems to me the bottom line of secular philosophy. — Wayfarer

And I guess I keep saying is that it isn't a forgone conclusion that the former is better than the latter. It seems more about aesthetics or personal taste. There's not a good deed going that hasn't also been done by a secular humanist or atheist, nor a vile crime available that hasn't been committed by a devoted religious person.

not just as the accidental collocation of atoms (Bertrand Russell's phrase) - which seems to me the bottom line of secular philosophy. — Wayfarer

How would you demonstrate that, apart from, perhaps, being less attractive than religious language (intention, connection and oneness, etc), the latter is in some way inferior - which is essentially what you are pointing to.

We can point to almost any period in history, when religion was dominant - when people believed we were situated as part of a divine plan - and the culture wasn't any kinder or more connected or tolerant. It seems to me that a lot of progressive reform about the status of women, children, gay people was taken up by non religious deists or freethinkers. Hence the old bar-fighting Bishop Spong back in the day:

The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the Bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.

- Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong

Not exactly representative of anything other than psychopathy. — BC

I did say extreme example, but there are many other churches who hold similar hateful views about women, gay people and culture. The interesting thing for me is there doesn't seem to be an equivalent Hillsboro Secular Humanists. :razz:

:up:

you have accepted the almost ubiquitous presumption that philosophical enquiry consists in self-reflection. I think that presumption mistaken. — Banno

I only thought self-reflection was a frequent starting point (not philosophical of itself) but one that may lead you to explore what is true and to examine the presuppositions held personally and by culture. But as a non-philosopher, I can't say I know what philosophy is. One reason why I'm here.

It's the philosophers' inept response to "everyone likes a good book" - when you read that, do you immediately look for counter instances? — Banno

I'm worse than that. If I see people queuing for something, I'm immediately suspicious of it.

So for you, what makes philosophy worthwhile? I think I read you say somewhere that ethics should replace religion. Is that right? Is so, what did you have in mind?

Twisted and degraded forms of religious belief are not necessarily illustrative of what was originally meaningful about them. — Wayfarer

That's true of course. But when did that original meaning become lost; was there ever a golden era of Christianity, say? Luther obviously though it happened hundreds of years ago.

It's not good for you, and probably ought be discouraged in children. Certainly philosophy is not something for adolescent minds.

If you have a choice. — Banno

That's a tantalizing thing to write. Do you feel like exploring this any further so I get the nuances?

I often wonder is there a point where useful self-reflection becomes philosophy? Is it there a demarcation point where we become aware or our presuppositions and vulnerable to philosophical enquiries, demolitions and glib answers. I always found philosophy too difficult and tendentious to get much involved.

As is well known, Nietszche - I'm not an admirer - forecast that nihilism would be the default condition of Western culture, which had supposedly killed its God. Heidegger likewise believed that the root cause of nihilism was the technological way of thinking that has come to dominate modern society, reducing everything quantifiable facts, and leaving no room for the kinds of intangible values and meanings that are essential to human existence, which he sought to re-articulate in a non-religious framework (albeit many suggest that his concerns and preoccupations remained religious in some sense.) — Wayfarer

I understand this but I would suggest the case hasn't been fully made and is an opinion or judgement. And people repeat it endlessly so that it's almost, ironically, an article of faith. Modern culture is bereft: discuss.

Martin Luther thought Christianity was a racket of transactional materialism back in the 16th Century when religion was unassailable.

What do you mean by 'the purported nihilism of religion'? — Wayfarer

Well, for me Islamic State or Westboro Church might be seen as examples of more extreme instantiations. But any religion that seeks to restrict the full expression of what it means to be human and denigrate rights, might be seen to have strong nihilistic inclinations - the root of nihilism here being humans are nothing but dirt before god and divine command morality. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, many forms of Protestantism do this. And the actual functioning of significant aspects of Catholicism, which seem to abandon all moral values in order to protect pedophile priests seems an apropos example. Needless to say, I am not arguing that all religion is bad just that it doesn't necessarily affirm human life.

Some good general advice would be not to do philosophy if you can avoid it. — Banno

Ha! A jest or a truth?

It's not fortuitous, but intentional, as a matter of definition. — Wayfarer

It's still our fortune that god did it and we may benefit.

But much of this argument hinges on very specific, expressions or versions of religion.

How could we determine the difference between the purported nihilism of secularism and the potential nihilism of religion? If religion had the same cultural prominence today as it did 300 years ago, would our culture be much less nihilistic? How would we be better off?

I don't think so. Imagine if someone is suicidal for mental health reasons. I would want to give them a reason to live. They may have formed the belief that life is pointless and meaningless. False beliefs can motivate people do harmful things and reach bad conclusions. — Andrew4Handel

I don't see how this is related to whether a lack of belief isfunctionally the same as disbelief, as I think I have illustrated.

I assume you don't believe in in the deity Ahura Mazda - like any gods, he can't be disprove, but I am assuming you live as though he doesn't exist. That's my point.

As various philosophers (including Adorno) have observed, this is associated with the upsurge of nihilism, and the view of mankind as the fortuitous product of chance and physical necessity. — Wayfarer

Isn't the view of mankind as the fortuitous product of theism and divine necessity just as lopsided and potentially dire?

Don't you think it's a rather easy charge to make? How could we determine the difference between the purported nihilism of secularism and the potential nihilism of religion? If religion had the same cultural prominence today as it did 300 years ago, would our culture be much less nihilistic? How would we be better off?

But an issue here is the contest between religious lore, containing many symbolic and allegorical depictions of the human condition, on the one hand, with an attitude from which the human subject is altogether removed, or treated exclusively as phenomenon, on par with any other object of analysis (the 'view from nowhere'). — Wayfarer

I think it remains to be demonstrated how this matters other than speculative ruminations about what we may have lost (unclear though that seems).

We are talking about legal lies here and giving men access to women's identities is a legal and existential lie being forced on us

Women should not have to accomodate men in their spaces and awards because these men have chosen to feminise themselves. — Andrew4Handel

It's probably important to try to bracket off personal experiences and trauma from an understanding of a broader social issue. While lived experience can sometimes be a helpful frame, it can also colour and distort a person's views.

In my work life, I have only ever used unisex bathrooms. In over 30 years it has never been an issue.

For my money it is important in life not to be too concrete about human behaviour. I see trans women (and some men) at work. Have done for many years. They quite properly use women's services and bathrooms without incident or problems. Functionally it works. Humans have the capacity to be inclusive and accommodating.

Sure, anyone can dig out some horror stories - as you can about any human behavior. But a deliberate focus only on examples where things might have gone wrong does a disservice to any social issue.

But you can compare it to Pascal's wager and whether there is anything to lose by believing or not believing in God. — Andrew4Handel

Two clear problems with Pascal's wager - 1) Which god/s do you pretend to believe in? If you settle on the Anglican Christ, boy is Allah going to be pissed. 2) You can't fake a belief - you are either convinced or you are not convinced. And pretending to believe is not going to fool any deities. Even if you manage to pick the correct deity or version of that deity to believe in. :worry:

One issue about the truth is what to do after you have discovered it. How would you react if there was proven to be an afterlife? And how should we react if we could prove there was no afterlife and why? — Andrew4Handel

Hard to say. But even if someone can prove that consciousness survives death, what of it? It says nothing of itself about whether Hinduism (say) is true or not. We would actually need to know there is an afterlife AND why and how this is the case to derive any coherent meaning from it.

I think that if we don't know something we should live as if we don't know it. — Andrew4Handel

Isn't living like you don't know functionally no different than living like you don't believe? In the case of gods and goddesses - if I don't know, then I have no reason to believe - no reason to hold sacrifices or prayers or follow religious rules. And therefore I behave as if they are not a thing.

Do you hold a view that all problems are solvable if the intellect or computation capacity is sufficiently high enough?

I think that no after life has problematic implications for life and meaning and that moral nihilism is a negative conclusion but could be true.

It could be decided our behavior is highly unethical such as failure to help the poor and disadvantaged and global inequality. I think creating new children is ethically problematic. — Andrew4Handel

Well, you're not going to be alone with these sorts of ideas. Many people I know have been aflame with such notions since they were teenagers, decades ago.

I can't imagine how an afterlife would make sense, but that's more about me than a philosophical argument. Personally, I think not having a belief in an afterlife makes many of us more concerned about the only life we do have, which matters more than if it were just some brief stepping stone on the way to Allah and paradise. I think this likely to intensify the motivation to do something substantive about social justice and climate change - at least that's how it has played out for most of the secular humanists I have known.

I was watching Rick Roderick the other day and he pointed out that the best books, whether in philosophy or not, are those that produce the most, and the most diverse, interpretations. I agree with him. The idea that philosophers, by means of clarity and brevity, can pin down the meaning of their works, has not stood up to scrutiny.

That’s not to say all interpretations are equally good though. — Jamal

Fair point. It was more personal taste - and what I should have said is that I am not sufficiently immersed in philosophy to obtain useful readings from complex works.

Generalizing, we can say that philosophy is critical: critical of prevailing beliefs, certainly fanatical or fundamentalist beliefs, but perhaps more importantly, beliefs that seem obvious. — Jamal

A lot of people would probably agree. In this vein, I guess we've been in a period where the enlightenment project and the presuppositions of science are themselves under scrutiny, and debunking physicalism seems to be a key attraction. More and more people are reaching for the word scientism.

There are two big negatives on the periphery of much philosophical discussion - inadequate philosophy used by atheist polemicists and bad speculative quantum physics used by advocates of the 'supernatural '- a word some people think of as a lazy pejorative. Both approaches turn a lot of people off the more serious arguments presented by both orientations.

For me as a layperson, there's philosophy I can use or learn from and philosophy for academics who relish jargon saturated, recondite deliberations about thinkers so intricate or verbose, no one can seemingly agree about the correct reading of their work.

Reality is a donut-hole, or nothing out of something. — Thus Spoke 180 Proof

As you ramble on through life, Brother,
Whatever be your goal,
Keep your eye upon the doughnut,
And not upon the hole.
- Unknown

That's perfectly reasonable and I can roll with that. I am interested in metaphysics and ontology. But owing to time limitations, I tend to look for the broad brushstrokes and count on people like yourself to do the hard thinking. :pray: It would possibly be helpful to flesh this idea out a little more by way of looking at some of the potential implications of monism.

Why Heidegger came to my mind, I'm not sure, as I'm by no means an expert in his philosophy, but I think he too grasps that this kind of insight requires a different way of being in the world. The point being, there are precedents in philosophy for the idea, but it takes some study to begin to grasp what it means. — Wayfarer

Yes, I guess I took this as a given. But as an idealist are you not an ontological monist? How would you tentatively resolve the notion of different beings as expression of a great mind/cosmic consciousness? Or is your idealism of a different ontological status?

Ok. I thought some expressions of monism (idealism) understand humans as being dissociated metacognitive alters from the one source, but still with their own experiences. No reason why we shouldn't do the right thing by ourselves?

This is your area - any thoughts on the above?

:up:

Can you say how?

If you were told that no matter how hard you tried, you will never ever reach perfection, that flaw is proverbially "a neccesary evil", that perfection and imperfection are a mutually dependent dynamic.

How would it make you feel? — Benj96

I don't think I've ever lived in a world where this is a question that concerns me. 'Perfection' is a word. I just do things to the best of my capacity and move on. I can't imagine perfection even being on the table. It might concern me if I was a piano soloist or some kind of craftsperson, but even then...

Ideals exist for a reason. Realism also exists for a reason. How do approach them? — Benj96

I reflect on actions I take sometimes to see if they are consistent with my beliefs and practices, but I don't get too preoccupied by this. I am a pragmatist (in the non-philosophical sense).

Morality has failed and we have lost millions to war and genocide and preventable famine etc. And quite a lot of this seems to have been based around moral certainty and false "truths". — Andrew4Handel

Morality hasn't failed. People are flawed and no moral system can guarantee compassion and generosity. Never has - whether we are serving gods or some political ideology.

The problem that I see we have is that we cannot say "genocide is wrong" and that be a factual statement. This could lead to moral nihilism.
The truth may be that nothing is right or wrong and there is no justice. — Andrew4Handel

Humans can't help but chose values and modes of being, so I think this is wrong. We quite readily develop an ethical systems on the principle of harm minimization and human flourishing. Just about all moral systems in the end boil down to these simple principles.

Humans build the ethical systems they want to suit cultures and times and situations and this has always been the case. Although perhaps the choices are a bit richer today than 200 years ago. To say genocide is wrong is a shared community value most cultures hold as true. But we know there are tyrants who don't care. That's always been the case. We are no less exposed to potential chaos now than ever before in history.

What's changed?

And this is what was sort of referred to in The Rorty et al discussion I posted. Would you say to Martin Luther King "But who is concerned about any of this? Are you in a position to usher in a new world of conceptual understanding for humanity?"
Would you challenge his life and world changing statements by questioning his world view, authority and the truth value of his statements?

There are occasions where every little bit of activism and fight for your truth and values is vital. — Andrew4Handel

But the point is not what anyone says to Dr King. The point is everyone comes with a perspective. I do not have Dr King's perspective. Additionally, I was referring to your discussion about the nature of truth, not what one does about social justice as they go about their business. Beliefs and theories are cheap. What matters is what people actually do.

Are you saying action is more important than philosophical theory and justification? What problem are you working to solve?

I mentioned the book The One, by Heinrich Pas, earlier in the thread - see this Aeon essay by the author with a synopsis of some of the ideas in that book. (Also worth taking the time to peruse the reader comments and author responses.) — Wayfarer

Very interesting article. The comments and responses were indeed fascinating.

I feel that somethings are undeniably true and preserving the truth is valuable and that we rely on truths to negotiate life and I see no value in a kind of "anything goes interpretive relativism" outside of genuinely ambiguous things that have proven good grounds to dispute. — Andrew4Handel

Extreme relativism is fairly rare. Sounds like you may be frightened of the postmodernists. I think that ship probably sailed decades ago.

Truth is an abstraction and does not work the same way wherever it is sought or found - there's mathematical truth, historical truth, cultural truth and subjective truth about ourselves, etc. To say the square root of 64 is 8, is a different type of truth from the statement we should not harm children. Truth may be necessary or contingent. And what about perspectival truths - the beliefs people hold as true, often without good reason - presuppositions, axioms, etc?

Somethings may not have truth value like moral claims and I think it is best to acknowledge this and put morality on fact based footing rather than have to create a society on unsustainable fictions unless that is a commitment we want to make. — Andrew4Handel

How does one put morality on a fact based footing? Personally I think that 'unstainable fiction' may be a good definition of society. Everything eventually changes, even that which we consider the immutable social order.

But who is concerned about any of this? Are you in a position to usher in a new world of conceptual understanding for humanity? There are many people from a gamut of diverse religious backgrounds who think moral truths originate from god. They believe this is true. Is it likely that we will ever usher in a world where everyone agrees on what is true?

I'd phrase it as "Cooperation being a 'means' to a goal (wellbeing or flourishing), not the goal itself", but that is essentially the same. — Mark S

That's fine.

To me the most interesting aspect of morality is whether anyone can demonstrate objective goals.

No, that's cool. Thanks for the response, I was just looking for an overview. But it's moving away from the OP. Thanks.

I understand all that and you're right. Personally I doubt that 'reality' can be understood by human beings. But I think we do pretty well with our slice (or perspective) of whatever it is we access. I'm just wary of claims that science is faith based (the presuppositions are another case entirely).

Agree. As I read it, Rorty and Derrida, and presumably other postmodernist/poststructuralists, dismantle the notion of foundationalism on the basis that a statement's truth or a particular discourse is really only ever verifiable in terms of other statements and discourses. So foundationalism isn't really a possibility for them. There is no irrefragable piece of knowledge that founds any thought system - not even the cogito. If this approach involves an act of performative self-refutation, or engenders a regress problem, that only seems to further suggest the inability to obtain a foundational justification. Thoughts?

These metaphysical assumptions are not themselves subject to empirical verification but are instead based on faith in the rationality of the universe and in the ability of human beings to understand it. — Wayfarer

I wonder if this is a bit of a stretch. At least with science, for the most part, we are able to identify regularities and make predictions. There's nothing available like this for religious faith - the claims, the fruits of that faith are not repeatable or experienced publicly. I think it might be a better comparison to say that religion deals in faith and science deals in reasonable expectations. Metaphysical assumptions underpinning the scientific enterprise are a different matter again and a good scientist when pushed on these might say, 'I don't know,' rather that the faithful's answer to everything, 'God did it.'

Is there a difference for you between presuppositions and foundationalism?

Morality as Cooperation Strategies can come to Utilitarianism's rescue by limiting moral means to cooperation strategies that do not exploit others. This eliminates at least most traditional objections to Utilitarianism. — Mark S

Sorry Mark, I still haven't followed how we locate or arrive at corporation strategies that do not exploit others. Surely there are many potential cooperation strategies that can or do exploit others?

I see your point.

It's true that everyone holds presuppositions that enable them to take the next steps in their thinking and beliefs. Not sure this implies foundationalism with a capital F, however. It gets messy when one says (as I often have) that they don't believe in metanarratives (like theism or Platonism or progress). But to have an organized anti-system is to have a system, right?

Which is why I usually say I hold that human thought is paradoxical and that much of what we call reality is human projection based on our limited perspective. From this 'dimly lit' vantage point I generally hold that I (or any of us) don't have enough information or wisdom to make reliable judgements about the nature of reality.