I’m refuting their justification for its rightness and have explained thus. — schopenhauer1

The point is they don't like sudden, far reaching changes. It's a preference, it's not as simple as right or wrong.

I work in an organisation which has been very stable for a few years. 10 years ago it was in tumult. I disliked that period of chaos greatly. I now value the stability and the people who are in key roles. It's not perfect but it is the best it can be from my perspective. I do not want to see any big changes to this organisation because I don't want stability and predictability to be threatened. I am a conservative in relation to any big change being suggested. Am I aware that this stability can't last forever and that change is inevitable and has been the case in the past? You bet. That has no bearing on my preference for conservative change only.

The 'aesthetic faithful' was referring to the group of people we were talking about in the OP. This was a separate point to where we ended up - talking about people who love life. As I said of this second group most I've known do not have any religious beliefs.

I have no idea why you would raise idea of beauty in suffering or lessons to be learned by suffering. So far you are the only one to have raised this.

Why did you capitalise because? Anyway... it's a very simple belief. They don't like sudden and big changes that are imposed by others through war, governments, businesses. The fact that society does change is beside the point and unconnected to their perspective. You can still resist and dislike significant change in a world where changes have been made.

I don't think the point I am making about the aesthetic faithful is connected to the loving life people. Many of those confounding folk who love life do not hold any religious beliefs. They are not motivated by aesthetics.

Huh? I have not given my view on this subject, just an account of how some people think. I learned many years ago that some people adore life and celebrate it, even those who have been exposed to torture, trauma and tragedy. I have also learned that some other people hold the opposite view and will never understand that first group and will spend their days puzzling over the first group's ebullience with something approaching resentment and incredulity.

I think my quote sufficiently refuted their purported aims as cherry picking. — schopenhauer1

I wouldn't think that example works, but you might find a better one that does. Radical change from the past is accommodated and becomes the tradition of the future. A conservative doesn't look back throughout history and try to turn back the clock after thousands of years, right? That's not conservatism, that's a belated counterrevolutionary. A conservative isn't going to wear 17th century breaches. He's going to wear the more conservative choice of his time. Probably a traditional suit.

Over and out. — Nickolasgaspar

Literally, it seems.

You got to stop posting pictures of Jordan Peterson, Prax. People will talk.

I find the thing in life is to remember that people don't share my experiences, my views or my accounts of reality and why should they? I suspect that just as some people have a ginormous sex drive, other people have phenomenal zest for living, which cancels out the negatives. Maybe it's chemical... :wink:

Ha! That would be taking things too literally, even if it did make me laugh. I think conservatives are gradualists and understand that life has been upturned historically by great tumults - as you say - the one god taking over from the many, but also wars, social changes like unions, etc - read Burke on the French Revolution - a formative document on the implications of revolution for conservative thinking. Conservatives obviously choose their projects - feminism may be an old and venerable tradition by now but I suspect conservatives still find some of its notions problematic. But conservatism isn't static, it accepts change but it doesn't like revolutionary change or government implemented social change like affirmative action, etc.

Well, they either don't see it or they choose aesthetic relief as per terror management theory. Most people I've met over the years think life is a privilege and mostly enjoyable. We can either say they are deluded, lying or living a different life...

Thanks. I guess my question is pondering the extent to which people find theism and, for want of a better term, the 'supernatural' attractive because it appeals to them aesthetically. While the loose ends and incomplete circle of atheism is a turn off.

I hope you don't mind if I jump in here, — Jamal

Not at all.

One thing I can't do well is games, like chess and poker. — Jamal

Now that's interesting, I don't do games at all. But I have no interest in them. I played a few boardgames as a kid and that's it. No cards, video games, nothing for 40 years.

telling oneself and others that one is borderline innumerate might just reinforce a psychological block that stands in the way of your mathematical genius. — Jamal

Ha! It would be nice to contemplate the possibilities, but alas I'll never find out.

Like music, it demands constant practice to stay on the horse, and without that it becomes very difficult to get back on. — Jamal

That's interesting. A form of math fitness, maybe. I hadn't considered that.

Guilty. Just my math background showing. — jgill

I hadn't noticed. Digression. Do you think there is a math brain or a type of person to whom math speaks? I ask simply because I can't do any math at all. I am borderline innumerate.

That amuses and frustrates me, yet I was guilty of that harmless insanity myself once. — plaque flag

It's a phase for some and a psychological affliction for others. I had a stage when I was around 10-11 of thinking everything was a simulation - although I lacked the wording for this back in the 1970's. I thought of it as a movie being run in my brain by parties unknown.

A lot of things can go wrong in the introspection phase it seem to me...

I'd even claim that the concept of raw experience is itself a philosophical construction — plaque flag

:up: I can see that.

You could put it in your manner and he might agree, though he would put less emphasis on Plato per se. I think he'd simply say that, we are biological creatures like any other - albeit with unique properties (like language). For us to be able to have any nature, we have to be constrained to give shape to our experience — Manuel

Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.

Difference among these two being, Cudworth give a much richer account of innate ideas, Kant seems to deny them, arguing that we have certain "filters" that are innate, but not ideas per se. — Manuel

A useful distinction.

Wasn't thinking of you to be honest. But why not?

But based on what I do have, it seems more reasonable to me to say that a planet is made of non-conscious matter, than to say it is made of ideas, which requires a subject. When things become this abstract, one is poking in the dark. — Manuel

I hear you. It's a wicked problem. Even the notion of consciousness is something I'm pretty sure we couldn't conceive of without language.

I just want to avoid the po-mo orientation in which everything is language and nothing is ever complete. — Manuel

But I can't help but find this account compelling. I'm a reluctant post-modernist by osmosis and age. For me nothing is ever complete and I can't imagine myself or my world without language.

It struck me listening to Chomsky recently, in his lambasting of postmodern relativism, that he seems to invoke a structural version of Platonism as a foundational grounding to avoid relativism. In other words, humans seem to have innate limitations or capacities inherent in our cognitive apparatus (is this neo-Kantian?). Not everything is possible or endlessly open if we have such limitations. I wonder also if this is an analogue for some kind of notion of human nature. Thoughts?

Don't take my word for it. Anil Seth says:

Despite a revival in the scientific study of consciousness over recent decades, the only real consensus so far is that there is still no consensus. — Fooloso4

:up:

All I know about H is that for a human being to be is to exist temporally in the stretch between birth and death. Being is time. How in essence does Heidegger understand being-in-the-world as a unitary mode? Is it held in the notion that I am my world?

Yes, I think the case is that we know discover the world through experience, I literally can't think of another way, it all leads back to experience and how we interpret data. — Manuel

Seems appropriate. But at some point experience becomes language and visa versa. Experience ends up being understood through language and I struggle to understand to what extent I 'process' through language.

But I wouldn't go as far as to say that an object, say, a planet, is literally made up of ideas. — Manuel

But hypothetically without preconceptions, ideas or language, what exactly is a planet? It seems to me to be an act of constructionism, not merely raw experience. There are understandings, if you like and then we seem to order, contextualize, name.

So what do you think? Is “define your terms!” always or often or ever a legitimate imperative? — Jamal

I will sometimes ask how a person is using a particular term as this is more useful than a 'correct' definition. People who get stuck on specific definitions are often irritating pedants and seem to miss the point.

Thank you. I enjoy these kinds of discussions, perhaps because I'm from outside philosophy. You are an engaging and informed interlocutor.

It's only that design in nature seems obvious to me, but obviously there are those who don't agree, and I can't think of a way to make the case. — Wayfarer

Agree. It is more of a faith based position it seems to me. BTW, I am not saying there is no design in nature, I merely say it can't be demonstrated.

I have no insight about Life but I am satisfied that human lives are random events, with no capital 'm' meaning, only more modest meanings we inherit though culture and/or make for ourselves.

Can you demonstrate that there is design in nature?
— Tom Storm

I myself don't think it needs to be demonstrated, but that if I need to demonstrate it, then probably nothing I could say would be effective. — Wayfarer

Ok. That's surely an outlier position, but let's get back to this later.

You seem to have argued essentially that you don't like Darwinism because it is unsatisfying to you aesthetically and is used to render meaning an arbitrary phenomenon. You are uncomfortable with that because there is an abundance of significant classical literature (and more modern work) which argues otherwise. This material and the perennialist tradition resonates with you. The application of Darwinism and scientism has robbed our contemporary understanding of reality of enchantment and transcendent purpose, along with the possibility of intelligibility and truth (the evolutionary argument against naturalism).

You then argue that representatives of Darwinism, like Dawkins or Dennett, are inadequate scholars and bungled representatives of a nihilistic era. They are stunted in their conception of being and ignorant of the important questions of philosophy.

But other than citing writers who deride forms of Darwinism or elevate models of higher consciousness and ultimate meaning, what can you demonstrate?

Evolution has the appearance of design. What reasons do you have for concluding that evolution has a goal or a designer, if this is what you are suggesting? I'm not aware of you making the argument and forgive me if you have earlier. Cut and paste if this helps.

Yes. Those on the Dawkins forum - the very first forum I joined - constantly used this defence against his many howlers, notwithstanding that his books are in the ‘Religion’ section of shops all over the world. — Wayfarer

So you are still not providing arguments, you're just trashing Dawkins and now it's his fault that some bookshops put his work in the 'Religion' section. Is that not a source of amusement rather than scorn?

If the apparent design in nature is only apparent, and not actual, that must be the implication, mustn’t it? — Wayfarer

I guess so. Can you demonstrate that there is design in nature and by extension a designer?

.

He did a great job as a science explainer, but he is not very good at philosophy. — Wayfarer

As we all know Dawkins is not a philosopher. But none of this answers whether we have evidence that evolution is directed by a designer, however we wish to formulate this notion.

Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. — Wayfarer

I'm no expert on Dawkins work but whenever I have read or heard him talk about the 'appearance of design' he is generally providing a rebuttal to some intelligent design proponent.

One of the key problems in dealing with Dawkins' work is separating the blunt polemical from the elaborately scientific. He's trying to be both a bar room brawler (albeit a tweedy, polite one) and a scientist. The two get mixed up and often deliberately so by people who dislike his work.

Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens? — Wayfarer

And animals (birds nests, beaver's dams, etc.) Probably not.

Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.

This just sounds like the rhetoric of resentment or an ad hominem based on impugning motives. It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers.

One of Dawkins books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'. — Wayfarer

Yes, I've read it and used to own it. I already said it was a polemical title, but you'll note the book is full of descriptions of a highly complex interactive process as organisms interact with their environment and change over time. Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? Do you have evidence that evolution is directed by higher consciousness? Or is this just an inference, a fallacy of incredulity wherein one can't imagine how it works without some kind of magic?

Overall, some of Chomsky's ideas are uncomfortably close to innatism for the liking of empiricist philosophers. There's something altogether too platonic about his 'innate grammar'. — Wayfarer

Perhaps. I just watched him defend human morality as constrained by innate structural limitations - or something of the sort - against arguments by that scoundrel and relativist Foucault.

dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker - which I don't. — Wayfarer

This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right?

Whatever Dawkins or Dennett say in polemical mode, I'm not sure words like 'dumb' or 'blind' help us with a full understanding. The evolutionary process is clearly complex and tailored and remarkable enough, without recourse to anthropomorphising nature.

I read him as saying you should not project transcendent meaning/purpose on evolution as the only correct way to understand it.

As you know as well as me, this is great material for working up a cult of personality. We humans love the ineffable, the paradoxical, the esoteric, the grandiose, the mysterious. Give us this day our wizards of the ephemeral and the diaphanous. — plaque flag

Yes; perhaps it's a distraction from the fact that we are going to die; a terror management system. :smile:

Comrade, you helped to remind me of this. :wink:

Do any philosophers here have more input on what makes a good life worth living for and worth dying for ? — invicta

I saw a t-shirt with a likeness of the Buddha on it. Underneath it said, 'Try not to be a cunt: The Buddha.' I think that's about as profound as I can get. I'm not a fan of system building or theory and I consider life to be without a fixed meaning, but since I know the experience of suffering and I seem hardwired (like most humans) for eusociality/empathy, I take a position that we ought to end or minimise suffering. Not being a cunt is a good first step.

The fact that religious institutions routinely violate their own principles is not an argument those principles. — Wayfarer

Not just religious institutions. People who believe in transcendent meaning do it. It's not a point we can overlook if we are willing to put atheists on notice as leading to murderous nihilism or rights violations.

What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? — Wayfarer

Just to clarify - humans rights are a construct and we can see them violated all over the West too. Try being an Aboriginal community member in this country. Believers violate others rights all the time, so this isn't a secular versus sacred matter.

The point is humans choose their values and also ignore them and a belief in god or transcendence has never safeguarded rights or preserved the sanctity of human life.

What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? — Wayfarer

Well, all that happens regardless of what we believe or what the truth might be, right? North Korea? Parts of Africa?

But the consequences of an idea say nothing much about whether it is true or not.

I can imagine that Dennett's ideas are shocking because they puncture the vested interests of so many groups. Talk about dangerous ideas in a world still in the thrall of romanticism.

I have no idea if Dennett is right or not, or if something similar to his ideas are right or not. But I have no reason to dismiss them on the basis that they might lead to the dissolution of some established values. The argument from disenchantment doesn't resonate with me.

Water was rushing down the slate, and I was shocked by the thereness of all that beauty, shocked to be alive, shocked that something (anything) was. I had other encounters with this shock / wonder, but they decreased with age. Perhaps it's just a feeling. — plaque flag

Nice. I wonder though why we would need to build a metaphysics on such a transitory experience of surprise. Why pull out this emotional reaction and not the one where we wanted to punch someone? Privileging this account of strangeness or surprise seems to be a post hoc rationalisation for the numinous.

:up: