Instead, memory is a reconstructive process. — Joshs

Yes, and boy does it play around with the construction work. Often it isn't even up to code...

Philosophy is an empty vessel. — Banno

So it seems is theoretical physics.

I am not an elite ohysicist. Im a particle physicist and have a rather clear view what happened. — Prishon

Not sure that counts but thanks for being grandiose. :razz: Laat je niet gek maken.

've had sleep paralysis, but never an OBE. Just felt stuck in a body that won't move. You know there is testimony of people claiming to have floated into a different room and reported on the events in that room that nobody in the room where their body is knew but was confirmed true. Might be false statements, but certainly it is informational. — TiredThinker

I've had many OBE's (up above the house and through tree tops) and I've also floated through a dark tunnel into the light after sniffing nitrous oxide. I do not believe that these are anything but illusions produced by the mind.

But the question is begged: Prior to the Big Bang as a meaningful notion at all, there is the language out of which this theory in physics is constructed. Big? What does this mean? — Constance

Unless we are elite physicists we have no idea how to even conceive of these matters. Any wonder that literature/religion/myth/philosophy are so attractive. For my money any discussion of this subject is exceptionally speculative and the best we can do is read the distilled ideas of experts and pretend we understand.

'Big Bang' is a term used by Fred Hoyle in 1949 to gently mock the event, so don't get bogged down in the wording. Physicists do not believe there was explosion but an expansion. Personally I couldn't care less.

The idea of beginnings and endings seem to me to be human conceptions and preoccupations and, while such frames certainly match lived experience on earth, they can hardly be expected to describe all which is the case.

I am an atheist but I grew up in the Christian Baptist tradition which also held that the Bible is largely allegorical. Fundamentalism and literal interpretations of scripture are a comparatively recent phenomenon.

As the great religious scholar David Bentley Hart reminds us, the early Christians, like Paul, certainly never considered the Torah as anything more than stories.

Religions use stories and myths to get to broader truths. This is a well established tradition. It may be hard for some people who have not been exposed to wider Christian/spiritual traditions to understand.

One either believes in the teachings of the sermon on the mount or doesn't believe , in that case theyre not a Christian. — Ross

You don't have to think they are the literal words of Jesus to think the sentiment is useful and spiritually sound.

An analogy might be that one claims to agree with the policies of a political party but rejects the fundamental arguments made by the leader of the par — Ross

This is unrelated but I would have thought it is very common for the foundational ideals of a party to not be followed by any of its leaders in practice.

You're mistaken. Sure, some Christians think the story book is factual. But many also see the New Testament as allegorical.

My local Catholic Priest sums it up - 'The Bible is an error prone, man-made document. You need to look past it to get to the truth.'

The great American Bishop John Shelby Spong not only questioned the contents of the New Testament, he has denied the virgin birth and Jesus' miracles, not to mention his specific words. He remains an Episcopalian.

from Spong -

This point must be heard: the Gospels are first-century narrations based on first-century interpretations. Therefore they are a first-century filtering of the experience of Jesus. They have never been other than that. We must read them today not to discover the literal truth about Jesus, but rather to be led into the Jesus experience they were seeking to convey.

Unless you are a fundamentalist apologist, anyone who wants to talk about Jesus needs to surrender the inviolability of New Testament. Pick up most New Testaments - it even says in chapter prefaces that no one knows who actually wrote the gospels. How could we possibly know what Jesus actually said outside of tradition?

But if we are looking for exaltation in issues of ultimate concern, for Australians I think the sun is our spiritual centre. — Banno

At the temple of Melanoma Trismegistus... :death:

I'm not sure I understand what your argument is. Sounds like you're just having fun with language. That's fine. I do that too. I have nothing to add to my earlier comments. Take care.

I often work closely with funeral directors, so my thoughts are based on lived experience. But I'm in Australia which has a somewhat more secular culture.

In any “serious” conversation in contemporary philosophy, can you point me to where god is actually alive? — Ennui Elucidator

I don't know what 'serious' or 'contemporary philosophy' means to you but I don't think that is the right question. The point I am making is that gods and religions continue to have a hold on much human behaviour, choices, politics, culture and wars, regardless of what a few academics think. Nietzsche's madman can walk into markets all over the world tomorrow and find that there's a good chance he will bump into fundamentalists. So the right question (as far as I can tell) is how is it that the gods survive alleged secularism?

I would point to my earlier posts and suggest that it is a pretty obvious extension that any communal spiritual activity is inherently religious and calling it non-religious is reactionary rather than descriptive. — Ennui Elucidator

This idea seems important to you. You already know I disagree with your choices. But I will ask you, what does it mean?

The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism. — Ennui Elucidator

Spirituality is more nuanced and generally refers to people's connection to place, people, culture or, if necessary, their idea of higher consciousness. It's what gives them hope and joy. Most people have a sense of the numinous and, as an atheist myself, I talk about people's spiritual life without irony. But I understand that some people are convinced spirituality is a synonym for God stuff and woo.

Someone is born, you want to celebrate. Someone dies, you want to mourn. — Ennui Elucidator

The trend today is that both are celebrations. You celebrate the life that has ended rather than wallow in Victorian-style grief rituals. That said, remember, some cultures have very extensive mourning protocols (such as Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians).

If god is dead and religion is god talk, I don’t see where we are going. — Ennui Elucidator

God is dead is a saying purloined from a partially remembered/understood philosopher. I don't think it has the impact some think and it seems clear that religions and God are still a major and growing influence in world politics and culture - from Trump to the Taliban.

If not a religion, what do we call a group of people engaged in meaning making regarding areas of ultimate concern? — Ennui Elucidator

I would call that a celebration. Religion is a word so poisoned by its associations that it may be better not to use it. In Australia we often call football a religion - mainly because people are irrationally devoted to their random team winning. It's ultimately meaningless but fanatical, so perhaps religion is suitable. I find a word like religion is best used ironically.

Such is the problematic nature of the word religion that even many believers deride it, as in, "I'm spiritual, but definitely not religious." Some words are unsettling and dubious.

They're the words of Jesus himself. That appears to me like God granting eternal Bliss to those who worship Him as I mentioned in my blog. — Ross

Of course we don't really know what Jesus/Yeshua might have said, or if he was an actual person. And not even Christian scholars claim to know who wrote the gospels. Let's face, it we have some claims in a story book - just like every other religion.

Christianity is focused on salvation whereas Buddhism is not — Ross

So I have known Christians and Buddhists who were both obsessed with fool's gold. In the former, salvation in the latter, nirvana/enlightenment. Both spawned distorted, narcissistic expressions of their faith that seem obsessed with status.

However I would argue that there are many Christians who do not have a focus on salvation. This tends to be most acute in some forms of Protestantism.

I think it was William Morris who made the point that no pattern should exist without a meaning. It seems to me that patterns have significance if they are also suggestive of a narrative. Couldn't it also be said that defective pattern identification is one of the reasons people embrace conspiracy theories?

Why was Islam so successful in the past and why might it be hard for the Taliban or ISIS to bring Afghanistan to success today? — Athena

Islam was successful in the past because it celebrated diversity and pluralism. It practiced religious tolerance. The fundamentalist groups you are talking about are at war with modernism and pluralism and are essentially a savage pietistic reform movement. People keep saying Islam needs a reformation. The problem is Islamic State may be what a reformation in Islam looks like. Stephen Schwartz wrote an interesting book on the nature of Islam's struggle with fundamentalism called the Two Faces of Islam back in 2002. Irshad Manji ( a gay, Canadian Islamic woman) wrote an equally interesting book on the nature of contemporary Islamic intolerance called The Trouble with Islam. It's hard to imagine a successful state emerging from a foundation of captious hatred, but anything is possible.

Hypothetical. Let's say you know Jews are hiding from the Nazi's in an attic of the home next door to you. An SS officer asks you if you know if any Jews are hiding nearby. Do you tell the truth?

We often experience some strange deja vu in life, the happenstance of certain coincidences, the deep innate intuition and instinct that somehow in a moment on some subliminal level gives us a feeling or impression of what will happen next. — Benj96

In 50 years I haven't had that experience myself, but I have occasionally observed the odd coincidence. I see no good reason to make any more of it.

Historians have noted the consistent swing of the pendulum from liberalism to conservatism and back, the boom to bust to boom of the economy, pandemics floating to the forefront roughly every 100 years or so, war and the periods of peace that interject between them... — Benj96

I'm not sure this means much or leads us anywhere. There are only so many plays possible in human life, so it's not hard to see that some elements will repeat at some level. I suspect it's also a superficial reading of events. For instance, the current pandemic is quite different to the 1919 version. Economic cycles vary a lot in their specificity. Political events often share themes but are dissimilar.

Human beings are meaning making, pattern recognising creatures. We have a mania for seeing signs and assuming that events are significant or connected or personal when they are mere events.

Surely you mean asceticism. — baker

Oops typo. Yes, I did mean asceticism. The former would be the spiritual wisdom of Oscar Wilde.

The purpose of wisdom is to improve one's life, and that includes improving one's socio-economic status. Agree? — baker

Is it not that case that in most traditions, wisdom privileges aestheticism?

Since when is greed, piracy & missionary colonizations indices of "wiseness"? — 180 Proof

Since the Reagan years? :joke:

Nice summary.

The lie didn't become truth. The liar is not giving an account of a fact - the situation in the lie just happens to coincidentally match the facts over time, so what? It's still a lie.

I meant to wonder if the mind body problem exists outside of framing it as one. — Valentinus

Yes, I've often wondered about that.

As you've suggested, how one goes about answering this can lead directly to opposed forms of metaphysics and especially that hoary old conundrum of physicalism versus idealism.

It's interesting to me that amongst sophisticated religious scholars, like David Bentley Hart, the mind is still taken as a disproof of physicalism. There's a lot still at stake in this matter.

The primary skill required for the development of competence is the ability to recognize high quality endeavor. If you don't know it when you see it, you can't do it right. — T Clark

Nice. :clap:

But if you are energy and matter... why have agency? — Benj96

Water always finds the lowest level with extraordinary efficiency. Does this mean water has a will and is impelled to do so? No. Physics. We tend to use loaded words and human-like motivations to describe phenomena and then, because we have smuggled in the words, we find ourselves ascribing human-like agency.

I suspect everyone, or most, "suffer" from Dunning Kruger. — Yohan

It's pretty clear that many people assume expertise in a subject when they have only read a book on it or done a short course. Many of us do have to make decisions about matters based on scant understanding of the subject, but is that DK? Surely this is only the case if we exaggerate our capacity/insight (cognitive bias). I think DK itself is subject to the DK effect and is cheerfully misapplied to many things.

It takes consciousness to be the most immediate fact of which we are acquainted with. — Manuel

Yes - from a phenomenological perspective I guess we could say we are locked in...

Good point. Of course we may be heading into metaphysics when we make the claim that all there is is physicalism. Isn't this a metaphysical position? It's my position too, but is there not something troubling about the somewhat vague nature of physicalism in the light of all reality being quantum waves?

If no one was in need then givers would be disheartened and if no one was a taker then demand would leave no incentive, no purpose in life.

We can’t all be charitable right? — Benj96

Yes, we can all be charitable. I believe it is intrinsic to human behaviour. It's certainly a requirement of most religious systems. I can't foresee a time when people won't need to help each other.

Both parties gain a personal sense of satisfaction from their actions. — Benj96

I think you're describing what is called reciprocal altruism. The term givers and takers is a loaded one - 'taker' has a pejorative ring to it. The reality is that some people need more more support than others.

We don't do it because it makes us feel good. We do it because we know it's right. — T Clark

I think this is right. Although there are no doubt some folk who give to demonstrate piety or get a tax advantage.

You seem to be implying that only intellectually-challenged people can't tell the difference between Sophists and Philosophers, fixated on money, not a good sign by some accounts, and using that to make the distinction between the two. — TheMadFool

Was I that unclear? My point was how is an ordinary person expected to tell the difference between bullshit and acuity? Much of the time I can't even tell the difference between good and bad products, let alone metaphysics.

What more need be said about how Philisophy and Sophistry were so alike that they could be and were mistaken for each other? — TheMadFool

Throughout the ages the question has remained - how can an ordinary, perhaps foolish person tell the difference between the two? This can be an issue even in cases where the differences are more apparent.

An eminently sensible and substantive contribution to this great social policy conundrum.

You've actually gotten the hang of death pretty well already. We all have. Think back to what it was like for you in the years, centuries, millennia before you were born. Same thing. For my money the most appropriate contribution we can make on the subject of death is silence.

Neoliberalism is an imprecise term. It interests me that Hayek, the founding thinker of neoliberalism was no fan of big corporations, oligopolies or big banks. He liked a free market but he hated what people call crony capitalism (The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation and Liberty) . He would have detested what passes for neo-liberalism today and, as I was taught in economics, Hayek believed the corporations should be bound by the same rules and moral expectations as individuals.

Not sure this gives us much more, but it's worth noting.

I don't see any good reason to accept the proposition that reincarnation is a possibility.

There's a thread all about it already.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1675/reincarnation/p1

Why? — frank

So it can be a civilized state. And I've seen it work very well here all my life. I understand some Americans with a libertarian bent don't agree or understand. Such is life.

Thanks Joshs. I'm making my way through some of the principles of phenomenology and I have to say much of it resonates. But I'm in the shallow end of the pool... Is there an on line reference, a dictionary of key terms or something similar?

transcendental subjectivity’ — Joshs

One of Husserl's? I don't properly understand it. Quick definition?