If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult (depending of course on the specific nature of the environment, rainforest probably being easier to survive than tundra or desert.) But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. — Wayfarer

I'm never really sure what counts as nature in these discussions. I would tend to count buildings and machines as a part of nature too, since we made them and they are expressions of human interaction with our environment, just like a bird's nest or beaver's dam. I know some people prefer to see human activity as a disruption of nature and that nature is that which is without human influence. Of course the idea of nature is a human conceptual construction in the first place so there's that..

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Do you think it's as hopeless in the US as many think? Are the President and his billionaire boys' club staging a nascent fascist coup in America? If so, will the constitution hold or will it be brushed aside?

Not sure any of this helps my sense making efforts. But it takes all sorts, right?

What do you value in Nietzsche - as far as living your life is concerned?

Nothign to apologize for at all. I enjoy your contributions greatly.

I'm not following, I'm afraid.

To accept our loathing of mankind to overcome the loathing of mankind.

Most people prefer presenting their loathing of mankind as "evil" which must be objectly disregarded... — DifferentiatingEgg

Huh? Who do you think is a misanthropist? Nietzsche or the rest of us?

Thanks guys but I am asking specifically about why this resonates.

The idea that we find ourselves somehow limited by social conditioning and seek to overcome that stage of psychological development by, in a sense, surpassing ourselves. — Nemo2124

I'm not sure that resonates with me or what it even means.

By the way, to quote just highlight what the other person has written and click on the quote option that comes up. The quote will show up below.

Perhaps it's the ultimate self-improvement guide and in this day and age, we're constantly being challenged to improve ourselves to conform to media stereotypes, for example. — Nemo2124

But it still seems predicated on notions of improvement, on the idea that you are not good enough, that you ought to transcend yourself. Why?

I'm curious what a good example of such Nietzschean self-overcoming actually looks like. As someone who enjoys the half-arsed and the mediocre more than anything, the idea of working at reinvention, shedding patterns, behaviours and beliefs, seems tedious and possibly unrealistic.

Sure, but that's the approach - what about the book's content you find particularly interesting? When you say, "I think Nietzsche is becoming more-and-more relevant..." I'm interest in which ideas and why?

Can you say some more about what specifically you get from reading Zarathustra and what you think is important about the work?

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The ‘faculty of reason’ is a perfectly intelligible expression, and the idea that humans alone possess it fully developed, and some animals only in very rudimentary forms, ought hardly need to be stated. — Wayfarer

I am familiar with this common argument and it has always left me somewhat cold. I don't have anything devastating against this view just some random thoughts. And yes, I'll be using reason.

Your wording seems very biased when you write things like "fully developed" and "very rudimentary forms" Surely that's a contingent viewpoint based on a series of assumptions?

This view is entirely predicated on us identifying ourselves as special - humans seem to have an innate ability to determine that we are favoured creatures of gods, and better/smarter than everything else on the planet. Is this not also one of our great blind spots - putting ourselves at the centre? Our reasoning is often indistinguishable from monomania. Perhaps this is why we have worked very hard to destroy the world and its wildlife. Reasoning often takes us to oblivion.

Is the line between us and animals so special because we have atom bombs and iPhones? Are our more complex adaptations and affectations a sign of superiority or really a kind of deficit?

It might even be argued that our particular brand of reasoning makes us inferior to animals who have and can find and do everything they need much more simply and elegantly than humans. They need no internet, no space programs, no Vogue magazine, schools or social media to thrive and live in harmony with nature. I'm not convinced that complexity equals superiority.

Our reasoning produces some useful and remarkable things (to us), but much reasoning is weak and bias ridden, and poorly inferred and dependent upon heuristics and simplifications. Humans have epic limitations on using reason which suggest we are simple and confused. (Yes, I know, this is your cue for something about higher actualization.)

Isn't one of the key arguments in Evan Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (2007) that consciousness is enactive? That is, it arises from dynamic interactions between the body and the world rather than being an intrinsic property or essentialist trait? This isn’t my area, but that sounds fascinating and I wonder what this says about animals.

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Absolutely. The world has become a Bond movie. One way to deal with climate change is to kill 80% of all people, right? :wink:

I'm frankly very scared about it. A lot of people (including my dear other) think I'm overdoing it, but I think we're looking at the worst global crisis since 9/11. It dismays me that so many people are shrugging it off or falling in behind him. I don't think they understand what's happening. — Wayfarer

I think part of the problem with this matter is that we have to follow inferences to come to particular conclusions. Not everyone will make the same inferences. Churchill was right about a certain Austrian
when many others thought he was overstating the case.

Some folk I know have held for some years that Trump is a puppet for Peter Thiel (the real danger) and that his chaos and the MAGA shitshow is merely an excellent smokescreen for the real work - the remaking of America along radical libertarian lines. They are expecting concentration camps any day soon. This seems overly paranoid, but who really knows?

Agree, which is why he needs his loyalists. It’s likely to get much uglier, don’t you think?

Doesn't look like there's any useful opposition to any of this. Surely some disgruntled and powerful ex FBI/CIA types are making plans...

Possibly the next step is for Trump to start dividing the military into those loyal to his vision and those not so much. Perhaps he will create a new military arm, a MAGA elite who can help him dispatch any opposition should Musk and Thiel want him to throw out the constitution.

As the Trump cabinet comprises 13 billionaires, and as the World's Richest Man is acting as a kind of freelance change agent on Trump's behalf, 'plutocracy' is nearer the mark that 'oligarchy'. — Wayfarer

It was always an article of faith amongst my circle that America is a plutocracy. It's been owned and run by corporations for some time. Isn't the difference now just one of aesthetics and a different mob of sharks? It's now more celebrated and the names are better known. I remember when Obama bailed out the banks after the last cuntact from the financial elite. Cornel West said, what do you expect from a President whose key advisors were mostly from Citybank. West called Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats."

Interesting comments, but I'm going to have to ask you both if you have a horse in this race, otherwise it seems (per some folks' deluded opinions) that you can't philosophize about religion. Source: The Boy Scouts. Secondary source: Trust Me Bro. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not sure what you mean. Horse in what race? The idea of using logic to establish some kind of "fact" about a mythological character (Jesus) and an incoherent notion (God) about which there is no agreement seems odd. Setting the reasoning aside, I generally hold that belief in god is similar to sexual orientation - you can't help what you are attracted to. The arguments are likely to be post hoc justifications. I find the arguments of incidental interest. I'm simply incapable of believing in god - the idea is confused, at best ineffable and doesn't assist me in my approach to sense making, so it's of no use to me. :wink:

:up: I think I'm mostly in agreement with your last post. I probably wouldn't go as far as to say god is false as far as science is concerned, but I would agree that the idea is undemonstrated and therefore of no real use except as a form of poetry. But given many people spend a lot of time living emotionally and aesthetically, it is easy to see how god might be of use to them.

What do you think of the uses of logic? Aside from finding it boring, I see it as a rather blunt tool - capable of demonstrating almost anything, regardless of whether it aligns with reality. :razz: Just because something appears to be logically necessary within a system of ideas doesn't mean it exists in the world. For example, we can define a perfect unicorn, but this doesn't mean such an beast must exist.

He definitely saw himself as having a mission but did not necessarily see himself as the incarnation of God. — Jack Cummins

Yes, in the logic of the stories, it may be that JC saw himself as the Messiah, which is not the same as God. You are likely right to see it as symbolism. We do not have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus or the events and the gospels were written decades after the events by anonymous sources. So we can't really say what anyone at the time involved thought. Essentially we are left with a form of literary criticism regarding a series of legends attached to a person (or persons) who was the inspiration for some stories.

Whether the popular movement starts with peasants and labourers or disaffected white Christians or angry Muslims, the endgame is the same: one megalomaniac shouts at everybody and his tools carry out the pogroms. — Vera Mont

Yes, that seems to often be the case. Authoritarianism quickly transcends and engulfs whatever politics may have been the original impetus.

Yes, that does make sense.

...the logic (or theory) of those 1,000 or 2,000 years ago does not seem to be without standing or bearing even in 2025. That is to say, has not yet to be disproved. — Outlander

That's fair, but it has been never been proven either. So what do we do? Would it not be prudent to put the as yet undemonstrated logic of the ancients in brackets and just carry on? I'm not particularly partial to Freddy (in as much as I can follow his writings), he seems to be offering a project which is the exact reverse of the nostalgia projects of people like Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.

responses, where would this pop notion of lazy pub servants come from and be so persistent in the minds of voters? — kazan

No idea. But it's when an idea like this is weaponised into policy that it matters. I suspect the myth of the lazy government employee is an old one and probably motivated by an innate suspicion of anyone whose salary comes from tax payer's money.

In your experience and resultant opinion? — kazan

I have met many bureaucrats and politicians many are hard working and sincere, even those I dislike. Although these days the wise, mature veteran bureaucrats, who help to build departments and nurture public policy responses, are less frequently encountered as they have many been restructured out of circulation.

I can't see it, and I don't get why politicians are obsessed with Musk-wannabe reduction of bureaucracy — javi2541997

Well, this has been a consistent thread in English speaking governments for the past 40 years and a key plank in neoliberal driven politics. Its origins are Reaganism and Thatcherism. Cut backs often play to the populist notion that government workers are lazy and do nothing and are paid for by money "stolen" from voters through taxation.

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But notice that among what this excludes is - the subject! There is no conceptual space in all of this for the actual scientist. Which in some sense is what Bishop Berkeley is attempting to restore. He's saying something like, look, unless this is real for someone, then what kind of reality does it have? Phenomenology was to bring all of this out and make it explicit, but the germ of the idea is there in Berkeley (and Descartes for that matter, who is often credited as the forefather of phenomenology.) — Wayfarer

You put it very well, I understand the reasoning and I am sympathetic. And what smatterings of phenomenology I have read certainly resonates.

:up: I'll ponder whether I agree.

In any case, we do not - and cannot - go beyond appearance. — Manuel

I tend to agree but I guess that depends upon what we mean by appearance - in recent history we have certainly devised instruments that allow us to go beyond (ordinary) appearance and these tools seem to tell us that solid matter is almost entirely empty. And let's not get into quantum speculations.

And in a separate vein, is it not the case that people who claim to be enlightened are able to see beyond appearances, at least in part? Is this not a goal of mediation, etc? I'm not personally in the higher consciousness business but I am curious about the framing of these things.

It seems to me a matter of rather routine observations. — wonderer1

Well that makes sense if you believe in scientific realism - that there is a reality which can be understood and studied. This assumption isn't demonstrable by science but is taken as a foundational premise that makes scientific investigation possible.

Note, I am not saying science can't provide us with pragmatic and useful interventions in the world. I would just never mistake if for absolute truth. I think of science as more instrumental or pragmatic.

The desire to know the answers to ultimate metaphysical questions like “Who am I?”, “What is reality?”, and “What is the mind?” has been haunting me throughout my life. — LaymanThinker

Everyone is different. I don't think I have asked the quesion "Who am I?" It doesn't engage me, not does it seem answerable. Consciousness is indeed interesting but it requires significant expertise to understand, so I'm out. Reality? I'm not sure what that word refers to, apart from poetically. The notion of "reality" seems to me to be a secular equivalent of god - a fabled place for the buck to stop. I tend to think of philosophy as developing better quesions and more dynamic ways of conceptualizing human experience. One thing I do hold is whatever your philosophical beliefs and no matter how intricate your metaphysics is, on the ground nothing much changes. You still need to eat and piss and have meaningful relationships and open a door before walking into a room...

There is always going to be a metaphysical component in epistemology, but it's quite small. — Manuel

Doesn't epistemology rely upon metaphysical commitments for it to make sense? I'm not sure one can meaningfully talk about what we can know unless we have resovled what there is and somehow we continually end up in a tail chasing discussion about whether an external world exists outside our perception and what it is. Not to mention the quesion of time and space - are they products of the cognitive apparatus of human minds, or do they exist? Don't scientists subscribe to a massive metaphysical commitment, that reality can be understood?

I hear you, but I don't think what the founding fathers intended matters much to most - assuming they even if they know or understand the history. It might be argued that the "ordinary people" have been split into tribes and fed shit by media so that a shared understanding is no longer possible in a country too big and atomised to govern. The Left seem to be disorganised and banal and the Right seem to be marketing a version of certainty based upon anger.

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The police and the military aren't immune to corruption, ideological or otherwise. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not thinking corruption, I'm thinking more that they may be aligned with authoritarian visions for America and long to rid society of deviants.

Do you think the police and military would oppose Trump should he decide to suspend the constitution and remain in power as a totalitarian ruler?

In that case, if law enforcement (both state and federal) can't deal with them for some reason (i.e., they are too numerous, so that they effectively overrun law enforcement) then, and perhaps only then, civilians are entirely justified in joining the fray and physically fighting them, even if it's to the death — Arcane Sandwich

Do we have good reason to assume that law enforcement isn't already a large part of this group?

Of course, if there is a real national problem - failing economy, pressure from foreign powers, large influx of incompatible immigrants, severe weather events, a military defeat - the entire population is insecure and uncomfortable; the very underpinnings of the social structure come into question and the nation can be mobilized very quickly behind a promise of solutions. — Vera Mont

Yes - particularly if elements of the media have been priming people for decades - catastrophizing, intensifying differences, finding scapegoats, promoting hatreds, conflicts and unrest, etc.

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Try to make it past the first sentence before finding an offending whole two words that "render the paper obsolete." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry CT, I have no view on the paper, I was just making a needless quip.

Interesting. Given the interest in nostalgia projects of every kind these days, along with a hatred of modernity, I wouldn't be surprised if Medieval critiques become fashionable again in some circles. :razz:

. Objects are recognised by us as kinds and types - this is where Kant comes in - and without that recognition, which is part of the process of apperception, then they would be nothing to us. Experience presents itself to us in the form of ideas. — Wayfarer

Very interesting responses. So am I right in thinking that for you idealism consists more of our cognitive apparatus making order our of a type of chaos (but there is some sort of "noumena" to begin with)? I don't read you as subscribing to the notion that there is only pure consciousness and nothing else, held by a ground-of-being style great mind, in which we are all participants or instantiations.

The biggest issue here is that, for whatever reason, we have some trouble (at least I do) in understanding how concretely existing things could be solely ideas. — Manuel

Yes, I think this is the key problem for most people in thinking this matter through.

The idealist might say that the idea of solid objects misses the point and remains stuck in a framework of metaphysical realism. In Johnson's case, the toe and the breaking themselves are a product of consciousness. I assume that the point of Berkeley is that the world of primary qualities does not exist independent of the mind. Solidity and the notion of 'hard matter' does not exist independently of mind and so kicking the rock, breaking a toe are mental experiences. It is how consciousness appears when experienced from our perspective. The solid stone and the foot's impact upon it are examples of the ability of consciousness to create a coherent world of experience - held together in the mind of God. Or in the case of Kastrup - we are all participants or aspects of a 'great mind' which is the source of all reality.

Hmm - I wish I could find the quotes by Kastrup - I'm sure he has written and stated in interviews that mind-at-large is "not metacognitive and is purely instinctive" and that morality is invented by humans to organise their preferred approach to manage power. But how one understands "humans" given what he says about our ontological status is complex.

This is how he differentiates himself from Berkeley - and it's highly ingenious. It's from his blog dated August 2015.

My formulation of idealism differs from Berkeley's subjective idealism in at least two points: (a) I argue for a single subject, explaining the apparent multiplicity of subjects as a top-down dissociative process. Berkeley never addressed this issue directly, implicitly assuming many subjects; and (b) I argue that the cognition of the non-dissociated aspect of mind-at-large ('God' in Berkeley's formulation) is not human-like, so it experiences the world in a manner incommensurable with human perception (details in this essay). In Berkeley's formulation, God perceives the world just as we do.

In other words, we are all dissociated alters of one great mind. We are all expressions of The One - a familiar spiritual axiom.

Yes - I think of Berkeley as somewhat similar in his conception to the contemporary thinker Bernardo Kastrup. Instead of a God, Kastrup posits a "Mind-at-Large" - an all-encompassing, transpersonal consciousness that serves as the source of reality. All of our experiences and notions of "the real" are participations in this one great mind. This seems to align with Paul Tillich's idea of the "ground of being."

Of course, not being a clergyman or bound by theological traditions, Kastrup has no need for a personal god. Mind-at-Large lacks intentionality, isn't a personal being, and doesn’t function as a source of morality or any of the other theological elements one might associate with divinity.

Just out of interest, do you interpret Carl Jung as an idealist in the way Kastrup does? It seems like it could offer a better explanation of the collective unconscious and shared human symbolism; something they never really clarified when I studied Jung.