And yet it is worth a glance at Paxton's definition. — Banno

Yes, that definition probably encompasses Trump fairly well. Reading Ian Kershaw's rise of Hitler (Hubris) there are some parallels with Turmp. It’s also worth looking at Ian Dunt’s Origin Story podcast on fascism too. Was Hitler even a fascist? Or is the word specific to one political Italian story? An issue with understanding fascism is that definitions tend to focus on methods rather than central ideas. The notion of fascism (like some other movements) seems to be without theorists or thinkers. It's an approach more than a clear doctrine.

I think I have largely come around to your way of looking at this.

For me, morality isn’t about labelling people as good or bad it’s about evaluating specific actions based on their inherent nature, intent, and consequences. This avoids the subjectivity that can arise from judging an actor’s character alone. — ZisKnow

Just for the sake of argument and to understanding context - why are you concerned about morality at all? When people start theorising about morality, I often wonder about purpose. Do you believe that if you don't think about the matter in some theoretical way you will cause harm?

I suspect that no one here has any capacity to influence the world's moral behaviour, just our own. Do you not find that acting from intuition is not enough? Can you provide examples of where your moral theorising has made a significant difference in your actions or assessments?

Yes, and I'm more than sympathetic to Evan's thesis and also the equally fascinating Michel Bitbol.

Sure, but as I say, I don't think this is simple or clear. And we are also talking about values and emotion (I guess pathos was a repetition?).

I was pretty sure this would wait until week two, but there it is.

Is it even possible for value, or affectivity or pathos, the pain of a sprained ankle, say, to occur without agency, one that is commensurate with the experience? Just a question. — Astrophel

I’m not sure. Those experiences may not be unified under a single foundational principle. Experience is interesting but contested space. I don’t have the expertise to determine what it means. But I do consider that values and emotions are products of contingent factors and seem to exist in relation to other factors - a web of interactions. What is at the centre? Is there even a centre? The problem with ideas like this is that they flow readily and may not connect to anything…

Participatory knowing shapes and is shaped by the interaction between the person and the cosmos, influencing one’s identity and sense of belonging. Vervaeke associates it with the 'flow state' and a heightened sense of unity (being one with.) — Wayfarer

I don't think I am convinced that this counts as knowing as such and is likely to be a symbolic connection or relationship emerging from contingent beliefs systems. Something doesn't have to be true for us to experince catharsis or other psychological satisfactions from it (ask any novelist).

But the point is, overcoming that sense of otherness or disconnection from the world is profoundly liberating in some fundamental way. — Wayfarer

I'm sympathetic of the idea of overcoming a sense of otherness or disconnection and that this can feel liberating, but it might be worth considering alternatives to framing the experience in such binary terms as 'connected vs. disconnected' or 'otherness vs. unity.' We could also think in terms of degrees, layers, or even shifting perspectives. For instance, rather than aiming to dissolve otherness, we could explore the tension between connection and separation and how we might understand ourselves and the world better through this interplay. Personally I don't usually look at the world as 'other' or as 'unity' I tend to suspend or bracket my judgement and am reasonably happy with ambivalence and paradox - rigid categories seem unnecessary.

You may be right. I’m not huge on politics, all I really know is never vote Liberal.

Though, I was surprised that you did agree with Joshs's thoughts about what constitutes the real. That was pretty out there. Maybe some of this does resonate with you.) — Astrophel

I have been particularly interested in @Joshs contributions and am often intrigued and/or sympathetic to the frames he brings here via post-structuralism and phenomenology. I have enjoyed bits of Evan Thompson's and Lee Braver's work.

But I have never pretended to be a philosopher or to have spent much time reading philosophy. In previous years philosophy didn’t capture my imagination. In the 1980's I read a lot of works available at the Theosophical Society, where I often hung out. I have no problem with Henry’s ‘duplicity of appearing’ as referenced. But I am not someone for whom the idea of god resonates. Whether that’s Paul Tillich’s ground of being or Alvin Plantinga’s theistic personalism.

:up: Thanks.

Yep. Well put. I'm not sure exactly what direction it will go but we'll know soon enough.

How does one open a room? — Astrophel

You're the expert. Tell me.

:up: Cool. As an atheist (by disposition) I remain intrigued by most things. I dislike closing doors. But I am also getting on in years, with limited time, set habits and a contented life, so I have bugger all reason to adjust my outlook on the basics. But the door is open.

Thank you. Possibly needs a thread - it's a fairly subtle line of thought.

Lastly, how do we know these things? — 180 Proof

I have often wondered about this. The usual answer seems rooted in the definition of classical theism, which is considered rationally coherent - God as the source of all goodness, the ground of being, the essence of divine simplicity, or something along those lines. Still, I suppose you and I might question whether this transcends mere assertion and, if so, how it can be known.

I wonder what an adaptation might look like made by a black director/auteur.

I’m a-readin’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — praxis

Nice. I must have read it a dozen times over the years. I discovered this book at 10 and never looked back. Each time I re-read it (like The Great Gatsby) I find it sadder and more nuanced than the last. It's curious that for all the inadequate children's adaptations in movies and TV, no great director has ever tried to film this complex story from a more adult perspective.

Is there some end-point in any liberalism, conservativism, or anything else? — Relativist

Interesting quesion. Do you think there needs to be an end point? I tend to think of these ideas more as dispositions or methods, not goals, and these methods set about intervening in the world which is in continual change.

I love DBH. I'd love to have a chat with him. I missed him here in Melbourne last year. He was at a conference I could have attended but didn't see.

So nobody is really innocent! If you were completely innocent, then you wouldn't have been born in the first place. That's the bad news! But according to the Christians, the good news is, that you really don't belong to this world. — Wayfarer

Ha! It's what I call the prefect excuse. I don't buy it, but I know it has helped many people to sleep at night.

I don't think he trivialises suffering or says 'have faith that it'll be OK in the end!' — Wayfarer

I'm not sayign that he does this. And nor would I. Suffering is serious. Probably the most serious and formative matter I can think of.

But then life taught me that such realisations may be elusive - they can come and go without much apparent cause. There is also a lot of capacity for self-delusion in their pursuit. And the cultural context in which they were practiced and understood is vastly different to our own. — Wayfarer

Indeed, very interesting. You strike me as a sincere seeker of truth. I spent the first 18 years of my life among the extended Baptist community in inner Melbourne. Over the years, I’ve also spent time with Theosophists, mystics, Jesuits, Buddhists, and others. Additionally, I’ve engaged with secular humanists and the atheist community.

What I’ve observed is that people are largely the same - the fears, behaviors, and relationships don’t vary much, regardless of belief systems. However, some individuals are rare; they seem to possess an authenticity and integrity that transcend labels. These are the people I find interesting. Anyone can claim to be a theist or an atheist, but I don’t think labels mean all that much.

That couldn't be right, because if he didn't believe that his religion has a plausible attitude to suffering, surely he'd abandon the faith, which he hasn't. — Wayfarer

Have a look at Hart's recent interview on Youtube with Curt Jaimungal. He's pretty clear. It's a pretty staggering interview - perhaps because he is, these days, less cocky and self-regarding owing to his own sickness and pain. He has faith that there must be some kind of explanation for evil but he doesn't pretend to know what it is. I don't think it follows that people leave their faith just because it doesn't have all the answers. If that were the case most theists would be atheists by the morning. People generally believe that on balance secularism or theism makes more sense of the world they understand. The issue of suffering has nagged at Hart for decades. And he has certainly discussed that his faith is sometimes impacted by doubt. Isn't that how faith works?

I think Hart's views tell us that it's not so simple as theism having better responses or answers. If a theist and religious scholar as sophisticated as Hart comes to this conclusion, then the problem of suffering and evil can't be put down as an obtuse physicalist response.

As mentioned in an earlier comment, there is an unspoken convention that this is not something that can be considered in the secular context, as by definition, secular culture can't accomodate it. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure about that. What do you mean by 'accommodate'. David Bentley Hart has said (and recently at great length) that the problem of suffering (the inherent cruelty of this world) is atheism's best argument and that there is no answer to it in religion which he finds plausible. And isn't death the end of suffering for secular types? In the mean time, I have worked in palliative care a lot over time and I can say that theists seem way more disturbed and distressed by suffering than secular people I've met. Anecdotal I know but there it is.

Thank you but @Joshs is a serious player in this space and I am sure he has a response.

To test the claim of radical changeability in all objects of experience for everyone is to do two things:
1) it is to try to teach a believer in stable objectivity to see the underlying movement in supposedly static experience. How do you convince someone to see more than they see? Either they see it or they don't. Meanwhile, as relativist, you can leave them to their objectivism, knowing that it works for them, and isn't 'wrong' or 'untrue', just incomplete.
2)The believer in radical relativism must every moment of experience test their own perception(make it contestable) to see if this dynamism continues to appear very moment, everywhere for them. — Joshs

That sounds complicated and a lot like hard work. Is this exhausting to live by?

As a non-philosopher I find this hard to grasp or at least accept. Is it making too much out of too little change?

Even if meanings subtly shift from moment to moment, we can still reliably communicate, build technology, and make predictions about the world. This suggests that there’s a shared, stable structure to reality (note I am not sayign objective or certain) that doesn’t depend on momentary subjective fluctuations. For example, the laws of physics or the meaning of basic concepts like “cat” remain consistent enough for people across cultures and times to understand each other and cooperate. If everything were as fluid as this seems to suggest, such stability and shared understanding would seem not to be possible. What am I missing?

On the other side, there is the fear that those in the immanent frame have reduced the human good to mere consumption, the specter of consumerism and spiritual emptiness, or on the far side the fall into grave sin. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This would cover my sense of the world today, but oddly I get there more from an immanent frame. Like David Hart (although not sharing his faith), I see as much consumption, consumerism and spiritual emptiness coming from mainstream theism as from any secularists. But I don't think either frames are justifiable in as much as we don't really know, do we? I mean, can we even say for certain whether maths is invented or discovered, much less say anything sensible about the notion of a god ( I have more sympathy for an apophatic orientation). So for me neither frame really fits, but I do get what Taylor is getting at.

:up:

Kuzminski disputes that Pyrrhonism *is* skepticism, per se, pointing out that the latter is a form of dogmatic belief (or dogmatic unbelief, more to the point.) Kuzminksi points out the the Greek 'skeptikos' meant originally an 'enquirer' or 'seeker', which is very different from what negative or dogmatic skepticism developed into. — Wayfarer

Nice. I don't come out of a philosophical tradition, but I was always taught that one needs to separate healthy skepticism from denialism. I do think it is healthy for anyone to ask what reasons they have for holding any particular belief. We probably need to do this to grow - to transcend the dogmatic assumptions of upbringing and culture. In your case, would it not be fair to say that a skepticism about the mainstream and its platitudes drew you towards a countercultural orientation and by extension into traditions of higher consciousness?

That was not only a big failure of Spain but the European Union altogether. Our politicians decided back in the 1990s and early 2000s that it was better to manufacture everything in random Chinese villages, with zero labour rights. — javi2541997

Yes, this neoliberal approach was as common In Australia as it was in Spain. We used to make clothing, tools, cars, whitegoods, toys, furniture. All now imported from various Asian countries where labour is cheap and easily subdued.

Arguing that a science doesn’t begin from radical doubt, that it “works from established beliefs/knowledge, and then tries to explain what is less well understood in terms of what is more well understood” just subsumes it as a secularized version of the belief in a God of fixed purposes. Because both rely on faith in sovereign purpose, this faith is itself nihilistic, productive of skepticism. — Joshs

Great, thanks. Yes, I guess if all meaning is contextual and shaped by practices, then a radical skepticism would seem to be superfluous. Such skepticism relies on the idea that meaning or truth must be grounded in something absolute or universal.

Would you say postmodernism is best understood as a form of skepticism, or does it represent a distinct philosophical approach?

Believing in god does not resolve moral conflicts. — MoK

I don't know how anyone can argue effectively that a belief in god can resolve a moral conflict. How? How do we know what God thinks about moral issues? Which God is true? Can anyone demonstrate what God's relationship to morality is? Believers can't even agree on morality so it's clearly not working as a useful source of morality.

Nice. Well I consider postmodernism to be a huge subject with many tributaries and it would require considerable expertise to understand and critique it. I find much of what I have read about postmodernism sympathetic to my intuitions. I tend to hold human knowledge and beliefs are contingent products of culture, language and cognitive limitations and that we cannot transcend these to reach some putative 'really real' or 'ultimate realm'.

I think it would be interesting to read opinions by folks from other countries, because these tend to be more objective than what our government might be... — javi2541997

From the 1960's on until 1990, my grandmother went to Spain every year for three months for her winter holiday. Not sure what she thought about Franco but she didn't like police. She loved the architecture, the people, the food, the language, the weather. She once met Orson Welles in a cafe.

Australians often travel to Spain. They seem to go because it's a cool place to see and the food is great. Tourism is a pretty shallow - it's opportunities to take photos and eat.

In the 1970's my mum and dad sometimes talked about the transition to democracy and hoped that Spain would make the journey from Franco to freedom. I would have thought the reforms and advancements were worth it. But if you are suspicious of government and consider your democracy to be flawed and shameful, then you would be like every second young person in any Western country on earth who is convinced their country's government is shit and that no one tells the truth.

:up:

I must admit I understood little of what you wrote, but I do have a suggestion. The letter is long and dense. I think you might have a better chance of Priest reading it if you shortened it to a one or two paragraph summary, — T Clark

Agree. Short three sentence paragraphs and dot points are more likely to get it read.

I think that is a hallmark of every social movement, that it casts itself as an answer to all big the questions, no? — Pantagruel

Perhaps not. One of the threads within postmodernism (Rorty comes to mind) suggests that not only is there no definitive answer, but the very 'big questions' themselves are grounded in presuppositions built on quicksand. Is PM too dispirit to be classed as a social movement - is it not closer to a range of tendencies or frameworks for critiquing assumptions about grand narratives (to use that awful term)?

God is believed to be omniscient. This means that God knows all moral facts (by moral facts I mean a set of facts that rightness and wrongness of an action can be derived from) if there are any. — MoK

Well, that's just one interpretation of god. But don't forget that for many theists god doesn't properly 'know' anything because god is the source of all goodness and all potential - god is not reducible to the status of some kind of sky wizard, with a set of opinions, god is the ultimate concern and the ground of being itself.

Thus, believing in God does not resolve moral conflicts. — MoK

Theists have no objective basis for morality. In this respect we are all alike. The best a theist can do is form personal beliefs or preferences or subjective views about what they think a god's morality might be. This is why, even in the same religion, theists are all over the place and can't agree on so many moral questions, from the status of women, to euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, gay and trans rights, blood transfusions, stem cell research, divorce, human rights, etc, etc.

Ok. I'm no expert but I tend to think of postmodernism as a more exciting, perhaps liberating way to examine matters, something that refreshes our dependence on any number of gods from the 'natural order' to the 'absolute concern'.

a type of reactionary response to a recent phase of psycho-social evolution. — Pantagruel

Can you explain what you mean?

the idea that mankind has reached some kind of tipping point. — Pantagruel

Do you mean that the hubris and vainglory of foundationalism have been challenged by a severe form of skepticism?

Exactly!