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On faith and gods
James Bowery has raised a question about the cognitive verities of our being-in-the-world, characterising it as a point on a faith continuum. In a comment on “The final question” thread he writes:
Well, I do wish to “interject” some qualitative distinctions; or at least to set forth the meaning and relation of things as I understand them. So, to that end ... I will not spend too much time on the first, which is the human brain’s rendering of a representative reality from the raw data of the world beyond the organism. Obviously, the brain stands at the apogee of three and half billion years of evolution, from the first simple cells which sensed light in darkness and succeeded in transmitting that capacity to other cells. Figuratively speaking, God was light. Non-figuratively, the whole, limitless noumenal truth is le soleil absolu, but the form in which we limited beings re-cognise it is strictly shackled to planet earth. My favoured guide Martin Heidegger accepted the Cartesian subject-object duality but placed human being in the “there-then”, which is a human-scale objectification of that whole truth. But the whole question of how we are evolved to “sense light” therein, how we autogenetically construct from the input of our five senses a sublime simulacrum limited to our own cortex, and how we then filter it through the great external-facing, associative systems, remains; and it is, of course, that most important and ancient mystery which is the Mind-Body problem. There are many theoretical solutions, the most populous among academics being species of physicalism and emergentism. With so much post-Christian, blue planet, Gaia thinking prevalent in the West it is perhaps not a surprise that pan-psychism is making a bit of a comeback. Beyond formal academia, in the badlands, Chris Langan’s CTMU appears to be both pan-psychist and a mathematical proof. Even by the standards for pan-psychism, it is not taken seriously by academics outside his own immediate high-IQ cohort. It is at least complete, or claimed to be. Not one of the other theories are claimed by anyone as adequate at this stage. All are problematic. All are contested. No one has anything even close to a definite and provable account of brain function. This is true even of accounts of how the sleeping brain conjures into existence its dream-world. We know in our waking hours that dreams are brilliant, strange fictions. But however improbable or fractured a dream may be, once the brain chemistry flows we are totally immersed and certain of the dream’s material reality. One would think that this contradiction might help in the formal search for a solution, but it hasn’t yet. Anyway, in my distinctly informal estimation, certainty speaks of an evolutionary attention to survival and continuity which is so needful that all that is Mind derives from it and serves it, and so constant that no moment of human experience escapes it, not even what we dream. The mechanics of it are absolute. Regardless, to finally resolve the Mind-Body problem, including the certainty aspect, may take decades yet of painstaking neurological science. Or it may take a conceptual breakthrough as novel and startling as Darwin’s eureka moment on the chalk path at Down House. Every interested academic party would like to find a starting point for that. It behoves everyone, particularly laymen, to be mindful of that and to tread lightly as we play with theorising ourselves. The final contribution to the reality-rendering process is the waking brain’s spontaneous transformation of raw data ... “the thing that is” ... into meanings. Meaning can be autonomically associated or it can be derived by the more reflexive workings of higher emotion and/or intellect. In the former case it may be as primitive and general to all mammals as pleasure or pain. It may extend into the body, and be as visceral as the fight vs flight reflex or sexual interest, arousal, and intercourse. These and like meanings are typically informed or accompanied by pre-existing, lower-order, animalistic emotions. But the reflexive approach to meaning is wholly dependent on an interjection by our most sublimely human qualities, as expressed in the little complex of (again pre-existing) higher emotions. This brings us to the question of those emotions and their relation to faith. From what little of it I can personally see, faith is an evolved organising faculty. It arrays and focusses the higher emotions, flooding the mind with their quality such that, as with any emotion, it is dominant over the intellect. It is entirely operative within the gamut of higher emotions and does not stray outside, not even to the animalistic emotions (which arise elsewhere in the brain’s structure). Faith, then, is not an emotion itself. Neither is it plain belief, or belief with a bit more intensity. One believes based on data in some form from the non-sensate cognitive machinery - non-sensate because the sensate part of the cognitive mind functions directly through instinct or through the mechanics of movement. The non-sensate parts, ie, emotion and intellect, must rely on more complex psychical structures, of which belief is one. Belief functions at a psychical distance. It affirms that one’s assessment of a given circumstance will be typically sufficient for an evolutionary adaptive outcome over a maladaptive one. It is entirely credible that the human capacity for belief, like trust, confidence, judgement, and suspicion and much else besides, has its genesis there, in the strengthening of adaptive choice-making. Belief has intentionality in the phenomenological sense. It is active and serial in its investments, each time coming into operation as needed and sufficient unto itself. It is not a permanence, therefore. One does not “always believe”. Post facto, each belief quits consciousness for the memory. It has, then, something of the passing quality of a state. Its sufficiency and evolutionary necessity are the permanent features. Faith, on the other hand, is fully a permanence in the hearts of the faithful, and therefore not a state. Faith does not come to a point of closure and go into memory. One might speculate that although it formulates in the higher emotions alone, its deepest evolutionary root is not there but with belief, in the brain’s necessitous power to maintain a constant, discriminating vigil in the cause of life. Such a source would allow that constancy processes as a constancy to the principle of presence and presence’s truth ... the first “I am” in any identitarian formula ... such that this most fundamental of all truths is recrudesced and, as much as is possible given our fallibility, sacralised. Thus deity enters the life of men. It is the creation of faith, which is the creation of the evolutionary drive for survival and continuity, in the face of what, to borrow the Christian term, is fallenness (see my prior commentary on the development of savannah and of the thinking faculty). Thus evolution equips the human organism with an opposing, redirecting force to the Fall, or at least potentially so, and only then by what I have described previously as esoteric practik. Just as emotional predisposition varies within racial groups and between racial group, so faith varies. While the higher emotions themselves are more or less a fixed pallet within the races, excepting their psychopaths, faith is less robust and may be absent entirely from whole lines of descent. Those among us, such as myself, who do not stand in a line of transmitted genes for faith, only have cognition via the great outward-facing brain systems by which to navigate life. That, of course, remains so regardless of the (usually imposed) religious character of the age. It was so in Puritan England and it is so today amid the neo-Marxism, political correctness, wokeness ... call it what you will. I would be pretty confident that in the 16th and 17th centuries there were few Puritans among the quarter to a third of Northern Europeans who lacked expressed faith genes; and there are few radical egalitarians today - fewer, indeed, than among the surviving Anglican and Catholic faith communities. In their exoteric expression, the great religions vary in their capacity to exploit the fitness gain of faith, which means to host esoteric practik. Christianity is particularly impoverished in this respect. It distributes the higher emotions within three exoteric foci, of which the Christian deity and the canonical gospels occupy the highest. The second focus is the self, presented as the Christian soul seeking a salvation after physical death granted by the grace of the deity. The third is the tribe, sited at one remove from the focus of the deity, not in contact as in Judaism where the tribe stands immediately beneath the deity and above self. Christianity is an individualised religion. Our connection to tribe is absented, and our connection to the fullness of our identity with it. All humanity is substituted in its place:
Under this exoteric disposition the answer to suffering is prayer for the sufferer. The answer to grief is acceptance of God’s will and prayers for the soul of the deceased. The answer to one’s own failings in the way of faith is begging for God’s love and forgiveness. The answer to another’s moral failing towards oneself is one’s own love and forgiveness. The answer to the faithless is faith in, and love of, the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the answer to more or less every doubt or challenge is to have Jesus “in your life”, for which practise a frightful imitatio of endless charity to the suffering African Other is now obligatory. An unbounded altruism in this last respect might help to unlock the Pearly Gates, but it is no guarantee. If He doesn’t like something about you, Jehovah won’t be graceful. Hell and damnation have been quietly retired by the compassion-mad modern Church, and the modern, fundamentally liberal church-goer would be mightily vexed by an old-time hellfire and damnation preacher. But the gospels are perfectly clear and the torments of Hell were rightly the wages of sin until the 1960s, at least. Jehovah may only demand a totalistic faith-investment in His claimed facticity, limiting faith’s exercise to humility before Him, reverence for Him and observance of His Word, but he is still the capo de capo of a moral punishment and reward system in the form of a feedback loop. Something along these lines, I would say:
Of course, the same general model could be applied, with few positional changes, to anti-racism, race equality, feminism, “gay” rights, or trans politics. One need only substitute sin for “oppression” and the sinner for the white, sexually normal male (and now, as the revolution eats itself, TERF). The parallels between one form of Jewish thinking and another are unmistakable. One can’t help but wonder if the divide revealed in the Incident at Antioch is less about who broke bread with whom than the Judaic refusal to extend to the gentiles the turn to sacralised identity which Judaism vouchsafes Jews. Because, after all, the prospects for Olam Ha-ba rest upon the attainment by the gentile of estrangement and amorphousness as his own final, existential condition (Christianity) or the coercion upon him of that same finality (Judaism and Marxism). In the quote from James with which I began these ruminations, he concludes with the following:
Perhaps the question, if we are to avoid a re-run of The Thirty Years War, is this: To resolve the Marxist Question do we have to resolve the question of Jewish millenarian thinking - which is really Jewish identitarian thinking - and does that also involve a question about the meaning and function of Judaism’s Christian offshoot? I don’t profess to know the detail of how such an historically seminal and towering question may be answered. But as an existentialist and Heideggerian I lean towards the possibility that Christianity can be re-set, that the relation of its foci can be corrected, and that the emphasis on faith as total commitment to the Jewish G-d can be reformed as faith as the roadway out of the exoteric and into a proper and harmonious relation of the European sociobiology and the European sense of the sacred. For one thing, I know that there are even today a few surviving, secluded monastic orders, all of them Catholic I am sure, which hold the personal god to be a modernist nonsense, and seek the great twin fealties of all real faith: union with the All and self-perfectionment. If there are indeed men and women among us who know these ancient goals to be the reality of faith, then there is always a possibility, however remote, that a reform movement not entirely exoteric in its address could spring up within European Christianity - even as it is wasting away. Indeed, because it is. Whether the problem of reform would be any easier to resolve than the problem of Mind-Body is another matter, of course. Comments:2
Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 07 Jun 2022 12:22 | # You have confused some thoughts about a framework for a solution with a solution, or an attempt at a solution, itself. My final paragraph clarifies who could possibly create systemic religion, in line with the cautions I expressed to you long ago when you were speaking of the creation of a new race-based religion. Earlier in the text there is an appeal to caution in respect to the Mind-Body problem, so I am not entirely sure why you are making the claim you do. 3
Posted by DanielS on Wed, 08 Jun 2022 05:52 | # I wasn’t confused, GW, but rather seeing occasion to underscore how your efforts in trying to negotiate tradition and modernity, like Bowery’s efforts as such, have suffered for your insistence, rather, on treating of the (((red cape))) misrepresentation of what should be )))proper((( post modern conceptualizations, for your resistance (intransigence) against understanding me (a Gen-Xer, in bringing (proper, post modern) social correctives to the general errant patterns of Boomers (especially STEM-bent Boomers). The cardinal sin of both of you has been to presume mutual exclusivity to what I bring to bear rather than see it as resource which can, and should be integrated with what you reasonably want in defense and interests of your people. However, this is a matter not just typical of your Boomer generation, but a charmed loop recursively reconstructing by unhelpful personality traits in both of you, which I also take occasion to characterize. 4
Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Jun 2022 07:47 | # What I have actually said - consistently - about your contribution was that its place is in, or closer to, the political, in the sense that there is a staged development from foundation to activism. There are two ways of apprehending that development. The first, as listed in an essay I linked on a recent reply to you, goes something like this:
So on that basis b, c and d broadly cover your stuff. But there is a second, more philosophically relational way - so, perhaps more interesting - by which we might position it, and that’s within a live, creative regimen such as the one I am now employing here for my scribblings, namely as foundation, developmental structure, and political expression. This form, covering the same range as a, b, and c, assumes for a managed project, and is applicable to any developmental and whole line of thought in our particular world of concerns. It was my hope, which I expressed to you several times, that you would find a way to connect to the Ontology Project, but that was not to be. I am not sure that you ever really thought that anything more grounded than social interpretation was required. 5
Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 08 Jun 2022 22:23 | # If I understand the qualitative distinction you seek to “interject” it is between “belief” and “faith” where “belief” has a temporal aspect but not “faith”, because it pertains the eternal aka timeless (not subject to revision aka change). “Certainty” also appears but it is unclear why you include that in your interjection unless it is to, perhaps unintentionally, correspond to what I call “decision”, e.g. in my sense of “faith”, “a leap of faith” takes one from mere “belief”, via values thence evaluation in an act (hence the fact of that act is “certain” in the sense of a fait accompli or accomplished fact, a matter of history presumably not subject to subsequent revision and therefore “everlasting” rather than “eternal”). 6
Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Jun 2022 23:50 | # OK James, so I am distinguishing a three-layer form in which faith appears as one layer, the whole structure contrasting with the licence with which you use the term (ie, as a spectrum). The first layer is the representation of the world that springs into being in the cortex with fabulous spontaneity, and in which we have a total, mechanical certainty. This is that core epistemological problem of Mind-Body, and at present we cannot explain it. But we can say that the certainty involved has the same quicksilver spontaneity as, and is a specific characteristic of, the representational process. The second layer is our capacity for belief, which I have distinguished by its phenomenological intentionality from faith as the third layer. Further I have tried to distinguish the evolutionary action of each, and set the fitness gain of faith aside as an at least potential counter to Man’s fallenness. I have made faith the parent of the gods, and then looked at faith within the Christian context. At the close I have offered an answer to the question you posed about supremacist theocracy, on the assumption that the Jewish struggle is the underlying force in that. If Christians’ faith in the Jewish G-d is to have any liberational potential Christianity itself must be conceptually de-Judaised and rescued from decline (which means rescued from the political). It must be taken into the esoteric, ie, faith itself ... faith in the personal, saving god ... cannot continue to be the sine qua non of Christianity’s reward. That grand project obviously cannot be originated and conceptualised within the exoteric church. 7
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 03:52 | #
And you have said this - consistently - because you are VERY ignorant and competitive where you should not be. This is an ignorance and misplaced competitiveness that you share with James, though your case is only a bit worse. The only saving grace is that your contentions have been so stupid that I was able to easily put them aside. 8
Posted by Al Ross on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 04:12 | # James , the “certainty ” of , say , Jew - inspired , Christian belief is evidenced by the clergy - pronounced funereal valedictory to the “dear departed” , i.e. , ” The sure and certain Hope” et al. Well , it can’t hurt to hope . 9
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 04:25 | # Trying to relegate my contribution to “the political” or what you think is the mere political is just an expression of your ignorant hyper competitiveness; (the TIP and TOOP of business); wherein you try to diminish and trivialize (one you deem as a) competitor; also a part of your unmerited (shown in your ignorance), gargantuan ego, with an autobiography that has desperately sought to cast me as your convenient foil. Remember when you said that I made up my own private definition of “incommensurability”? This was just the latest and most salient example of what has been hundreds of instances of obnoxious gas-lighting from you, a hyper competitiveness that expresses a pathology of your narcissistic personality disorder. Unfortunately for you, my “contributions” are of a deeper, more important philosophical level than yours, and ever so will it remain. Your definition (and proposed requirement) of “pure” philosophy only shows that, lets face it, that you are a bit stupid as well. And indeed a wailing modernist, trying to apply limited STEM personality to philosophy. As for James, you’ve got a guy there calling others unresponsive, while he turned an altercast where he could have been in the lead of a concrete project to sort out the who question - who we are, DNA Nations - and instead turned it into a competition, wherein I am supposed to come up with what he deems as a better or equal method of conflict resolution than he proposes, as if the concern is mutually exclusive, when in fact, the who question is necessarily preliminary. Unresponsive? For what might have been his part, he let ten years go by. Let me repeat GW, your opinion of my work means NOTHING to me. 10
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 07:14 | # Daniel, you live too close to the objects of your own intellectual attention to understand the whole nature of our people’s need. In plain fact, in order to make the DNA Nations project functionable, or any other single aspect of nationalist revolution, our people must be redeemed to the fullness of their selfhood from the formative power of systemic liberalism, the doctrine of faith in the Christian deity, materialism and nihilism, technology and the city, power and elitism, and Judaism and every related utopianism, doubtless along with other significantly negative force that has come unbidden into our life from our history and historiography. That will not be achieved by hermeneutically-dancing academics in communicationism setting some new rules for their human park. Their rules will stink because they are imperfect men. Another mechanism ... actually, the stripping away of mechanism itself ... is required, and that’s what you cannot, as they say, get your head around. Change of this order seems to be too absolute, too interconnected and inter-dependent for you to grasp. 11
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 08:07 | # Stupid, as ever, you are GW.
First of all, you attempt, as ever, to position me dishonestly, as foil to your convenience, as somehow “too close” to the objects of my intellectual attention to understand the whole nature of our people’s need.” As ever you make assertions from nowhere, and feel because you make them, they must be true. This one isn’t either. Then, after ignoring, as ever, what I actually say (e.g., that hermeneutics can and should always circulate back and connect with the ontic end of verification as need be, a process which I do engage... then comes.. 1. Major philosophical stupidity number one: you draw a diagram this clunk leads to that clunkity clunk ... “for everyone, in pure philosophy.” Not that he’s trying to diagram how he prescribes English people must behave in order to be authentic to their kind - “there can be no other” ...for them or anyone else.. He wants to say that this is THE philosophy, THE pure philosophy. Stupid. If you were to say that this is A philosophy that I propose for English people and may be a close fit for other Europeans, you might get away with it. But you are far too grandiose for that, and in fact, clearly, a sub-genius.
The DNA Nations project is functionable already, would be with enough people to begin, (Ancestry.com and other genetic testing sights are very popular); no harm in beginning with them and as for the rest, if they are going to have good will toward our kind, the first step is that they may need help overcoming despotic obstruction and misdirection: I have done this (way way better than you), described that first step in my concept of red caping; which you, of course, tried to deny the significance of because it is infinitely better than your stupid, “ontology project” and structuring project (a concern for structuring, which you poorly derived from me); while your calling (((red caping))) an insult term, sounds more like something derived from Bowery’s hyper sensitive egocentrism and paranoia.
Well good luck with trying to get into everybody’s head - the pop-psychology books that you belabored in your youthful despair and ambition could not have been a waste of time…could they have been?
No, doubtless.
Oh there we are again. The jealous idiot, has to project his clunkity-clunk pedantic, this causes that like a car engine and call it “dancing” because heremeutic inquiry can move gracefully from broad to focused perspectives as need be.. and this stupid attempt at a smear, “communicationism”, in order to distract from his dumb assed psychologisim.
You wish that I and others will not be working in an ongoing process to shape, craft, and perfect practices, regulative and constitutive rules, in order to make them better where need be, reconstructing the good ones that are fine, so that they will not have to bear the stink of the farts emanating from your arm chair philosophy. You are going to try to tell me that people are imperfect, after I had just emphasized the pragmatists major contribution in fact, being in our imperfection not needing to form a barrier to philosophy. No people are imperfect so they need GW and only GW, must bear his unbearably stupid “sweeping aside” of the many better ideas which threaten his UNMERITED GARGANTUAN EGO, THE CLEAR EXPRESSION OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER:
Always tries to pretend that he’s so meta. No, Mr. Idiot. What I am doing is clearly above your head and You cannot get your head around it; your sick ego, autobiography and clear sub genius, will not let you grasp this: that my project is the one that deals with interconnection from the onset; but is not so stupid as to unecessarily put everything on hold for the sake of your gargantuan, unmerited ego and the armchair farts wafting up of your asshole self.
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Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:39 | # Daniel, if you think back you will recall that I have supported the DNA Nations concept. I have also praised your descriptive of the red cape. Where I differ is, first, on your reification of “the white left”, which is a strategic error as well as a failure to distinguish the various forms of nationalism from liberalism and its unique axiality. Second, your reliance on “specificatory structures” derived through hermeneutic critique is a poor replacement for holistic thinking, and reveals an orientation towards the political (which, for some reason you deny). A third area, which has now emerged, is your assumption that ethnic nationalism is generically understood ... something held as a standing reserve which can be brought to bear by order. I would argue that the more one examines it, the less it resembles anything the generality of nationalists recognise as such, certainly in England. The pre-internet generation are vestigial Nietzscheans, and some are fascists. The internet generation are substantially simple racists, anti-Islam ideologists, and whatever term one wants to use in place of anti-Semites. The three components of ethnic nationalism, ie ethnicity, natural identity, and nativism, are only vaguely understood, and then not in combination. And that’s before we even think about what the non-nationalist majority know and don’t know about the advocacy of their own ethnic person. Look, rather than blow another fuse or spam the thread with little quotes from this comment, duly rebutted in your inimitable style, why not respond to the OP by posting a hermeneutic dance on faith and the Christian deity; so we can get some idea as to why it is you do all these things so much better than anyone else? 13
Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 14:15 | # Regarding “certainty” in the sense you have described, I had said, “While we may remain true to ourselves in our phenomenal perceptions, we are on shaky ground the moment we begin to interpret them”—that is to say, those perceived phenomena that are simply “given”, “assumed”, “disclosed” as “true” (hence “certain”) prior to our ability to “bracket” them or put them in scare/skeptic quotes (what many would describe as “qualia”). Is that correct? According to Langan, Kant would refer to such qualia as comprising “phenomenal syntax” of what Pierce would call the interpretant aspect of Being. In other words, someone who is color blind would have a different phenomenal syntax from those of us to whom the qualia ‘red’ can be sign, subject to interpretation. The “language” spoken by Reality has aspects that are unavailable to us not just because we don’t know how to interpret them but because they are unavailable to us as qualia, hence “truth” regarding them is meaningless. The color blind can interpret our social interactions so as to impute a second-person qualia of “red”—what might be called “socially imputed qualia”, but such qualia is of a qualitatively different character—uncertain. Having, I hope, come to an understanding of what you meant by “certainty”, my further elaboration of what you might have meant—regarding decisions as embodying a “certain” act, hence fact arising from that act, can have an aspect of “phenomenal syntax” in our experience of this thing we call “self”. Our experience of ourselves has “certain” aspects such as emotions and actions/decisions—such aspects being prior to interpretation of them. But please understand that I, too, accept all of these “certainties” as qualitatively different from “faith” or “belief” in my sense. The way I put it: “We are thoughts who have thoughts.” In other words, our “certainties” are contingent in a qualitatively different way than are our contingent interpretations aka “thoughts”. If it doesn’t stick in your craw, think of this as an approach to reconciling Darwinian evolution with “intelligent design” as does Langan. So, there is only one qualitative distinction in addition to mine you are interjecting: belief vs faith. 14
Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 15:57 | # GW wrote:
Your use of “permanence” is what threw me when I attributed to your use of “faith” an “eternal” character—particularly as you have belabored the temporal/temporary character of “belief”, and as in the vernacular the objects of “faith” are frequently seen as having more “eternal” aspects. So, I now think I understand better what you mean by “faith”. But I still don’t get why you think you can claim “permanence” to “faith” since there is this thing called “religious conversion”—and so far as I can see, you rely on the qualitative distinction between “permanent” and “temporary” to justify your qualitative interjection of a distinction between, respectively, “faith” and “belief”. Do you, perhaps, “intend” to attribute “intention” in the venacular sense to “faith” and “intention” in the phenomenological sense to “belief”? i.e. Faith is a willful belief? 15
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:05 | #
You did not praise it, you said it “might be good if I did not use it as a term of insult” So egocentric, you apparently believed that I was directing it at you; and I thought Bowery was bad with his treating talk of Descartes and Locke as terms of insult directed at him: ridiculous. 16
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:07 | #
For the millionths fucking time, I specify “the White ETHNONATIONAL left” exactly so that assholes like you do not try to misrepresent what I am saying. And for the millionth time, you try this dishonest sleight of hand. What kind of asshole are you? 17
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:09 | #
No, it is not a strategic error, as I have explained a million times, that it does not function on the axis that you doltishly treat as a found object of nature, but despite my explanations as to why it is important, it never penetrates your skull. 18
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:15 | #
“The some reason that I deny your attempt to relegate” the philosophical sources that I draw upon as “political” is because the reason is that I draw upon philosophy, real philosophy, much deeper and superordinate to your armchair musings. Your attempted assertion that I am not coming with a holistic world view is just your wish to maintain your self image as the grand philosopher - a role for which you are not equipped, for several reasons. To note regarding “specificatory structures”: If GW criticizes an idea, you can be pretty sure its a good idea - he is threatened by them. 19
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:17 | #
It is generally understood, but I did not say that it was something that can be taken for granted in standing reserve and be easily brought to order. 20
Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:29 | #
What is this butt hurt thing about the circularity of hermeneutic inquiry being “a little dance”? If your desire is to take a break from the rancor that you inspire in me, I can agree. But that doesn’t mean engaging you and your gaslighting/strawmanning, that only served to piss me off; a trap that I fell into again when I saw the need to comment on the prior thread for the urgency of the Ukrainian thread. I will try to leave then, with this remark. To me, your treatment of “faith” as a special and particularly genetic related issue is a mistake - yes, where STEM “philosophizing” tries to nerd away above the ordinary language of praxis, the social world, that would correct such absurd speculations: faith to normal people would be more simply a matter of maintaining confidence in something (like the value of biological patterns) when the palpable reasons to maintain that faith are not evidence. That is not to say that faith and its willing suspension of disbelief is not necessary to maintain coherence and all the good things that go along with it, but it does invoke the need (in order to sustain “narrative”), need for the hermeneutic turn (and its “little dance”) from Modernity. 21
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:32 | # James,
When I read your comment on the Final Question thread I think I saw that part as a bit hybrid or logically compressed, James. Certainty, in this context, is the quality which accommodates the brain’s rendering of the world to the world-in-itself, which is indeed unknowable. We respond to that unknowableness with this mechanical certainty from the birth of foetal consciousness to brain-death. The rendering does not have to be particularly accurate for certainty to attend. It will attend. Schizophrenics are certain in their torturous world ... sixties hippies on an acid trip likewise. We are certain in the many and varied worlds of our dreams. We cannot be otherwise without a deeply disconcerting if momentary sense of imbalance. Certainty, therefore, is an absolute fundamental of the brain’s rendering action, is contemporaneous with it, and thereby substantially prior to the discriminations of the outward-facing cognitive machinery of the brain.
I’m not sure how I should approach this. I like to maintain clear distinctions. The more stuff that gets thrown onto the pile the more blurred everything becomes. OK, so I’ve a feeling that linguistics has a deceptive allure for many extremely able people who seek to address cognition and knowledge. I can see that language applies to the intellect function (thought), the higher and lower emotion functions (feeling), and even the instinctual and learned workings of the senses (sensation). Thought, feeling, and sensation are the languages of these respective brain functions. I can see that, if real, “qualia"would have categorical content which invites interpretion (ie, in the language of the relevant function). But I hesitate to ascribe language to a qualia - quali? qualium? - as a system of syntax in itself. There is too much licence in it, and with licence comes abuse, albeit not intentional. I think there might be a piece of cleverness here which has over-reached itself. Let’s leave qualia to one side for a moment, and take a step back to distinguish between this mechanical certainty in the rendering and the notion - because that is what it is - of the truth of “the thing in itself”. Obviously, in philosophy truth is the the mediator between the object and its meaning. It is an overlay on the unknowable raw data. In the Cartesian model of correspondence there is always a fatal dose of self-referentiality in the subject’s discriminations for truth because the standard for correspondence is in the subject and nowhere else. Heidegger accepted Cartesian duality but rejected correspondence. Instead, he sought (via Dasein) to naturalise being in the world-in-itself, thereby rooting the cognitive event away from the referenced truth of the object to the authenticity of our presence. Dasein’s facticity ... its raw data ... inhabits the world-in-itself, which is the world as raw data. It is all raw data. It has organisation, but there is no datum point (pan-psychist models aside). In other words, that world has no knowledge of itself by which the qualitative might be referenced. Qualia are fundamentally incoherent and cannot exist in it. What I am saying, I guess, is that Heidegger’s epistemological model is inconsistent with original quality-laden data. How we, as men, interpret data rests not on the relativised quality of our fixed reference points for truth but on the authenticity of our being.
Well, I am sorry to labour so many points and try your patience. Thank you for it.
Fair enough. But you do then have to find some means of explaining how faith originates in Man and how it functions, which means is not simply an appeal to faith. I have had my crack at that in the OP. So ... 22
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 09 Jun 2022 22:52 | #
Faith is a sociobiological attribute in the region of the brain dealing with the higher emotions. It has a definite fitness gain and almost certainly pre-dates Homo sapiens (ref: the Fall as the time of the costly and rapid evolution of the intellectual function in the EEA of the savannah). It is either transmitted to a given individual or it is not. If transmitted it is either expressed or not. If expressed it is a permanent presence in the individual’s mind processes, pressaging either religious attachment or another, similarly consuming attachment, in our time invariably political, invariably a liberational cause. If pressaging a non-religious attachment there can be a conversion to religion. If pressaging a religious attachment there can be a “loss of faith” in strict religious terms. One might exchange the term “faith” for “belief”, which is used in the KJV, after all (not sure about the Greek original). I don’t like it because there is the other evolutionary function of belief which I’ve outlined in the OP, often involving intellectually derived principles, positions, analyses, predictions, conclusions and so forth. Similarly, one might exchange the term “belief” for “faith”, but then the special intensity and higher-emotional character of faith as such would be conflated with everything else. Most of all, though, faith is itself, utterly human and its proper expression within esoteric practise truly is the only authentic reply to fallenness. The fact that Christianity is very poor indeed in this area commends us to reform it, not to deny faith its realm. After all, no one alive in the West today knows how to construct a new faith system.
I thought about that while I was writing the OP. To my mind phenomenological intentionality must indicate a wilful application of the consciousness, a wilful attentionality. Do I think faith is such an action? Well, its true function (not purpose, of course) is practical, and hidden and only very rarely found; requiring really quite specialised, usually monastic schools of knowledge. There, yes, no doubt it could have intentionality. But often it will not. It will remain wholly compulsive. How much more so, then, will compulsion characterise the faithful of the exoteric circle. Yes, they may know the traditions of spiritual liberation in this world from reading and conversation, and some may even produce behaviours they associate with spiritual attainment. But these are unforgiving matters, and the very difficult and decades-long practise that human liberation actually entails can only ever be undertaken by the remarkable, ideally wilful few. 23
Posted by Long Time Lurker on Fri, 10 Jun 2022 02:35 | #
If you feel that way why do you post here? Are you trying to chase off all the quality posters like what happened when you had quasi admin privs here?
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Posted by DanielS on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 05:16 | #
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Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 07:37 | #
My piece is about faith and Christianity. It does not mention “the left” except in terms of the Jewish form that radical equalitarian thinking takes. Yours, meanwhile, is the first comment on the thread. It is angry and abusive and does not address my piece except to go off on one because it mentioned Heidegger’s acceptance of Cartesian subject-object duality, which is a matter of fact. For the record, there is no right↔left axis in nationalism ... no individualism ↔ collectivism ... because the pursuit of the individualist and universalist wordviews form no part of any nationalist philosophy. Nationalism simply does not see human life as a struggle by one man or by all men to break the bounds and become “fully human”. As a coherent system in its own right it does (or can - see under) have a base axis along which every philosophy arrays, but it has nothing to do with the competing liberalistic universes of the individual and the collective. It has to do with competing defensive and expansive gene interests. It arrays the native principle in opposition to the imperial principle. You are stuck on defending collectivism, which shows in your talk of unifying. I have tried to explain many times that the tribe does not collect because it does not consist of individuals that were not collected in the first place. Blood does not unify because it is already one, not many. Nationalism, especially a nationalism of ethnicity, simply does not start from a position of the tribe’s fundamentally right-liberal condition which requires your “correctives”. You are imposing a left-liberal “collectivist” reading and trying to call it nationalism. Let us be clear, the native principle is not collectivising. The imperial principle is not individualising. All nationalisms commence from the awakening to our human truth, which is the golden thread joining them. They subsequently array by a particular, differentiating expression of that truth. I have wondered aloud before that nationalism should not be presented as an axial arrayal. Rather, I think it might be a process of over-lapping or partial nesting, so that each philosophy takes something from the one below. Maybe one day I will try to represent that. Meantime, at least try to look at what you are saying, Daniel, with a more critical eye. There is a reason why the rest of nationalism does not think of itself in the terms you desire. 26
Posted by DanielS on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 08:01 | # Perhaps other people will read your comments GW. I will not read this one and try not to read (and thereby be irritated by your stuff) otherwise, as I have had it with your dishonesty. If others believe your bullshit that is their problem. They have other places to go, including mine. 27
Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 09:05 | # If you do not read my observations on life, how do you know what to “correct” for being “Cartesian” or for being “STEM” and, worse, “boomer” or, heavens forfend, “gaslighting”? How, as a textual analyst (ie, a hermeneuticist), do you shake a leg when you don’t read and understand the text in the first place? James and I have similarities and differences in our understanding of the world. We engage mostly on differences, as one does because it is by resolving those that understanding and agreement arise. Human beings, excepting yourself, fundamentally want to agree. So we don’t shout names at one another. I don’t attack him for sneaking in qualia and, not only that, qualia as an inherently designed syntax underlying Creation. I explain what I think. MR has always been a place where people can come to explain what they think, providing they think. I will never stop you coming here. But I wish you would engage on a productive basis. Risk your worldview. If it fails then seek to identify its flaws and either strengthen it or change it. 28
Posted by Long Time Lurker on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 17:31 | #
Observation and “listening” to quality ideas has its own merits especially in philosophical endeavors. Insult throwing back and forth simply isn’t worth much of my time. Its simply a signal to noise issue ... sadly I seemed to have provided the action for a reaction of more of the latter. If the “AIT” discussions and its social “science” implications and like topics ever get going in depth perhaps that will change. There is said by some that there exists a tribe that knows no shame ... Does your DNA nation idea suite have any Algorithmic discussions on: Insulting and condescending presentations/behavior often have the opposite effect on the public and have been described by many as a hollywood N approach. BTW: Language aside, you made it a pain to archive “some” of the really good threads by adding a ton of useless images that radically increased the raw size of the “information” and required editing of them to remove ...
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Posted by Thorn on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 22:21 | #
No such “tribe” exists. Never has…. 30
Posted by DanielS on Sun, 12 Jun 2022 06:45 | # To note, I haven’t read comments since a few days ago, because I do not need to be provoked by people willing to function under the auspices of GW’s dishonesty and misdirection. I came back primarily to add some important comments about the war in Ukraine and then got provoked to say a bit more due to GW’s dishonest power play, gaslighting and strawmanning. I’ve learned well enough that there is no end to it; I’ve stayed away from MR for months on end before and will not find that a problem again; so you, whoever you are, may say your bit without a response from me, but if people want to know better of me and what I am actually saying as opposed to strawmanning from GW (and to date, Bowery as well, let alone Hitler and GW fanboy Al Ross), they know where to find me.. 31
Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 12 Jun 2022 09:07 | # Nobody is “dishonest”. Nobody is “misdirecting”. Nobody is “power-playing”. You are not a victim. You simply cannot stand-up your own Weltanshauung. Since it is sacred for you and cannot change, and you cannot change yourself ... you cannot grow your relationships, for one thing ... you revert to name-calling and vituperation. However, I invite you, for the second time on this thread, to contribute intellectually on the basis of open and honest debate. You are not being driven away. 32
Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 13 Jun 2022 16:30 | # GW writes: “I like to maintain clear distinctions. The more stuff that gets thrown onto the pile the more blurred everything becomes.” Do not multiply entities beyond necessity as brother Ockham would say. There is a tension here between attempts to communicate and attempts to comprehend. Communication requires a Rosetta Stone which most certainly multiplies entities beyond necessity but only for the purpose of mutual comprehension or, as some might say, consiliance which is essential for conciliation of multiple identities thence reconciliation to a unified identity. We all are comfortable speaking our own argots if not languages but it can be more than mere comfort: hard-won comprehensions at the frontiers of philosophy are frequently the result of, as you say, “clear distinctions”. But we are really at a loss when, in the process of attempting to maintain those hard-won comprehensions for ourselves, we refuse to teach others our argots if not languages. This is one reason I have always gone to some effort to try to get people to define their terms with the minimum length glossary that can be founded in the vernacular. It is also why I sat down with you over Skype and fleshed out much of the minimal semantic structure of your terms (you apparently had a similar conversation with Thorn although I didn’t see much in your structure attributed to that conversation differing with the result from ours—this is not to be “competitive” but to try to understand what was of so much greater value in Thorn’s conversation that you elided ours in assigning credit for the structure). The purpose of such a glossary is not some sort of STEM insistence on computational precision, but to stop torturing our fellows who are grappling, along with us, the frontiers of philosophy. It is an attempt to be not only human but humane. So I’m tempted to go through that process with you again. 33
Posted by DanielS on Tue, 14 Jun 2022 02:05 | #
Yes, you are dishonest (Bowery can be quite so as well, but you take the cake)
Yes, you are misdirecting, perhaps only as a biproduct of your primary interest - yourself.
Yes, you are power playing (by something like the TOP and TOOP corporate business climber model, a zero-sum game), and that is what is behind your gaslighting, endlessly repeating strawmen that I’ve already rebutted many times, forcing me to rebut them to no end (with that, people coming here anew might think that I am the one who is unreasonable)._
We can agree on that one.
Indeed I can and it holds up. The only thing you can try to do in opposition is put up strawmen.
It is practical for me, working hypotheses, which can be shaped and crafted where necessary. You offer no reason to make significant changes in my working hypotheses. None.
Not true.
To think, I am holding back, going soft on you compared to saying what I really think of you.
If only it could be done. But I am the only one being honest here, so… 34
Posted by DanielS on Tue, 14 Jun 2022 02:39 | #
Yes, and I have rebutted many times before your stupid objections.
You mentioned left in comment, saying that it was on a given liberal axis that you take for granted. You are wrong and can’t stand corrected because you are stupid.
Yes, there is and for a homeostasis of the depth grammar, right would be a matter of corrective feedback and left would be a matter of corrective calibration.
GW likes to make proclamations and when he does, he assures himself that it must be true.
I thought you said that “nobody is dishonest here”. That is extremely dishonest.
You are too stupid to do anything but try to pose an antagonistic view, or that I have a problem with people naturally being together, but more pertinently, you deny that their is a necessary re-constructive aspect in social reality that can and should be invoked for accountability through boundaries and borders. Not a matter of coercion.
You put quotes around this word “collective”, a word that I do not use, probably knowing that it has pejorative connotations. I do not impose a left-liberal collectivist reading. A nation is a group and most everyone besides you can understand that it requires boundaries to manage it effectively.
Where did I EVER say that the nation or the native principle is about collectivising?
You’re drunk with the cool-aide of your pop-psychology books; you can play “zen master’ and try to mystify people with your bullshit.
Not a little grandiose, are you? GW, just about anybody has come across tens of thousands of people more capable and qualified for philosophicla endeavor than you are.
You are a business man, GW. A merchant is the level on which you function. You said that the “market has spoken” in keeping the platform that I outline unpopular (for now). But you are not now and never will be penetrating enough to get out of the box to see that it is not the market which has spoken, but rather kosher marketing, which has spoken (and speaks to and is spoken through people like you).
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Posted by DanielS on Tue, 14 Jun 2022 03:49 | #
Not really an overstatement.
It’s not computerized yet, no. Have to get people to participate in the simple concept of identifying and preserving genetic kinds. https://www.dnanations.com/?p=46578
On one level, geneticists mark the partitions - e.g., haplogroups, and on a more general level, I would encourage people to propose their own categorization to begin; I would suggest four kinds of categorization: 1. Genus European 2. The particular (ethno) European Nation 3. Two kinds (perhaps three or more kinds when an entire half is the father) of European; for now, paternal taking the lead identifier - this may well need correction. 4. European Region: e.g., North Western; Northern; Southern; Eastern and Southern. Anybody who is any kind of European in predominance can choose the genus European if they don’t mind being classified with others. Obviously, those who are Not, say, North Western European cannot choose that category, and just as obviously, those who are North Western European, can choose that category. The idea at this point is category development through participation; cultivation and refinement of the categorizations through corrections over time. I present my own example:
Handle: DanielS Paternal J-Z467 (J-FGC21357) Maternal U5B1E1 Proposed Category 1: Genus European Proposed Category 2: European (ethno) Nation Proposed Category 3: Two Kinds, Italian father, Polish mother. Proposed Category 4: South and North Eastern European Handle: Your handle Paternal and Maternal side genetic group Proposed Category 1. Proposed Category 2. Proposed Category 3. Proposed Category 4.
I am interested in the project for reasons of defense and humane matters of human ecology. I see “eugenics” as basically a naturally occurring phenomenon anyway, and myopic errors for the sake of maximization should be tempered with an overall concern for human ecology and pervasive ecology I would be more concerned with people seeking fair and appropriate matches than with a heavy focus on improvement. Of course we’d want to push in the direction of improvement and away from genetic problems, but not without the restraint of balance and ecological concern, respect for niche disbursement, etc.
Again, I am wary of this word maximization, optimization being the better ideal for guidance of human nature.
Probably, but not pushing that too hard. Really, my concern is plain survival of our kinds. No, we don’t want to be burdened with a surfeit of children from people who are struggling nor obstruct (in fact, would be good to facilitate) the pairing of those who are doing well.
There are many potential arguments for the “proles” - to begin, the unionization can provide leverage for them to hold up to would-be elitist (((e.g.))) exploitation and destruction of their kinds; networks would also be established for their economic interests.
GW (Bowery also, but not as constantly) has been enormously insulting, in so many instances, hard to say when he hasn’t been, even if he does not use profanity.
A picture can be worth a thousand words. My heart does not exactly bleed since I’ve said many important things that you won’t see from others and this does not seem to move you either. Not that I can expect you to know the difference. I don’t post here anymore anyway. I’ll bear in mind the imagery slowdown in my new site 36
Posted by DanielS on Tue, 14 Jun 2022 06:16 | # I should clarify that really, the goal of the Euro-DNA Nations project at this point is to classify genus and species of European DNA for the purpose of curating, unionizing (so to speak) and coordinating our genetics in our defense. What might be done in terms of matching for the sake of improvement of offspring or even just appropriate partner selection is not the purpose here; though I do not seek to control others in terms of whom they might pair-up with, I would not talk in eugenic terms when promoting the project as that has a tendency to scare people, friend and foe alike; can be for good reasons - some acutely scientific reasons about which one should be leery before boldly talking in those terms and with goals of maximization in mind. Moreover, it’s a concern that is tangential at this point while not altogether mutually exclusive, on the order of Bowery’s contention that I should provide a dispute processing mechanism to his satisfaction or the project of DNA curation doesn’t fly. 37
Posted by DanielS on Tue, 14 Jun 2022 06:25 | # ....networks would also be established for their economic interests [if legal status is secured]. Again, that’s jumping the gun. 38
Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 15 Jun 2022 04:46 | # As an instinctive EGI Brit , somewhat unappreciative of the intellectual avalanche observed here , might it be possible to agree with Edgar Allan Poe and question why Kant’s name was spelt with a K ? 39
Posted by Al Ross on Wed, 15 Jun 2022 05:20 | # The vital interests of Brits were well catered for by Mr Farage whose practical politics eschewed those of the UKIP founder , an LSE academic called Prof. Alan Sked , an ineffectual intellectual who resented Farage’s cumulative successes by referring to him as an ” O - Level” man. 40
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 16 Jun 2022 08:21 | # James,
My point before was that language belongs to our whole, much differentiated, animalistic brain (languages, actually); and once a language is detached from one region of that brain and carried into or imposed upon the business of other regions, or into different contexts entirely, it becomes a descriptive rather than the actuality. Said language might be like a language. It might be internally coherent and systemic. It might label well, and sign. But we lose what its matter really is when we apply a label or sign for what is basically convenient assumption. In particular, we lose the difference between experience (ie, Dasein) and ideation, including the idea of truth. A coarse example of convenient assumption ... Forty-two years ago next month, as it happens, I was attending the Royal Agricultural Show which used to be held over four hot summer’s days at Stoneleigh in the West Midlands. It was the preview day, when one or other member of the royal family would turn up to tour the showground and make excruciatingly pointless conversation with some terrified farming yokels. As fate would have it, that day I was quite untroubled by the requirement for bowing and scraping, and instead stood leaning on the top-bar of the show-ring where only the nation’s pig royalty were gathering. One such beast, a sow with, for all I knew, a winning set of physical assets, was being goaded round and round the ring for some preparatory purpose - maybe to establish a target parade time, that being a concern with so many classes and so many entries to get through. Anyway, about thirty yards away to the right, a trailer backed up tight to an adjacent stall. A gentleman pig was disgorged and somewhat casually steered by its owner the four or five feet to the open stall. Of course, this chap immediately noticed the young lady in the ring. Rasping out a remarkably familiar if porcine “Phwooar, the arse on that!”, he decided that he wouldn’t be going into the stall after all. No, he was, somehow, going into the show-ring, and he was going now! They caught him again eventually. Now, the frisky pig knew what he was experiencing. He couldn’t be wrong about it. His bloke-pig Dasein “was”. Obviously, I could not know the pig’s experience itself, not only because I am not that pig, or that pig in that moment in time, or any other pig come to that, but because I could only draw a convenient inference from it. Further, the pig’s decision to make a bolt for his paramour occurred in the area of his brain that processes the sexual instinct. My inference occurred in the area of my brain that processes ideation. Sexual instinct expresses very differently, and hormonally, from the word-language in which ideas or thoughts express. My word/thought construct could never be “true” of the pig’s hormonal action. Do we, then, gain from “clear distinctions” in our interrogation of such questions, or is it somehow useful, or more useful, to bring everything within the category of, say, qualia - a cosmic pattern of truth and value underlying the worlds of pigs and men? Would Brother Occam approve of the additional categorisation? Likewise, what is the real position of your Rosetta Stone in the differentiated communications of our manifold brain systems? And what does that differentiation tell us about Heidegger and Descartes? The pig makes the argument for Heidegger, not only in moments of desire but moments of sagacity and love and anger, et al. What is most authentic in beings must be most communicable to other authenticising beings, and clearly superior to reliance on a self-referentialised truth which can never escape the circle of the personal and so never really communicate. At the same time, when I tell the pig story I am still only telling the story of an idea and its reference point, both of them in my own mind and nowhere else. Does this mean that Descartes is right with his correspondence theory, at least with regard to the workings in isolation of the intellectual function of the brain? Probably so, I think. But there is always a caveat concerning the cognitive. There need to be two things going on here, I think. First, the lines have to be preserved. There must be no conflation of the language and method of intellect with that of emotion or sensation. Intellect is a slow and cumbersome cognitive device it arrives at its end long after the other two systems have reported. Psychologists established years ago that decisions are taken elsewhere in the brain, and the poor old intellect labours along behind and, for the most part, in confirmation. Second, because intellect is ordinarily the seat of our consciousness, and the means by which we routinely ponder our existence, we are heavily inclined to take it as the All. We would benefit from a formal review of thinking’s boundaries.
I acknowledge your generosity, and apologise again for my failings in that regard.
It is, I fear, all too human ... altogether too much the product of the ancient evolutionary progress of our cognition ... that once the thinking mind begins working, and its “truths” and “meanings” appear, it is already lost to the appalling, ordinary fact of our subjectivity (itself due, in large part, to the layered depth or distance of the cognitive processes from the object, but also because evolution presses us at all times for decision, from which comes the autonomic certainty we have spoken of, but also the self-referential structure for meaning and truth itself). We cannot escape the isolation of the intellect. But we might, by our clear distinctions, think our way to sometimes accommodating a more holistic and instinctually-biased way of cognition. That, I think (!), is the only means by which Heidegger’s Dasein could become a revolutionary force. 41
Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 16 Jun 2022 16:35 | # I appreciate the pig story at both levels of illustration: That of “Dasein” and the meta-level of illustrating the value of illustrations as “distinct” from definitions. The “D” in the mathematician’s “QED” is “demonstrated”. The mathematician is (at least pretending to) share an experience—a subjective event. This, of course, gets utterly lost when we attempt to mechanize mathematics as is occurring as you read these words being rendered for your eyes by a machine. You are mercifully ignorant of the machine’s processes, just as we all are ignorant of the pre-cognitive “machinery” of sexual experience we share with pigs via our ability to identify with them. There is a lot to say here, but I do need to interject two things: 1) I am currently going through the torturous process of experiencing the world through the eyes of Ayn Rand via “Atlas Shrugged”, which is the primary introduction to so-called “Objectivism”. I’m subjecting myself to this torture because the Biden administration seems almost designed to refer hapless “conservatives” to “Atlas Shrugged”. It may be that the price we paid for our exceptional individuality was an exceptional ability to shift identities beyond not just our tribal group, but beyond our species—and that this is what is being exploited. 42
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 15 Sep 2022 18:38 | #
<meekly raises hand> I was one, as a young man in my twenties it was a life-line. ....good Lord, almost 40 years ago…(: Given the scum of American culture during my formative years, it was a most welcome lifeline. Life saving, in my case. Rand’s core directive, that “Man is a Rational Animal” is false. Is it a purposeful lie like Freud ? Like Boaz? (relying on TAN on these last two points)
The cure for this, for me, (which has since been disproved) was that the experience of we who drive cars to and from work have all had of getting in our car, driving and “waking up” miles down the road , while lost in intense, complicated thought, while our “not reason” part of our brains navigated the car for us, without us having to think about it. Many miles later, we “Wake up” and wonder how we ever got where we are** This insight was strengthened by my attempt to learn to play the piano. Etude in something or other. The key insight to playing the piano is that the rational mind goes away; which is quite wonderful! . Playing, I wondered how it was that my left and was doing what it needed to do without any thinking on my part. Ditto on the pedals… Here are some examples (I cannot play these works…) Those are not rational animals, those are human beings; Ayn Rand’s Objectivisim cannot account for that beauty. I hold out meager hope that the google-chopin will not create ORIGINAL beautiful piano music ... We can see echoes of Rand’s penchant all around us. Roger Penrose is a good example.
*** the nested parenthesis tell me that it will be written in Lisp programming language…of course
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Posted by Thorn on Thu, 15 Sep 2022 23:24 | # I agree with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. It confounds me why WNs sees her as an enemy. 44
Posted by Timothy Murray on Fri, 16 Sep 2022 22:40 | # Shia Labeouf articulates it well.
From a #teamtheological perspective, Shia’s (who’s mother is a jew, but who’s father is a Cajun…make of it what you (and #teambilogical predictably will..)) articulates the inability of the rational mind, un-enlightened by faith, to provide a reason worth living for. This is the same failure of Objectivism….it also points to a conundrum similar to finding a term for “White” that is acceptable to Polish plumbers and German Philosophers. I do not know Hegel, but, if Hegel is another in a long line of men who have tried and failed to replace Logos with Reason…do you truly think it will succeed?
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Posted by Thorn on Fri, 16 Sep 2022 22:54 | # Objectivism is a proper counter to hippy-dippy postmodernism. It drives leftists crazy. 46
Posted by Richard Yorke on Fri, 16 Sep 2022 23:31 | # The closest thing I’ve found to an explication of truth is a Swedenborgian Theology, of Spiritual correspondences. The Word being contained in Mythology throughout human history, just makes sense to me. I’m surprised that Genesis is not more widely read as a spiritual correspondence and is interpreted literally. That such, as an idea is not widely entertained by the clergy. Also whilst thinking of freewill, and it being generative, but also recursive. The recursion occurred to me when thinking about forgiveness, that reality would in someway have to be affected on for forgiveness to have any meaning. Otherwise why not psychopathy or a sociopath. “To err is human, to forgive Divine.” Words would have to be eliminated from a person’s vocabulary to remain consistent. If there is no God, there is no Evil. I figure a person receives the Word, and then begins to understand it. If they claim it for themselves they then begin to profane it.(troublingly there are perhaps other ways as well) “The Drunkards of Ephraim.”(Drunk on Truth, and their own Merit) In an abstract philosophical sense I agree with Anselm’s Intrinsic freewill, Contingent and Necessary categories. Instead of a Object Subject distinction. I also think that Christopher Langan’s CTMU is a Mathematical proof of God, but also that he is acting as Ephraim. As I believe would be consistent with a Swedenborgian theology, Swedenborg refers to people believing in Merit, as having an Evil inhered in their being that can not be removed in adulthood. Also as stupid. A mathematical proof of God in my opinion seals an Apocalypse. 47
Posted by Timothy Murray on Sat, 17 Sep 2022 16:19 | # Hi Richard Yorke
Me too. Couple that with the failure of the materialist explanations for our origins , and how that failure continues to grow the more we learn, is compelling; as if a Creative Being was drawing us deeper into a Story. “A Creative Being was drawing us deeper into a Story” certainly describes our current wars with the jews; it is reminiscent of when C.S. Lewis character in his space trilogy decided that God wanted him to kill the un-man, not for him to wait on God to do it for him. The attempted Masking of society, with a sizable majority submitting, then receiving the death jabs, is a naked sub-plot in a grand novel where the heroes are being separated from the chaff. cordially, 49
Posted by Thorn on Sun, 18 Sep 2022 23:42 | # WTF is not to like?
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Posted by Timothy Murray on Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:51 | #
Your humility is admirable; your conclusion is not true. That said, we, in Christendom do see such things…It is my belief that Protestantism is exactly what you say (I write as a former protestant, having experienced such lies and delusions ...). If we step back, we see Clive Staples Lewis arriving at the knowledge that God is real and present by his wrestling with the problem of materialism… (mind body problem, I suppose) Having converted and prayed, C.S. later wrote ““I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Which is anything but emotions clouding the intellect; rather, it is an intellect on fire. Cordially. p.s. Mere Christianity is a short read and well worth your time if you have not read it. 51
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 06 Jan 2023 22:35 | # Tim, In hominid Africa Out of Africa Faith is at the end of the ancient historical process, not the beginning. 52
Posted by Timothy Murray on Sat, 07 Jan 2023 20:46 | # GW
and…
That’s a nice narrative. It is cohesive. Men lie to themselves (faith—an organizing method of the mind) as a survival mechanism. Thank you for taking the time for your reply. Cordially 53
Posted by Timothy Murray on Sat, 07 Jan 2023 20:54 | # grrrrr…. my apologies for a lack of precision. Your entire post is worth a close study and a careful answer.
54
Posted by Timothy Murray on Sun, 08 Jan 2023 09:33 | #
Tan did a podcast on basic genetics and evolution. IIRC the Out of Africa theory was a lie fed to us by the usual suspects. That may have implications for your hypothesis. 55
Posted by Timothy Murray on Sun, 08 Jan 2023 10:18 | #
This is wonderful, thank you for your patience, kindness and for providing a platform for this sort of stuff. This materialist explanation for faith , while not the first I have run across, is certainly the most developed. Unfortunately, I lack the philosopher’s precision that your posts deserve. Quick question…are all the stories of men and women physically encountering God figments of their genes? Jacob wrestling the Angel, St. Paul on the way to Damascus, St. Thomas finger, Mary and St. Gabriel, Fr. Ripperger and Satan, Fr. Gary Davis portrayed in the move The Rite… these are all delusions men embrace ? (on the flip side, Muhammed and the genie…with the resulting culture of Islam) If not, then your definition of faith is pointless in that God and Satan exist. 56
Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 09 Jan 2023 05:32 | # Tim, the article above the line and various of my comments above this one (for example @ 22) talk about cognitive “certainty”. That is the context in which I would approach the testimonies of visionaries of all kinds. The mind is completely capable of raising the dead and discovering the fantastic in plain sight, signifying nothing solid or profound. As regards OoA, my timeline posits faith’s evolution in the hominid past, before Homo sapiens. So the verity or otherwise of OoA is neither here nor there. 57
Posted by Timothy Murray on Mon, 09 Jan 2023 21:34 | # Hi @GW
Quite, assuming one is ingesting LSD. best. t 58
Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 10 Jan 2023 05:51 | # I like God’s attitude . He , in his celestial , omniscient , omnipotent wisdom looks down . Whom does He see ? A simple Scotsman who can do Him no actual harm in any way whatsoever . God decides that He is so affronted that I must spend Eternity in Hell . Jewish logic or what ? 59
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 14:56 | # The below are from my notes on Charle’s Murray’s Human Accomplishment.
Replace “human accomplishment” with “he testimonies of visionaries of all kinds.” and you have a valid approach to evaluating faith claims.
60
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:15 | # But…. You did answer my original question and I thank you for it. Doing so simplifies matters going forward . 61
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:17 | #
Cordially
62
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 23:16 | # I will answer all real questions, Tim, in so much as I am able. I cannot “answer” expressions of faith, be they framed as questions or not, because faith follows a positive feedback loop round and round, and has no self-critique. 63
Posted by Timothy Murray on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 22:06 | # @GW
cordially..
64
Posted by Timothy Murray on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 22:09 | #
Dear Al. No true Scotsman would mouth such a pathetic expression of The Problem of Evil. cordially
65
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 22:40 | # Material facts are falsifiable, Tim. One can propose alternatives and subject them to a deductive process. Faith claims are non-falsifiable. 66
Posted by Al Ross on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 23:42 | # No, Timothy . That view is quotidian although I first met it upon a teenage reading of Sade’s ‘Juliette’. 67
Posted by Al Ross on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 23:53 | # The “no true Scotsman fallacy” is the last redoubt of your pointless Judeo - Christian mendacity. That great Scotsman , David Hume, was prevented from being appointed to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University because he did not profess belief in Biblical tall tales from the Middle East. His sponsor , fellow Scot , Adam Smith , the father of modern free market economics , was disappointed. 68
Posted by Al Ross on Fri, 13 Jan 2023 23:59 | # The RC Church runs schools in various countries to impair the impressionable minds of its votaries’ unlucky offspring : It would seem that God changed his mind about Gays and Trannies , or to put it another way the Catamites soundly beat the Dogmas. 69
Posted by Al Ross on Sat, 14 Jan 2023 04:41 | # Now we know what Christian clergymen mean , when from the pulpit , they declaim , ” We’ll start off with a Him.” 70
Posted by Al Ross on Sat, 14 Jan 2023 06:10 | # Timothy , might it be possible that you are Mormon ? If so , I am perfectly willing to admit that Utah has remained White due to a charming inversion of Biblical E/GI. After all , Salt Lake City is the only place in which Jews are called Gentiles. 71
Posted by Timothy Murray on Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:43 | #
There are plenty of faith claims in Science..you just restrict yourselves to not considering the alternatives. The latest is Penrose search for a mathematics that will allow him to “create” a mechanism for the universe to big-bang itself. This is a choice, not a deduction from empirical evidence. Cordially. 72
Posted by Timothy Murray on Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:45 | # The RC Church runs schools in various countries to impair the impressionable minds of its votaries’ unlucky offspring: It would seem that God changed his mind about Gays and Trannies , or to put it another way the Catamites soundly beat the Dogmas. The RC Church has been infected with the same modernist sickness that has infected the West. The Church has had wicked leaders before, she has some now.
73
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:11 | # Maths is a foundation of the scientific method. It isn’t scientific. Science does not make faith claims. It makes hypotheses which it then subjects to empirical testing. Faith claims ... someone saying I believe therefore it is Truth ... cannot be submitted to such. That is the difference. It is perfectly OK for faith claims to be made. But Truth is not determined by that means, even philosophically (when reason is required). 74
Posted by Al Ross on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 02:47 | # Please desist , Timothy . It’s a sorry sight to observe your racially - alien indoctrination. Don’t you have a Homo to go to ? 75
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 14:18 | #
Thank you for your measured reply. “Science does not make faith claims. “ But scientists do.
I agree with you 100% on this. Where we disagree is whether or not Science AND Religion can be subject to rational, logical analysis. I can understand the impulse, we enjoy thinking in our various fields…it is a refuge from madness and civilized. I too get grumpy when my thought process is distracted when I am deep into a problem. There is also the impression among many that “science won” ....and then the steady - state theory of the universe exploded . Now, I agree I am a rookie, I am starting the long process of educating myself on these matters. ... putting Aquinas* in context will take some years, as will be educating myself to the standards of being able to teach it will be work, but fun work…leisure in the Greek sense. That said, if you would PREFER NOT to think about that sort of stuff, I will respect your wishes and try not to bring that perspective to my comments. Cordially, *From plato.sanford.edu: “a rigorous and systematic examination of ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a distinctive method—can be called his invention. Few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank”. 76
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 14:31 | #
Silly me; I assumed you had a sense of humor.
Academics engage in politics; I am shocked! Shocked! But, lets take your larger point..that welcoming all comers to a University is always a good thing to do….take Yale, for example… “Yale University had its beginnings with the founding of the New Haven Colony in 1638 by a band of 500 Puritans who fled from persecution in Anglican England. It was the dream of the Reverend John Davenport, the religious leader of the colony, to establish a theocracy and a college to educate its leaders. Purchases and plans for a college library date back to 1656 but were suspended when King Charles II forced the colony to unite with Connecticut in 1665. Yale University graduate Yoel Roth majored in sodomy. I think he got his PHD in it. he then joined Twitter as head of trust and safety council. Should I express outrage if Yale refused to let faggots like Roth into their University? 77
Posted by Timothy Murray on Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:29 | #
Revilo P. Oliver’s Christianity and the Survival of the West. http://www.colchestercollection.com/titles/C/christianity-and-the-survival.html Should be a good read and be an insight into how much of #teambiological thinks. Post a comment:
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Posted by DanielS on Tue, 07 Jun 2022 11:42 | #
Alas, GW comes home, where he feels most comfortable - a beautiful old English church at night, where he can proselytize the faithful to convert from Christianity to his denomination of Heidegger. Comforting them, they can even keep their Cartesian duality! With faith in him they may overcome the post-modern demon that might propose other ways, than his denomination, of dealing with their Cartesian anxiety. Even its being put quite so as a “mind-body” problem is to be left to him, the slayer of the post modern dragon; while his high priest of modernity, Bowery, is called upon as need be to chase the demons away, “don’t cast modernity as a problem ... and most importantly, stay far away from talking about Cartesianism! You are demoralizing our people!”..who might actually come to understand how and why actual philosophers (as in NOT Guessedworker and Bowery) are talking about Cartesianism; and whereas you might, gawd forbid, turn your back on your faith in us, find us fallible STEM Boomer fuck ups, and come to understand that we are not necessarily the only, let alone exactly the best guides through the ravages of modernity and its weaponized forms.