GENIUS FORUMS

brokenhead wrote:

If you don't have the regard for logic that others do,that is absolutely fine,there are a number of ways to think abstractly about 'everything'.It just isn't logic if you need speculations to support it.

I have a tremendous respect for logic. Maybe you mean the formal logic that is taught at a university? Precious few people have had the experience of being formally trained in logic. I am not interested in being caged or duped by formal thinking. I am interested in knowing what is.

No,I'm not refering to university formal logic.

This is just basic logic.I'm not trying to dupe you here.Honestly.

I'm trying to briefly point out to you that a logical argument cannot be made for creater God the first cause.For 3000 years western philosophers have tried,and failed.Before the western 'age of reason',this was one pursuits they spent alot of time trying to acheive.

I've been an Atheist for a good 25 years and been going to forums nearly as long.On nearly every forum there is always a number of theists who claim God is logically proveable.And I've seen this arguments dozens,probably hundreds of times.It was why I was trying to avoid going down this path.It is ultimately futile for the protagonist.It can't be made.

If it could be made the Templeton Prize awaits the maker.

There is no strawman here. If you concede there must be life elsewhere in the cosmos, does it not follow to want to know how it functions and what its purpose might be?

I conceded there might be,like you I don't know.

None of that speaks to whether God the first cause argument can be made using human logic(which is the claim you are making).It is not "logically consistent"

This is not anthropomorphic arrogance.It is the reality of the matter.

If you are aware of some alien logic that makes it so,then you will have to provide it.Because I and my other fellow humans are not farmiliar with it.

I'm trying to briefly point out to you that a logical argument cannot be made for creater God the first cause.For 3000 years western philosophers have tried,and failed.Before the western 'age of reason',this was one pursuits they spent alot of time trying to acheive.

I've been an Atheist for a good 25 years and been going to forums nearly as long.On nearly every forum there is always a number of theists who claim God is logically proveable.And I've seen this arguments dozens,probably hundreds of times.It was why I was trying to avoid going down this path.It is ultimately futile for the protagonist.It can't be made.

I am not seeking to prove anything. I have studied enough mathematics that I know when an argument has been proven or disproven, or remains unproven. I have said many times elsewhere at GF that I do not believe any kind of proof of the existence of a Creator God can be made.

To seek such a proof is futile. Why would you want a provable God? Think about it for just a second. A provable God would be in some fashion be at your beck and call. Who would want that? Then everybody would have all their wishes and whims come true all the time.

What would constitute a proof in the first place? Seeing God? It would be too intrusive. "Intrusive" being a tremendous understatement. The image of a huge parent trying to sit in a tiny kindergarten chair to "be with the kids" comes to mind. Now multiply that by a trillion.

I am saying that it is not logically inconsistent to postulate an uncaused First Cause. I am saying that logic cannot disprove the existence of God.

I have always been curious about what makes a person decide to be an atheist. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

brokenhead, even though I'm not a part of this debate, I think your curiousity is genuine so I'll enlighten you as well...

I have always been curious about what makes a person decide to be an atheist. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

I decided to be an atheist because I refused to worship a God that would punish me for doubting His existence. After I got over my juvenile misconceptions, I learned that I was not alone: most people -- atheist and theists alike -- have no clear idea what they are referring to when they use the word "God". There's a common tendency on the Internet for people to conflate contradictory versions, or attack strawmen.

Since "God" is rarely a well-defined being (or postulate, or what-have-you), I now see no clear distinction between atheists and theists. I've seen arguments where an atheist vehemently refuses to believe in something that the theist doesn't believe in, either. It's just a lot of hot air. (I've engaged in debates where I take the position of a pantheist and end up having both sides agree that my position is true, but that I'm talking about something different than what they are talking about... neither side noticing the irony.)

brokenhead wrote:I have always been curious about what makes a person decide to be an atheist. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

i can only speak from personal experience,obviously.

My 'conversion' was fairly mundane.At a about 14 years I learnt about evolution and realised the Noahs Ark story was a myth.If that was a myth i asked myself what else in the Bible a myth.I looked a little further and concluded much of it was.Fairly unsophisticated teenage reasoning.

As i got older I looked further,more philosphically;still no evidence.My atheism towards an Abrahamic God became purely a lack of a reason to believe.

There was no, and still is no:
1)Logical reason to believe God exists
2)Empirical reason to believe God exists
3)God wasn't in my experience of the 'world'

If i were to say I believed in an Abrahamic God then I would be lying.Worst of all, lying to myself.

To this day the best argument I've seen for taking the "leap of faith" has been made by Kierkegaard.But I still can't make it if the leap would be to a creator God.It seems I'm not capable of making a 'leap' that requires one of faith.'God' caused me that way.

I've seen David and kevin argue that Kierkegaard's God is the same God as theirs.If i were to venture into the Crucible,that would be my topic of choice to debate.i would need to really brush right up on him first though.Maybe a 'project' for me somewhere down the track. :)

brokenhead wrote:I am not seeking to prove anything. I have studied enough mathematics that I know when an argument has been proven or disproven, or remains unproven. I have said many times elsewhere at GF that I do not believe any kind of proof of the existence of a Creator God can be made.

One can disprove his importance in the larger scheme of things. A creator God is in the same category as extra-terrestrial life - not an impossibility, but spiritually trivial.

I am saying that it is not logically inconsistent to postulate an uncaused First Cause.

If you understand and accept that all things have causes out of logical necessity, then it is automatically proven that there can be no first cause.

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DQ wrote:One can disprove his importance in the larger scheme of things. A creator God is in the same category as extra-terrestrial life - not an impossibility, but spiritually trivial

I would argue that the reverse is true. If you limit your consideration to daily life and the human condition, God becomes more trivial. In the "larger scheme of things," he is less trivial. I say this because if you enlarge your scope to include the possibility of other sentient beings in the cosmos, it then becomes possible to see a pattern or patterns. The more information you have, the greater chance that you will discover a pattern, or design, if one exists. It is easier to not waste time and effort considering God if all you are interested is a local scope. And, of course, if you have no personal experiences which would cause you to take that leap of faith. I am not necessarily interested in easy. I want the truth about what is and how it came to be. In fact, I rather expect the truth to be grand, complex, and difficult to swallow at times. If it weren't, everybody would have it, which is clearly not the case.

Again, you use the word "spiritual." Dan has given his definition of it, the likes of which I was unable to find by using various Internet dictionaries. Use of that word is confusing if you do not concede the existence of an entity, which when it is removed from a person, leaves behind a corpse.

DQ wrote:If you understand and accept that all things have causes out of logical necessity, then it is automatically proven that there can be no first cause.

Sorry, but I just thought of this. I fully understand what it means to say that all things have causes out of logical necessity. What I don't understand is why I should be motivated to accept it and therefore agree with it. Is my functioning as a human being somehow impaired if I consider it an unproven assumption?

I would have said that considering an unproven assumption, that which you know is so out of logical necessity, is indeed a little impaired, if not outright cognitively dissonant.

Dan Rowden wrote:I would have said that considering an unproven assumption, that which you know is so out of logical necessity, is indeed a little impaired, if not outright cognitively dissonant.

If it is so out of logical necessity, shouldn't there be some kind of proof of it? Any kind of cognitive dissonace should be a motivating factor to reduce the dissonace by eliminating the cause of the dissonance. Yet I experience no cognitive dissonance. I confess I do not know what you mean by a "logical necessity" in this case. All people who are A are also B. I am A. "Therefore I am also B" is a logical necessity.

I in fact do not know it is so that there can be no First Cause. That is what I am saying. This does not weaken the law of Cause and Effect, rather it strengthens it and renders it more consistent. Every effect has a cause. Accepted. What is the logical basis for claiming that every cause is also an effect? You are forcing this law to be so profound and always applicable, that it really then tells you nothing.

brokenhead wrote:

DQ wrote:One can disprove his importance in the larger scheme of things. A creator God is in the same category as extra-terrestrial life - not an impossibility, but spiritually trivial

I would argue that the reverse is true. If you limit your consideration to daily life and the human condition, God becomes more trivial. In the "larger scheme of things," he is less trivial. I say this because if you enlarge your scope to include the possibility of other sentient beings in the cosmos, it then becomes possible to see a pattern or patterns. The more information you have, the greater chance that you will discover a pattern, or design, if one exists.

This is the wrong methodology. Uncovering patterns is only useful for detecting empirical phenomena - such as evidence of your girlfriend sleeping around, or evidence for extra-terrestrial life. It is impossible to drive to the very root of matters and understand ultimate truth in this way. For that you need to seek those universal principles which underlie all phenomena.

It is easier to not waste time and effort considering God if all you are interested is a local scope.

And also if you are interested in the largest scope. You're evidently stuck in between the two extremes here.

I am not necessarily interested in easy. I want the truth about what is and how it came to be. In fact, I rather expect the truth to be grand, complex, and difficult to swallow at times. If it weren't, everybody would have it, which is clearly not the case.

On the contrary, truth is too simple for most people to swallow. People love to complicate matters because of their egotistical needs. They want to believe that they will survive death and live forever, that they are special, that a greater being loves and cares for them. They can find no sustenance for these needs in the simplicity of truth. Hence, they instinctively reject any movement towards knowing it.

Again, you use the word "spiritual." Dan has given his definition of it, the likes of which I was unable to find by using various Internet dictionaries. Use of that word is confusing if you do not concede the existence of an entity, which when it is removed from a person, leaves behind a corpse.

Finding the truth requires one to go beyond the conventional, materialistic mentality, not into the religious belief of souls and gods and the like, but into the intangibility and formlessness of truth.

brokenhead wrote:

DQ wrote:If you understand and accept that all things have causes out of logical necessity, then it is automatically proven that there can be no first cause.

Sorry, but I just thought of this. I fully understand what it means to say that all things have causes out of logical necessity. What I don't understand is why I should be motivated to accept it and therefore agree with it. Is my functioning as a human being somehow impaired if I consider it an unproven assumption?

It is an impairment if you recognize the logical underpinning of a truth and yet refuse to accept it. It indicates that your egotistical needs are impairing your cognitive judgment.

I in fact do not know it is so that there can be no First Cause. That is what I am saying. This does not weaken the law of Cause and Effect, rather it strengthens it and renders it more consistent. Every effect has a cause. Accepted. What is the logical basis for claiming that every cause is also an effect? You are forcing this law to be so profound and always applicable, that it really then tells you nothing.

Since a cause is a "thing", and since it is logically true that all things necessarily have causes, it follows that there can never be an uncaused cause.

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Alex,

But I don't necessarily believe absolutely in my labels

Not many people involved in philosophy do, congratulations! Do you believe posters here treat labels that way, or just express it too much as such?

You imply there is no core, no self and then you move in for the kill: all indicative of an 'incredible female mindset'.

It's the best label I could find at the time. It's there mostly to compensate for your 'manly man' rhetorics. Nevertheless, I also think this assessment is true. Not that it's that incredible, I think Kevin Solway wrote somewhere he thinks his mind is still 70% feminine, on whatever scale you want to imagine that. The idea is that it's not meant as insult, only people hopelessly stuck in sexism interpret these comments as insulting. Where's the insult in being compared to what many beautiful and smart creatures express so well? [beware - subtle humor intended]

However, when I deflected your comments and pointed to the source in Dan and David, that was not all the story. So, in a sense, your conclusion jumps the gun.

In the end all our ideas are obviously caused by 10,000 teachers and students. Still one has to define an identity within communication to make a message come through and most importantly make through this consistency a self-referential check possible through dialectic means.

an analysis of my own ideas and attitudes. No part of that was artificial or contrived, and I don't think it could be described as 'feminine'.

With underlying I mean something deeper in the motivation and general orientation in the writing. Nothing perversely wrong but in my view something to overcome if you want to move forward without emulating Castaneda.

When I wrote what I wrote, I used rhetorical skill to make it convincing, and it seemed to have worked, in that sense 'it was successful'. But, what? Do you want me to sign it? To declare that it is my set doctrine? Well, I don't. It isn't.

Take ownership and responsibility for what you write, unless you quote. It doesn't have to be etched in stone - we all change, we're all in motion. I don't understand why it cannot be your 'doctrine'. Is it with you all flirting and dating but never marry?

However, I think you are forgetting something essential and that is that all thinking, all intellectual and spiritual activity involves 'gestation' and in the language of symbols you could simply never escape the meaning. In the diagrams of alchemy you always see the 2 luminaries, the sun and the moon, and then in the foreground there is the figure, with other symbols, who is dealing with the synthesis, in whom the process is carried out.

A symbol containing a symbol, an image withing an image.

If you 'artificially' highlight only the masculine in yourself, I assert you are making a significant error and it will have to be compensated; it will call forth compensation.

I'd say it comes naturally for masculinity to highlight. And one cannot escape to introduce (by allowing this definition) to introduce a counterpart that obscures and hides, something that is all camouflage. Lets call it feminine. People of course are drawn between these opposites.

If the 'female' is indeed a potency that, broadly, is out of control, who will re-tame it, who will redirect it? How is that going to come about?

The female cannot be a potency, it's always the masculine channeling that runs out of control or steam, diverted, seduced, redirected - which is one of the natural roles the feminine has and with good reason for stability and progress! There's no real competition between feminine and masculine, there cannot be a 'preference' anymore really, once they are stated in a definitive way.

brokenhead wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:I would have said that considering an unproven assumption, that which you know is so out of logical necessity, is indeed a little impaired, if not outright cognitively dissonant.

If it is so out of logical necessity, shouldn't there be some kind of proof of it? Any kind of cognitive dissonace should be a motivating factor to reduce the dissonace by eliminating the cause of the dissonance. Yet I experience no cognitive dissonance. I confess I do not know what you mean by a "logical necessity" in this case. All people who are A are also B. I am A. "Therefore I am also B" is a logical necessity.

I in fact do not know it is so that there can be no First Cause. That is what I am saying. This does not weaken the law of Cause and Effect, rather it strengthens it and renders it more consistent. Every effect has a cause. Accepted. What is the logical basis for claiming that every cause is also an effect? You are forcing this law to be so profound and always applicable, that it really then tells you nothing.

I think you should have worded your previous post a little differently because it certainly gave the impression you understood why things are necessarily caused but that you just couldn't accept it; but what are you using as your definition of "cause"? If it relates specifically to our linear, empirical sense of causation then it doesn't mean much other than in practical daily terms - i.e. our sense of empirical, linear causation is simply the active part of consciousness. It has been well established that there is no way to demonstrate that such causal relationships actually exist. They are always no more than inferential, even if practical. But this isn't the sense in which causation should be understood as logically necessary and absolute. Causation is inherent in the very concept of "thing". I attempted to explain this HERE and of course David explains the matter in the causation section of Wisdom of the Infinite.

Read those and get back to me with your impressions.

A few thoughts regarding causation and "things":

-It seems obvious that all material things have causes - though on this empirical level causation doesn't seem to (...logically) prove itself.
-What about the immaterial: my conceptions? There doesn't seem to be a "smooth" link between one thought-thread stopping and another one beginning. New threads of things seem to pop out of nowhere. Instead of one flower infinitely blooming, it's one flower blooming a bit, but then another, and another, and another, etc. Infinite but disconnected realities.
-I think I can only experience one "thing" at a time. But on further inspection that "thing" = infinite "things". Bottomless pit. I think I've almost fallen in before, but I had a harness! Oh: Another. Thing.
-Always a new thing, always an old thing, always a thing in transition.

Hmmmmm.....

skipair wrote:A few thoughts regarding causation and "things":

-It seems obvious that all material things have causes - though on this empirical level causation doesn't seem to (...logically) prove itself.

Well, it does. For example, an empirical object can always be broken down into parts, at least mentally, and these parts count as causes. There is also time and space to consider, as well as the causal conditions which involve an absence of causal conditions that could negate its coming into existence. So there is no question that, logically, all empirical objects necessarily have causes.

What can't be established are the precise causal linkages between successive empirical events - e.g. a ball hitting a wall apparently causing the ball to bounce back. Those sort of linkages will always be speculative and uncertain. The ball and the wall are certainly causally linked, but the exact manner and detail of the linkage is impossible to establish.

-What about the immaterial: my conceptions? There doesn't seem to be a "smooth" link between one thought-thread stopping and another one beginning. New threads of things seem to pop out of nowhere. Instead of one flower infinitely blooming, it's one flower blooming a bit, but then another, and another, and another, etc. Infinite but disconnected realities.

A bit like bubbles arising and bursting on the surface of boiling water.

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The ball and the wall are certainly causally linked, but the exact manner and detail of the linkage is impossible to establish.

Just so. This is why your fall-back on the cause and effect principle is immaterial to anything. On the other hand, people such as physicists who spend their lives actualy trying to extend what can be said about just such an interaction are dismissed by you. Paul Dirac says in the intro to his classic text on QM that causality must be fundamentally rethought if any kind of formalism (QM) were to be achieved that was in accordance with observation, i.e., empirical evidence.

Empirical evidence also suggest that time - which is absolutely implicit in the C&E principle - had a beginning itself. What I am saying is that your statement that all effects - that is everything - must have had a cause is not a logical necessity. It may in fact be a mental cage that must be abandoned if we are to understand the way Nature itself works. It is the last holdover of the classical Western mental schema and is no more sacrosanct than the belief in a flat earth.

brokenhead wrote:

The ball and the wall are certainly causally linked, but the exact manner and detail of the linkage is impossible to establish.

Just so. This is why your fall-back on the cause and effect principle is immaterial to anything. On the other hand, people such as physicists who spend their lives actualy trying to extend what can be said about just such an interaction are dismissed by you.

Physicists aren't philosophers and have different concerns. They have no interest in uncovering universal principles, as it falls outside the scope of science. Trying to map precise causal linkages between things is a scientific matter. A philosopher already knows that it can't be done, other than tentatively and provisionally.

Paul Dirac says in the intro to his classic text on QM that causality must be fundamentally rethought if any kind of formalism (QM) were to be achieved that was in accordance with observation, i.e., empirical evidence.

That is entirely understandable. The classical conception of causality, as described by scientists over the centuries, was a limited, technical form of causality, which does appear to break down in the quantum realm. So it is only natural that their conceptions of causality need to be rethought. But this has nothing to do with the broader principle of causality, as understood by the philosopher.

Empirical evidence also suggest that time - which is absolutely implicit in the C&E principle - had a beginning itself.

There is no empirical evidence for such a thing. I think what you're referring to are certain assumptions which have been built into some of the Big Bang models currently doing the rounds. That's a big difference.

What I am saying is that your statement that all effects - that is everything - must have had a cause is not a logical necessity. It may in fact be a mental cage that must be abandoned if we are to understand the way Nature itself works. It is the last holdover of the classical Western mental schema and is no more sacrosanct than the belief in a flat earth.

Causality, as understood by the philosopher, can no more be overthrown by empirical evidence than "the non-existence of married bachelors" can. It is a definitional truth which expresses the logical impossibility of non-causality. Looking for empirical evidence to dispute it misses the point entirely.

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DQ wrote:That is entirely understandable. The classical conception of causality, as described by scientists over the centuries, was a limited, technical form of causality, which does appear to break down in the quantum realm. So it is only natural that their conceptions of causality need to be rethought. But this has nothing to do with the broader principle of causality, as understood by the philosopher.

I am trying to understand this broader principle you speak of. To my mind, anything that does not embrace the surprising findings of QM must be rejected. If you are saying the concept of causality you are talking about - the philosophical one - readily admits phenomena such as non-locality, then you have my ear. That is to say, if the philosophical ramifications of the empirical results of repeatable experiments in QM DO NOT contradict the QRS philosophy. (I know I sort of told Dan I would not be throwing around QRS as an adjective, but there you have it.) You cannot have any kind of philosophy that contradicts empirical evidence. Would you agree with this?

brokenhead wrote:

DQ wrote:That is entirely understandable. The classical conception of causality, as described by scientists over the centuries, was a limited, technical form of causality, which does appear to break down in the quantum realm. So it is only natural that their conceptions of causality need to be rethought. But this has nothing to do with the broader principle of causality, as understood by the philosopher.

I am trying to understand this broader principle you speak of. To my mind, anything that does not embrace the surprising findings of QM must be rejected. If you are saying the concept of causality you are talking about - the philosophical one - readily admits phenomena such as non-locality, then you have my ear. That is to say, if the philosophical ramifications of the empirical results of repeatable experiments in QM DO NOT contradict the QRS philosophy. (I know I sort of told Dan I would not be throwing around QRS as an adjective, but there you have it.) You cannot have any kind of philosophy that contradicts empirical evidence. Would you agree with this?

Of course. That goes without saying. The beauty of the principle of causality is that it cannot be contradicted by empirical evidence and yet goes to the core of all empirical existence out of logical necessity. That is what makes it a timeless, universal principle.

"Non-locality" simply refers to a causal linkage between two distant objects that science can't fathom at the moment.

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Hi Diebert:

"Not many people involved in philosophy do [believe their labels], congratulations! Do you believe posters here treat labels that way, or just express it too much as such?"

Really? My impression has been that people involved in philosophy were very invested in their labels. Almost extremely so. It is a discipline so caught-up in labeling. Here, the only people who engage me are the ones who take issue with me. And among those 'usual suspects', my impression is that they are acutely bound to their labels, their is little fluidity of thought, no alternative perspective from which to view the questions, and so on. It is often a closed-loop and has a cultish feel to it.

"It's there mostly to compensate for your 'manly man' rhetorics. Nevertheless, I also think this assessment is true. Not that it's that incredible, I think Kevin Solway wrote somewhere he thinks his mind is still 70% feminine, on whatever scale you want to imagine that. The idea is that it's not meant as insult, only people hopelessly stuck in sexism interpret these comments as insulting. Where's the insult in being compared to what many beautiful and smart creatures express so well? [beware - subtle humor intended]."

If Kevin uses this jargon to describe a condition he labels as 'pathological', I would have to spend a great deal of time ferreting through it, questioning it, challenging it, before I accepted it as a valid term of discourse (feminine vs masculine mind and all that it connotes). I regard Kevin, Dan and David as uneducated galoots and even when they have a bright idea to share, they fuck it up because of their ignorance of so many related and relevant issues and problems. The reason I am come here is to help them. Maybe it is just as basic as Jesus needing a Paul to get the whole show off the ground?

;-)

Reductions, reductionism, binary thinking, black and white thinking---these are all symptoms of problems that need to be overcome. They cannot be swept under the rug, they cannot be tarted up so as to conceal what they lack. This mind-set has to evolve and change, and to borrow their own phrase: it must move from an embryonic stage. Trying to make a donkey look like a race-horse only embarrasses the donkey and makes you look ridiculous.

I do appreciate this list for highlighting the question (male vs female)---it has indeed served me, and the category is relevant, very much so. But when it comes to the Doctor prescribing medicines; to a proposal for a cure; a solution to the 'problem'...I'm afraid that I would hold back from that. Also, the whole show needs a kind of make-over.

I don't know how I could make myself more explicit...

"Take ownership and responsibility for what you write, unless you quote. It doesn't have to be etched in stone - we all change, we're all in motion. I don't understand why it cannot be your 'doctrine'. Is it with you all flirting and dating but never marry?"

Of course, and I do. [I reviewed my contributions here today, from last August, as a sort of reality check. Aside from one or two most responses from the denizens here are so shallow and so limited that I often cringe. This level of response causes me to wonder if I really wrote what I thought I had written, as if I am not getting my message across. Alas, the readership here is not too sophisticated].

Though I think that an essayist or a journalist has to take responsibility for the points of view he expresses, the moral weight if you will, there is a part of 'creative writing' that moves into another territory. Writing about spirituality is such an area. Here, people seem very mathematical in their approach, and this is what is meant by 'masculine'. It would likely tend toward one of the 'types' that Jung identifies, and as a result would tend to exclude other types. Spirituality, art, life, love and things of that nature are distinct, in my mind, from mathematics and rhetorics. Not to mention how differently these things can be experienced (and are experienced).

You could describe a dichotomy in platonic-aristotelian terms and that might be part of it. But there is another perspective too: aristotelian-dionysian. There ia a whole part of the spiritual experience that is dionysian; something that happens to you, that you don't control. That comes very close to a problematic for the boys here, and that is that to receive from God you have to become receptive, female. I only have to refer to Ramakrishna to demonstrate the point. (And I do so because his life is a life they seem to emulate, I mean the fellows here). And there is a great deal about 'the spirit' and the mystery of things, the mystery of being, that is inexpressible in logical, rhetorical terms: it requires almost another language.

I am not at all convinced that the means of conveying ideas and images about this experience is best achieved through a purely 'masculine' discursive language. I would be much more inclined to think that a poetical language would be more useful, more accurate even. In any case it can certainly be part of the whole equation. To me, utterance changes. One has to have a fluid relationship to meaning: what can be represented. It is essentially artistic.

But I am told that the 'aesthete can never be wise'. I bow my head and walk away in shame...

So to me the nature of what we seem interested in exploring (God, divinity, spirit, 'enlightenment') is a thing that can never really be described, not like describing some object from the phenomenal world, At best you can only allude to it.

(That was sort of weird way of answering your statement about 'assuming authorship': I prefer the fluidity of a creative relationship to all these issues rather than that of 'concretizing' and representing my 'doctrines').

You misunderstand the purpose of the so-called "mathematical" approach of the forum. The purpose isn't to describe the nature of reality or articulate its detailed beauty. Anyone who has any inkling of the nature of reality knows that this simply can't be done. The purpose, rather, is to direct people's minds in the most efficient manner towards their own personal realization of it.

When you give a person directions to a particular location, you give them simple instructions: "Keep traveling along this road for 2 km, turn right at the intersection, keep going for another kilometre, turn left at the dirt road, continue on a bit and you should see it."

You don't say, "You want to know how to get to that location? Well, the road you're currently on is made of a pale gray bitumen and was built in 1987 by the local council, who, I might add, only gave the nod to its construction in order to buy votes in the council elections of that year. Even so, it has a pleasing functionality, although obviously limited by the fact that you can only go in two directions - up that way and back. You can't use it, for example, to drive onto those fields over there, where there are some lovely flowers at this time of year, so clearly it is pretty limited. In fact, I doubt that it can take you to your desired location at all. But I could be wrong about this ........"

Er ... thanks.

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Alex Jacob wrote: My impression has been that people involved in philosophy were very invested in their labels. Almost extremely so. It is a discipline so caught-up in labeling.

I'd rather say that at its best it's a discipline that doesn't run away from the reality of labeling. It acknowledges it, it tends to add to the labels, at times play with them but above all is concerned with testing and renewing them where necessary when the discovery is made one gets too much removed from reality, too much living in a simulacrum.

As you should know, one cannot prevent being bound to labels, one always lives more or less in an artificial construct for all kinds of practical purposes. But instead of introducing imagery beyond it's better to radically improve the construct - overhaul it at the core. New wine in new skins.

my impression is that they are acutely bound to their labels, their is little fluidity of thought, no alternative perspective from which to view the questions, and so on. It is often a closed-loop and has a cultish feel to it.

It's my impression you have no idea from which perspective they're coming from. Perhaps it's all those fluids you're so proud of...

If Kevin uses this jargon to describe a condition he labels as 'pathological', I would have to spend a great deal of time ferreting through it, questioning it, challenging it, before I accepted it as a valid term of discourse (feminine vs masculine mind and all that it connotes).

It seems to me like they have spend some time before deciding on these labels as proper device. For me it took a few years to see how disturbingly right they were in doing so. At the same time I keep a slightly different orientation on issues like what's 'good' for the world or not. I see their teaching purely in the context of a specific, ultimate form of consciousness that sparks wisdom. It might not mean that much in the greater picture but it matters to a few.

The reason I am come here is to help them. Maybe it is just as basic as Jesus needing a Paul to get the whole show off the ground?

Get in line :) It's amazing the amount of people spending energy on them or the forum to correct perceived wrongs. It's less amazing once underlying motivations appear to be quite different to the cynical eye.

But when it comes to the Doctor prescribing medicines; to a proposal for a cure; a solution to the 'problem'...I'm afraid that I would hold back from that. Also, the whole show needs a kind of make-over.

Not knowing what the disease is, or even that there's a disease, is the disease in this context. But this is scary stuff as it could be compared with creating a market for a product nobody really needs. That's why it's better people find out themselves and not having to be convinced or bombarded by references - this will only create the 'false seeker', as people tend to parrot and then claim it's their own expression.

[ Alas, the readership here is not too sophisticated].

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

i of a need

There is a whole part of the spiritual experience that is dionysian; something that happens to you, that you don't control.

It seems there wasn't much under my control after all, the more I unravel the events that have been leading up to where I'm now. Since hard determinism is the common train of thought at this forum, I really doubt control is an issue.

That comes very close to a problematic for the boys here, and that is that to receive from God you have to become receptive, female. I only have to refer to Ramakrishna to demonstrate the point.

Or the Islam, where they surrender to Allah. But here it's you who turns the female into some absolute property and lift it out of the psychological context of (gaining) consciousness into the realms of Daoism. Although passivity is part of the feminine context, not all passivity equals the feminine. Sam with the 'act' of surrendering. Similarly not all logic leads to goodness or wisdom or same with every truth spoken.

But seeing how you are using the definitions 'classical style' - yeah, not much to disagree with.

And there is a great deal about 'the spirit' and the mystery of things, the mystery of being, that is inexpressible in logical, rhetorical terms: it requires almost another language.

All experience can become that way, even without momentary bright and colorful flashes of poetry or music.

To me, utterance changes. One has to have a fluid relationship to meaning: what can be represented. It is essentially artistic.

(Yes,you're really into fluids.)

So to me the nature of what we seem interested in exploring (God, divinity, spirit, 'enlightenment') is a thing that can never really be described, not like describing some object from the phenomenal world, At best you can only allude to it.

Nothing can really be described. With everything we just attempt to allude and make the best of it.

Diebert wrote:

"It's my impression you have no idea from which perspective they're coming from. Perhaps it's all those fluids you're so proud of..."

Best if you were to indicate what you think I don't understand, and point me in the direction of what should be understood about them. I think the ability to access different perspectives is not a bad thing.

"It seems to me like they have spend some time before deciding on these labels as proper device. For me it took a few years to see how disturbingly right they were in doing so. At the same time I keep a slightly different orientation on issues like what's 'good' for the world or not. I see their teaching purely in the context of a specific, ultimate form of consciousness that sparks wisdom. It might not mean that much in the greater picture but it matters to a few."

Keep in mind that I wrote an 'essay' that you seemed to admire, as well as David. It was a way of placing in a context some of what I think they believe, and in no sense is it irrelevant. An interesting key is that even people who get things quite wrong---in the sense that what they do in the world with their 'project', their endeavor, may turn out horribly badly, nevertheless they were not wrong on all counts. Even a deluded person, when he thinks or speaks or proposes some plan of activity, is not so deluded that his plan does not have some redeeming feature.

For me it was and is very important to differentiate what I perceive as some core differences between men and women, or man's culture and women's culture, between the capabilities of masculine mind-set and endeavor and that of women's mind-set. An idea that Sue is involved with is that men, through their fixations, are actively involved in a sort of corruption of women, a spoiling of women. It is interesting to look at the uncapping of sexuality, say with Hugh Hefner and the whole movement in sexual mores of the 50s and 60s and to hold in the mind that Hugh Hefner's wife, who he was dedicated to and perhaps loved, had an affair behind his back. Some say that he channelled a great deal of his anger and contempt into his 'sluttification' of women. I have no idea, but certainly something pretty extraordinary happened, and it set in motion vast currents of change. The interesting thing is that Tolstoy had a very similar position, and wrote it all out in The Kreutzer Sonata, and if you wanted to go even further with the notion (as Sue seems to and Ryan agrees with) one could bring in Andrea Dworkin and her work in Intercourse, where she goes precisely to the core of the problematic of intercourse. You read Tolstoy and you are brought into his view, you are propagandized by it, persuaded. True, Andrea Dworkin takes female contempt of her own biology to metaphysical levels of paranoia and contempt, but nevertheless it has a certain convincing element. It is a terrible fact (looked at from one angle) that a woman is dominated by a man and forced to bear the generations to come. It is a terrible fate that nature has foisted on women.

I know that you and others (and they) have a very specific orientation and view of all these issues and problems: sexuality, lust, fucking, penetration, passion, sensuousness, craving, inner instability....and all of the negations that are part of a certain brand of yoga and ascetic practice. I know that. It is obvious. I know too that 'birds of a feather flock together' and people sometimes come together to share their agreements, to bolster their agreements in company. You come into a pattern of thinking and 1) you get convinced, 2) you are influenced to accept certain tenets and you adopt them---when it is just as possible to adopt other sets, under different influences. Many of the yoga gurus recommend/insist on sexual abstinence as a primary negation required for 'spiritual growth'. Yogananda, who I respect in so many ways, had this belief. As did so many others...who later were found out to be engaging in all sorts of kinky stuff behind everyone's back. All that this means is that suppression of sexuality is likely not a realistic course. Thereof, one has to work with it, and within a current of being. Red flags go up for me when the Lists of Negation are pulled out.

"Get in line :) It's amazing the amount of people spending energy on them or the forum to correct perceived wrongs. It's less amazing once underlying motivations appear to be quite different to the cynical eye."

I believe you, But my intention is to go farther than anyone else has gone, and in that sense I will pass right through these fellows. Honestly, everyone else has been partial, I am going to be thorough, but that does not mean I will negate what is considerable and valuable. I am greedy like that: I want and I demand the goods. If I'm going to spend time here and put in all this effort, I will goddam well get something out of it. Anyway, I am right at the front of the line, and I am the only one in it.

"Not knowing what the disease is, or even that there's a disease, is the disease in this context."

There is nothing at all easy about being alive. There is nothing at all easy about this juncture of history. There is nothing easy about unravelling what it means to be alive. All of our more recent history (post war) has been about identifying the problem, naming the sickness, and proposing the cure. Just look and see all the strange things people have done in the face of the task/problem that confronts us. The yogi-gurus also came in and made their case. Dan and Dave and Kevin are making a case, and they are set on making it BIG, very BIG. This is important stuff and this is one of the most important sites in cyberspace right now!

"(Yes, you're really into fluids.)"

I am into the ability to see all questions and issues from many different perspectives.

Alex Jacob wrote:Dan and Dave and Kevin are making a case, and they are set on making it BIG, very BIG. This is important stuff and this is one of the most important sites in cyberspace right now!

All the more reason to make sure they get it right.

David, the problem I have with Wisdom is that it allows no discussion. For instance, one could very well ask, where did Causality itself come from? To which you have pre-replied: that is an incorrect question. I believe you are glossing over the fundamental issue that I keep trying to raise.

To put it simply, I believe causality is a local thing. By local, I am speaking in terms of space and time. Einstein's General Relativity equations have indeed been empirically verified - they are in fact the most accurate equations science has, more precise than even Schroedinger's equation, at least as experiment has shown so far. What they tell us is that space and time are curved. What science doesn't know is which of several models of curvature that fit the equations is the correct one.

You are asserting that C&E holds everywhere. You have not proven it. In fact, you cannot prove it. You keep saying it is a logical necessity. Against my doubting nature, I will accept that, but only in the local sense, since you do not know what holds in the large. You are saying time could not have had a beginning. I see this belief as antiquated. You are holding onto a world-view that is fully equvalent to 15th century men thinking the world is flat. it only appears flat locally. C&E only appears to be truly universal. Just as we do not abandon Newton's laws for macroscopic phenomena, I do not need to abandon causality altogether - that would be a fatal philosophical error. Yet there may be countless Universes, each causally mutually independent. Our own seems to have a beginning, where space AND time began at one point. If time itself had an origin - admittedly not an easy concept to grasp - then necessarily, so did causality.

You make the mistake of dismissing modern science too quickly. Specifically, nonlocality seems to bear out your assertion that Reality is an infinite web of causality. Do not shoot yourself in the foot, David!

I think you are unable to grasp the fact that an uncaused cause is logically consistent with a local C&E - or any construct of causality, really. This is an achilles heel in your Weltanschauung. There are others, but not necessarily related to causality, IMO.

I regard my belief in a present Creator being - separate from a First Cause (uncaused) - as consistent with anything that can be truthfully said or known about Reality or any concept of a Universe or Totality. It is - as it must be - consistent with any claims made about Cause and Effect, either observed or simply postulated.

You do not understand that I am attempting to strengthen your claims of C&E by limiting its scope to what is knowable. Anything that is absolutely true always and everywhere and cannot be disproven or gainsaid necessarily says indentically nothing. I am in fact trying to rescue it from that ignominious state of inconsequentiality.

brokenhead, you are looking at the wrong scale. Causality is a relationship: it's not a theoretical framework, much less an emprical observation. It transcends science.

The causal relationship, considered without time, is one of mutually dependence: A implies B, and B implies A.

example 1: "If a sufficient force is applied, the cup moves; and, if the cup moves, a sufficient force must have been applied."
example 2: "The appearance of any thing, as each thing is less than the Totality, implies the existence of the Totality. Conversely, the existence of the Totality implies the appearance of each individual thing."

It's not inconsequential, but fundamental.

Trevor wrote:The causal relationship, considered without time, is one of mutually dependence: A implies B, and B implies A.

You cannot consider the causal relationship without time. In fact, the causal relationship may be time. Balfour makes this argument in The End of Time. He claims that there is no such thing as time, independent of events, which necesarily are part of a chain of cause and effect. There certainly is no absolute time, as there are no absolute causes nor effects.

And what I was trying to say in my previous post was that insisting on Cause and Effect itself to have no cause is a logical inconsistency which David nicely glosses over in Wisdon of the Infinite.

Let us say for a minute that the Totality is fundamental. Certainly, nothing exists outside of it; therefore, if anything is to be considered "fundamental," the Totality itself must be. Now if I were to come to you and say, "Trevor, the Totality." Something so fundamental comes to your mind that you cannot actually conceive of anything. If you cannot conceive of the Totality, it is in a very real sense, inconsequential. I am making this observation for David's view of the Law of Cause and Effect. It is so primal, it cannot even be considered a law. Understanding C&E the way David has it has no consequence. It is in this way inconsequential. It is even folly to discuss it. This is purely the result of accepting that C&E must apply everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has.

If you are trying to say everything, then you are saying nothing. Causality cannot be a theory in any traditional sense, as nothing that hasn't been caused has ever been observed.

The Law of Cause and Effect as I read it in Wisdom comes across to me as something dead. Perhaps I have not sufficiently drilled it into all of my thinking to "get" what it is David is saying.

David Qinn, in [i]The Wisdom of the Infinite,[/i] wrote:The causal processes inside our bodies merge seamlessly with the causal processes in the outer environment to form one vast sea of causation. In a very real sense, "we" are not even there.

The same is true for every kind of boundary you care to imagine. None of it is real in the face of causation. If you want to open your mind to the majesty of the Infinite, then you need to understand this point thoroughly. Study it as though your life depended upon it - which, in a deeper sense, it does. Give yourself over to it, absorb your whole consciousness in it, allow it to permanently alter your mind. It is literally the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Don't throw it away!

My mind doesn't seem to be altered, as I did not "see" these boundaries in the first place.