The purpose odf philosophy as opposed to psychology and binary reason is to exercise the higher parts of the human soul and allow it to develop, to “mature.” A person has to write a book to do justice to this but in short, look at it this way. These ideas that have inspired me aren’t to be blindly believed but instead consciously contemplated in order to open the mind.Belinda wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2017 11:34 pm Nick_A wrote:
But how can there be a purpose floating around unattached to any subject?Objective purpose is one thing and subjective purpose is another. You are a secularist so only accept the concept of subjective purpose. CIRET would only be annoying for you since it assumes the potential for an objective conscious purpose for Man in addition to that of the man animal. This is lunacy for the secularist so leads to intolerance.
Plato wrote of the tripartite soul. In other words, the collective human soul or essence has three parts: intellect, spiritedness (emotions) and appetites (sensory desires.)
Modern psychology has expanded on this as can be seen here
http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/p ... e_soul.htm
The human organism is a mini universe. It is structured as is our great universe in three parts. Plato described a society as analogous to a large human organism and should be structured as is the tripartite soul. Others who have influenced me assert that the great universe is also a tripartite soul. From this perspective the universe is the body of God or what Plotinus called the ONE and Plato called the GOOD. Attempts to put a face on it and secularize it are just self serving idolatry.
Our body changes every day. Cells die and new ones are created. Each of these cells have a purpose but each cell isn’t essential for the health and objective purpose of the body which is to serve the higher conscious parts.
An acorn has the purpose of becoming an oak. If it doesn’t succeed it becomes food for animals or just decays and becomes food for the earth. The fact that only a few acorns become oaks doesn’t negate the purpose of the acorn. A thing can have a purpose but it doesn’t have to actualize. It just serves a lower purpose
I’ve read that the relationship between a body cell and a brain cell is analogous to man on earth - a psychological slave to Plato’s cave and conscious man which is a brain cell that evolved from the limitations of a body cell and lives the life of the body. The purpose of things isn’t revealed in a static part of their being but is seen in the movement of its being as it participates in breaking down through involution or rising up through evolution and uniting with other things
Universal existence is a process. Its purpose is revealed in the process, not in things. Objective human meaning and purpose is an attribute of the cyclical process of involution and evolution. Secularization has influenced modern man to focus on things to define meaning as opposed to the big picture in which the value of the process becomes more evident to satisfy the needs of the heart to feel “value.”“Time in Buddhist cosmology is measured in kalpas. Originally, a kalpa was considered to be 4,320,000 years. Buddhist scholars expanded it with a metaphor: rub a one-mile cube of rock once every hundred years with a piece of silk, until the rock is worn away -- and a kalpa still hasn’t passed! During a kalpa, the world comes into being, exists, is destroyed, and a period of emptiness ensues. Then it all starts again.”