How Can P-Realists Understand Anti-Realism?

[Angelo Cannata]

Your Spirituality -Inner Life is too broad and I am quite lost with it.

You are 100% right, but it is not just something between you and me: I think there is good evidence that it is a world historical situation we are living in and we need the patience of dealing with it to get the best of it. Now I am going to try a description of this situation.

A simple reference point to understand spirituality is emotions. Both spirituality and emotions are something that touches us, takes our heart, makes us feel that something is moving, living inside us, something that can be extremely beautiful or full of sadness, or just deep. The limit of emotions as a reference point to understand spirituality is that they are mostly considered as separate, individual moments, occurrences. But there are moments when we can realize that certain emotions are so deep, so important, so involving, that it would be a shame to waste such a treasure without dealing with them in more systematic, organized ways. In this perspective, spirituality is a work on organizing and dealing with emotions, to make this tremendous resource fruitful at its best. This way we connect emotions with unifying reference points, such as meaning of life, our whole personality, or a whole understanding of life and the world.

We know that psichology is the specialist about emotions, so that today we cannot think of dealing seriously and properly with emotions without all the scientific and human contribution that psychology is able to give us. As you said, in this context psychology looks identical with spirituality. An essential difference from spirituality is that psychology lacks all the critical and radical questions and perspectives where philosophy is the expert. This way, Hitler is just a patient to a psychologist, but we feel that this is too limited. In this context, philosophy is able to provoke our understanding by suggesting that the Holocaust is not just an unpleasant consequence of the patient Hitler that is being treated by a psychologist; rather, it is a historical phenomenon that challenges our entire understanding of this world, of our life, existence. Spirituality welcomes this perspective, because spirituality is not just about well being and emotions: it wants to deal with the deepest problems about our understanding of existence and even our understanding of understanding. In this horizon psychology is inexpert. Philosophy is the specialist, but, on the other side, philosophy is too ignorant about the deep mechanisms of our emotions, human relationships, if compared to psychology. Spirituality takes both of them under the unitary comprehension of what we want to do with our lives, how we can exploit our emotions under a more organized view that can become the reason why we live and how to live.

Such a unitary view existed already in ancient philosophy and ancient Christianity, but it was lost over time.

Philosophy lost its connections with emotions because it needed to be serious, manageable, understandable, communicable; in the middle of this concern, philosophy reduced itself to reasoning, logics, criticism and now it is wavering between seriousness and systematicity (analytical philosophy), that actually are the specialty of science, and radical criticism (postmodern philosophy), that ends up into an emptiness, where everything is demolished, where we feel the need to build something positive, but we have absolutely no idea how such positivity can be built. Spirituality is able to build this “something” positive because it can exploit its wider horizon that includes attention to emotions, humanity, subjectivity, art, rather than just reasoning and understanding.

Christianity lost its connections with emotions for a reason that is very similar to what happened in philosophy: Christianity felt the need to determine things that are the essential, the points that make the radical difference. Emotions are too unreliable, they cannot be considered the essence of Christianity, so Christianity found the essence in cult and morality: you are a Christian if you practice a specific cult and you behave according to specific moral rules. It doesn’t matter what emotions you feel, or you like, or you cultivate. The word “spirituality” was born in Christianity and it meant “your life according to the Holy Spirit”, which meant, in this context, “your life according to the cult and moral rules of Christianity”, plus an additional, slight, tiny, quite invisible, reference, to your feelings and emotions about your practice of Christianity, that was just a residual of what spirituality was in ancient times, when the word didn’t actually exist yet.

Between the 19th and 20th century, Western culture started discovering Oriental religions and practices. Since these practices were perceived as dealing with what is invisible, inner, immaterial, in the experience of our human life, they were called spiritualities. People didn’t need much time to realize that Oriental religions and practices filled a serious gap in Western philosophy and religion: connection with emotions and the body. In Western culture, both philosophy and religion had become just “intellectual” practices. Actually I don’t like at all this meaning of the word “intellectual” as something that is cold and disconnected from emotions and the body, but this is what happened and how most people perceived these things. In this context, “spirituality” has become a synonim of practices and religions connected to the Oriental world. That’s why you feel certain practices, such as breathing control, as essential to spirituality: attention to breathing is essentially absent from Western philosophy and religion, but it has a vital importance in many Oriental practices and religions. This way you are just using the current understanding of spirituality, that is largely based on the Oriental culture.

I think that, in this context, philosophy has a vital contribution that can fill the gap that is, instead, in Oriental spirituality. This contribution is its heritage of work on criticism, reasoning, debates, logic. In this context, Oriental spiritualities, compared to Western philosophy, look quite naive, inexpert, easily exposed to criticism, easily accused of building metaphysics. On the other side, as we said, philosophy doesn’t have the depth, emotional connection, bodily connection, that we can find in Oriental spirituality.

I think that now, today, a hard work on spirituality can make a treasure of all of these resources; I think that, if we don’t do this hard and long work, we are just going to loose a tremendous and rich treasure and resource, that currently is scattered in fragments that live separated among the fields that I have mentioned: psychology, philosophy, religions, Oriental culture, science, emotions.

This explains why today this unitary idea of mine about spirituality cannot be understood: it cannot be understood because actually it doesn’t exist as a unitary category, as a concept. Currently, at present, we are in a stage where a lot of people are working, more or less directly, on fields related to my description, where nobody has a clear idea about where the problem is, what we can build, how we can build something organized, understandable, feasible, complete, balanced, positive. When I say “spirituality”, 99% of people think of Oriental spirituality; only a very little percentage of people are working on a wider and more critical understanding of the concept, but even those people are quite confused.

[FrankGSterleJr]

A few decades ago I learned from two Latter Day Saints missionaries that their church’s doctrine teaches that the biblical ‘lake of fire’ meant for the truly wicked actually represents an eternal spiritual burning of guilt over one’s corporeal misdeeds.

I believe our brain's structural/chemical flaws are what we basically are while our soul is confined within our physical, bodily form. The human soul may be inherently good, on its own; however, trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through.

Accordingly, I concluded, upon an atrocity-committing monster’s physical death, not only would he (or she) be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted his physical life; his spirit or consciousness would also be forced to exist with the unwanted awareness of the mindbogglingly immense amount of needless suffering he personally had caused.

Therefore, free of his corporeal shell, he may be wondering why he was so angry and mean so much of the time. …

When he was still alive, I’d occasionally catch Rush Limbaugh’s talk show (nationalized and heavily advertisement-laden), during which he gave his morning political sermons, mostly on the atrocities being committed against then-president Trump and his administration.

The ideas Limbaugh blathered on about were astonishing. I’d wonder how he got himself to spout some of the absurdities he preached: paranoid theories interspersed with business promotions, as though straight out of a capitalist manifesto, the pages of which I think I could actually hear him shuffling below his microphone.

With his passing, some anti-Limbaugh social-media posters said he must be somewhere in Dante’s Inferno’s political section. I, however, disagreed, and I said so.

Though no fan of his smug-ugly politics/ideology, I wondered whether his spirit or consciousness may finally be 100 percent free of the purely cerebrally based agitation and contempt that may have actually blighted much of his life. Therefore, free of his corporeal shell, he may be wondering, ‘Why was I so angry, so much of the time? Oh, the things I said!... I really hope I didn't do damage while I was there’ ....

[Veritas Aequitas]

Your Spirituality -Inner Life is too broad and I am quite lost with it.

You are 100% right, but it is not just something between you and me: I think there is good evidence that it is a world historical situation we are living in and we need the patience of dealing with it to get the best of it. Now I am going to try a description of this situation.

A simple reference point to understand spirituality is emotions. Both spirituality and emotions are something that touches us, takes our heart, makes us feel that something is moving, living inside us, something that can be extremely beautiful or full of sadness, or just deep. The limit of emotions as a reference point to understand spirituality is that they are mostly considered as separate, individual moments, occurrences. But there are moments when we can realize that certain emotions are so deep, so important, so involving, that it would be a shame to waste such a treasure without dealing with them in more systematic, organized ways. In this perspective, spirituality is a work on organizing and dealing with emotions, to make this tremendous resource fruitful at its best. This way we connect emotions with unifying reference points, such as meaning of life, our whole personality, or a whole understanding of life and the world.

We know that psichology is the specialist about emotions, so that today we cannot think of dealing seriously and properly with emotions without all the scientific and human contribution that psychology is able to give us. As you said, in this context psychology looks identical with spirituality. An essential difference from spirituality is that psychology lacks all the critical and radical questions and perspectives where philosophy is the expert. This way, Hitler is just a patient to a psychologist, but we feel that this is too limited. In this context, philosophy is able to provoke our understanding by suggesting that the Holocaust is not just an unpleasant consequence of the patient Hitler that is being treated by a psychologist; rather, it is a historical phenomenon that challenges our entire understanding of this world, of our life, existence. Spirituality welcomes this perspective, because spirituality is not just about well being and emotions: it wants to deal with the deepest problems about our understanding of existence and even our understanding of understanding. In this horizon psychology is inexpert. Philosophy is the specialist, but, on the other side, philosophy is too ignorant about the deep mechanisms of our emotions, human relationships, if compared to psychology. Spirituality takes both of them under the unitary comprehension of what we want to do with our lives, how we can exploit our emotions under a more organized view that can become the reason why we live and how to live.

Such a unitary view existed already in ancient philosophy and ancient Christianity, but it was lost over time.

I would like to consider some nuances to the above.

Note Psychology is [to exclude nonhumans in this case];

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior.[1] Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives.
Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences.
Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology

I am taking Psychology as a field of knowledge rather than practice and counselling to individuals or groups of humans.
Psychology [note advanced neuro-psychology] in this case covers ALL humans activities ['spirituality' as one] and traceable to the internal nervous systems and body.
As such, psychology can be applied to knowledge of whatever spirituality [since it involves human mental activity].

Philosophy-proper [not the academic kind] is a meta-tool [deal with broad and narrow] that overrides above all fields of knowledge [& actions] thus we have the Philosophy of Psychology.

Philosophy-proper is like the CEO while 'Spirituality' [whatever] and Psychology are the functional managers.

In this perspective, psychology [with other advanced scientific knowledge] in its broadest sense can dig into the mechanisms of spirituality and any aspects of inner life.
Thus psychology will investigate the mechanisms of emotions in supporting "spirituality" towards a certain convergence.

I believe 'spirituality' and 'inner life' [as your preferences] in the generally accepted positive sense [in religions and philosophy] inherently converges towards some kind of generic or universal well-being, intrinsic human values, thriving, flourishing, Eudaimonia and the like.

Philosophy lost its connections with emotions because it needed to be serious, manageable, understandable, communicable; in the middle of this concern, philosophy reduced itself to reasoning, logics, criticism and now it is wavering between seriousness and systematicity (analytical philosophy), that actually are the specialty of science, and radical criticism (postmodern philosophy), that ends up into an emptiness, where everything is demolished, where we feel the need to build something positive, but we have absolutely no idea how such positivity can be built. Spirituality is able to build this “something” positive because it can exploit its wider horizon that includes attention to emotions, humanity, subjectivity, art, rather than just reasoning and understanding.

I believe you are referring to the bastardization of philosophy ending with the present dominating academic-philosophy.
There is an inherent philosophy-proper in all humans as I mentioned is a meta-tool [CEO, Conductor] that overrides and guides every aspects of human live, i.e. spiritual, material, inner or outer.

Christianity lost its connections with emotions for a reason that is very similar to what happened in philosophy: Christianity felt the need to determine things that are the essential, the points that make the radical difference. Emotions are too unreliable, they cannot be considered the essence of Christianity, so Christianity found the essence in cult and morality: you are a Christian if you practice a specific cult and you behave according to specific moral rules. It doesn’t matter what emotions you feel, or you like, or you cultivate. The word “spirituality” was born in Christianity and it meant “your life according to the Holy Spirit”, which meant, in this context, “your life according to the cult and moral rules of Christianity”, plus an additional, slight, tiny, quite invisible, reference, to your feelings and emotions about your practice of Christianity, that was just a residual of what spirituality was in ancient times, when the word didn’t actually exist yet.

Christianity and other theistic religions is 'because God said so, just obey God commands .. everything will be OK" thus there is no need to be bothered with 'emotions'.

Between the 19th and 20th century, Western culture started discovering Oriental religions and practices. Since these practices were perceived as dealing with what is invisible, inner, immaterial, in the experience of our human life, they were called spiritualities. People didn’t need much time to realize that Oriental religions and practices filled a serious gap in Western philosophy and religion: connection with emotions and the body. In Western culture, both philosophy and religion had become just “intellectual” practices. Actually I don’t like at all this meaning of the word “intellectual” as something that is cold and disconnected from emotions and the body, but this is what happened and how most people perceived these things. In this context, “spirituality” has become a synonim of practices and religions connected to the Oriental world. That’s why you feel certain practices, such as breathing control, as essential to spirituality: attention to breathing is essentially absent from Western philosophy and religion, but it has a vital importance in many Oriental practices and religions. This way you are just using the current understanding of spirituality, that is largely based on the Oriental culture.

I believe there are references to 'spirituality' in Christianity re the Mystics.
It is because the Oriental religions do not focus on a belief in a God but rather on practices, it is termed 'spirituality' [marketing ploy?] to oppose the materialistic focus on Western culture.

Because, with "spirituality" there is a convergence towards some kind of generic or universal well-being, intrinsic human values, thriving, flourishing, Eudaimonia and the like, it is inevitable there should be generic features and practices to align with the above.
"Breathe control" is one of those generic features [religion, spirituality, arts, sports, various skills, health, etc.] and not specific to the oriental practices.

I think that, in this context, philosophy has a vital contribution that can fill the gap that is, instead, in Oriental spirituality. This contribution is its heritage of work on criticism, reasoning, debates, logic. In this context, Oriental spiritualities, compared to Western philosophy, look quite naive, inexpert, easily exposed to criticism, easily accused of building metaphysics. On the other side, as we said, philosophy doesn’t have the depth, emotional connection, bodily connection, that we can find in Oriental spirituality.

Unfortunately it is true, because Oriental spiritualities cater to a wide varieties of personalities of the majority in this 'animal' phase, it is opened to metaphysics, myths, pseudo-sciences and other nonsense. Note this thread where 'nonsense' still makes sense;
God is a Useful Delusion
viewtopic.php?t=41514

Fortunately the oriental spirituality do not rely on immutable doctrines and practices like the Abrahamic religions, there is an opportunity sieve out the generic essence [from Buddhism-proper] that can accommodate and drive the progress of humanity on a secular basis.

I think that now, today, a hard work on spirituality can make a treasure of all of these resources; I think that, if we don’t do this hard and long work, we are just going to loose a tremendous and rich treasure and resource, that currently is scattered in fragments that live separated among the fields that I have mentioned: psychology, philosophy, religions, Oriental culture, science, emotions.

This explains why today this unitary idea of mine about spirituality cannot be understood: it cannot be understood because actually it doesn’t exist as a unitary category, as a concept. Currently, at present, we are in a stage where a lot of people are working, more or less directly, on fields related to my description, where nobody has a clear idea about where the problem is, what we can build, how we can build something organized, understandable, feasible, complete, balanced, positive. When I say “spirituality”, 99% of people think of Oriental spirituality; only a very little percentage of people are working on a wider and more critical understanding of the concept, but even those people are quite confused.

I believe what is critical for the future is to determine the generic and universal convergences and its generic practices that underlie whatever is spiritual, religions, well-being.

I noted you are not into the convergences of spirituality or inner life.
If any, what are they.

As an example of convergence at a crude level;
1. Humans cultivate, produce all sort of food.
2. Food are prepare in a wide variety of ways [recipes] and eaten in different way.
3. But all these variations converged within the generic human digestive system that extracts the essential nutrients to sustain the survival of the individual[s].
4. The survival of the individual[s] till the inevitable converge to the preservation of the human species.

Just as the above analogy,
there is a wide varieties of activities from the spiritualities, inner life, etc. but they converge into to some convergent which I listed as generic well-being, universal well-being, intrinsic human values, thriving, flourishing, Eudaimonia and the like.
Your views on the above?

[Iwannaplato]

Wow, vagueness and strange appropriation.
Since the 14th century at least in English Spirit and spirituality are words associated with the non-physical.
There is absolutely no reason for someone who does not believe in deities or other non-physical phenomena (ghosts, the soul, the spirit) to use this word or any of its cousins. You could call it mental health, emotional thriving, well-being or some other word that does not have the metaphysical positions entailed by the use of this word.

But what we get with some, but not all, people who lack these beliefs, is the strong urge to appropriate the term, despite their being many just as effective secular words.

Prepare for the coming mental gymnastics from the two Vaguists.

We'll probably here about 'the breath' or some other supposed hopping back to some long lost meaning that actually does not explain or fit with the term Sprituality, even from the beginning.

[Angelo Cannata]

Psychology [note advanced neuro-psychology] in this case covers ALL humans activities

I agree, but it is just a perspective, the same way spirituality is a perspective, Maths is a perspective. Any perspective is able to cover everything.

Philosophy-proper is like the CEO while 'Spirituality' [whatever] and Psychology are the functional managers.

I think this idea as well is just a perspective. From a critical point of view, there are no meta-perspectives: they can be considered meta- only according to the application of a specific perspective. In this context, we cannot say that philosophy is absolutely the the most general, the highest, poin of view. From a critical perspective, we can decide to assume even cooking, for example, as the highest perspective, the most meta- perspective, so that philosophy becomes just a small subset of it. It is just up to us.

In this context, any convergence is just an aspect of conventionalism. This does not mean that it is wrong, it means that it is just an local, temporary, agreement between us humans.

with "spirituality" there is a convergence towards some kind of generic or universal well-being, intrinsic human values, thriving, flourishing, Eudaimonia and the like, it is inevitable there should be generic features and practices to align with the above.

It wouldn’t be difficult to criticize each of these ideas. For example, what is well-being? In certain contexts, we can think that suffering is better because it makes us live in the authenticity of what the world is. In certain perspectives, we humans are the evil of the world, because we are ruining it, so the good it to work to destroy the presence of humans in this world. We, or nature itself, have already destroyed species that now are estinct. Do we humans have a superior right not to be estinct?

These are just example to show that any idea of convergence should at least make all efforts to keep in mind that it is just a subjective perspective.

By proceeding in this critical direction, we just put ourselves in the mind of postmodernism, which ends up into the demolishion of everything. I think the this perspective, this awareness, that everything is or can be demolished is the best starting point for a good spirituality. In this context, this kind of nihilism is assumed as something positive, because it prevents any temptation of building new metaphysics. After this step, I think that the next step is to think and to do whatever we want, just in a non-metaphysical way. So, for example, we can worship those or that God we prefer, making clear that we want to do it not because we think that that God metaphysically exists, but just because we like it, we find it good, nice, useful. We can preach honesty, or well-being, or an art of breathing, but not because they have any objective validity; we do it just because we, subjectively, find doing it good and nice. Even when science says that something is good for us, this does not imply that everybody should cultivate it. For example, sport is scientifically good for our body, but cannot end up to a metaphysics of sport, or a religion of sport.

I think it is good to look for world agreements, that would help all of us, tremendously, for a better life on this planet. I think we just need to keep clear that, whatever agreement we reach, it is not because it has any kind of universality; it is just because, luckily, we, today, in this planet, have been able to find this agreement. Tomorrow we might find a different agreement.

[Angelo Cannata]

Wow, vagueness and strange appropriation.
Since the 14th century at least in English Spirit and spirituality are words associated with the non-physical.
There is absolutely no reason for someone who does not believe in deities or other non-physical phenomena (ghosts, the soul, the spirit) to use this word or any of its cousins. You could call it mental health, emotional thriving, well-being or some other word that does not have the metaphysical positions entailed by the use of this word.

But what we get with some, but not all, people who lack these beliefs, is the strong urge to appropriate the term, despite their being many just as effective secular words.

Prepare for the coming mental gymnastics from the two Vaguists.

We'll probably here about 'the breath' or some other supposed hopping back to some long lost meaning that actually does not explain or fit with the term Sprituality, even from the beginning.

You have criticized yourself: your definition of spirituality is itself an unjust appropriation, because, historically and strictly, the word “spirituality” belongs to Christians, it was born in Christianity, and even today it is used by Christians as a synonim of “Christian spirituality”. Christian spirituality is not associated with the non-physical: associating it with the non-physical means adopting a philosophycally metaphysical perspective, that is not the Christian perspective. In Christianity, “spirituality” means “life according to the Holy Spirit”; the Holy Spirit is not a metaphisically non-physical existing deity. Christianity is not a metaphysics.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Psychology [note advanced neuro-psychology] in this case covers ALL humans activities

I agree, but it is just a perspective, the same way spirituality is a perspective, Maths is a perspective. Any perspective is able to cover everything.

Philosophy-proper is like the CEO while 'Spirituality' [whatever] and Psychology are the functional managers.

I think this idea as well is just a perspective. From a critical point of view, there are no meta-perspectives: they can be considered meta- only according to the application of a specific perspective. In this context, we cannot say that philosophy is absolutely the the most general, the highest, point of view. From a critical perspective, we can decide to assume even cooking, for example, as the highest perspective, the most meta- perspective, so that philosophy becomes just a small subset of it. It is just up to us.

In this context, any convergence is just an aspect of conventionalism. This does not mean that it is wrong, it means that it is just an local, temporary, agreement between us humans.

Here is my nuanced views on the above;

My fundamental principle is;
Whatever is reality, existing, truths, facts, knowledge, objective are conditioned upon a specific human-based Framework and System of Realization [FSR] and Knowledge [FSK].
A FSK can cover any aspect of reality and fields of knowledge.
At present the scientific FSK is the most credible and objective, as such is the standard. [Is there a better FSK than the Science FSK?]
A valid FSK must have its specific constitution [explicit or implied] with is defined objectives, coverage, terms, conditions and all other requirements that need to be complied by its members [human subjects], e.g. the scientific methods and all its conditions within the scientific FSK.

The critical term is "human-based" which mean it has local, temporary, semi-permanent agreement, shared between us humans, i.e. this is objective [in varying degrees] defined as independent from a subject's opinions, beliefs, judgments and biases; this is collective-intersubjectivity. In a way I can agree, it is perspective but a collective perspective or paradigm.

So, there is FSK based objectivity [not of realism's] as intersubjectivity [human-based], but another critical question is, each FSK is in what degrees of objectivity along a continuum?
With the empirical-based Scientific FSK as the standard at 100/100 degrees of objectivity, the other extreme is that of the faith-based theological FSK at say 0.00001/100. The rest are someway in between.

Philosophy-proper [note 'proper' not the bastardized kind] is a meta perspective FSK [as I had proposed, like a CEO]. The question is to what degree of objectivity. I believe the degree of objectivity with my FSK [proposed] of philosophy as meta- is reasonably high; this of course need to be justified with valid arguments [T.B.A & pending].

The generally accepted psychology FSK [perspective] covers ALL human actions and what are their root causes via the nervous system. It is a perspective [FSK-ed] but generally is reasonably objective in contrast to the theology, astrology, arts FSKs.

Since the supposed "spirituality" is grounded on human actions, there is the Philosophy and Psychology of Spirituality [as a subset].

with "spirituality" there is a convergence towards some kind of generic or universal well-being, intrinsic human values, thriving, flourishing, Eudaimonia and the like, it is inevitable there should be generic features and practices to align with the above.

It wouldn’t be difficult to criticize each of these ideas. For example, what is well-being? In certain contexts, we can think that suffering is better because it makes us live in the authenticity of what the world is. In certain perspectives, we humans are the evil of the world, because we are ruining it, so the good it to work to destroy the presence of humans in this world. We, or nature itself, have already destroyed species that now are estinct. Do we humans have a superior right not to be estinct?

These are just example to show that any idea of convergence should at least make all efforts to keep in mind that it is just a subjective perspective.

Ignoring first-person subjectivity and realist objectivity;
Emergences, Divergences and convergences are empirically evident as objective, but are collective-perspective conditioned upon a human-based FSK, thus it has to be intersubjective [not subjective per se].

In line with the above ideas, 'what is spirituality' has to be FSK-ed, as such its objective has to be verified and rated accordingly;
see: Criteria in Rating Credibility & Objectivity of a FSK
viewtopic.php?t=41040

By proceeding in this critical direction, we just put ourselves in the mind of postmodernism, which ends up into the demolishion of everything.
I think the this perspective, this awareness, that everything is or can be demolished is the best starting point for a good spirituality. In this context, this kind of nihilism is assumed as something positive, because it prevents any temptation of building new metaphysics.
After this step, I think that the next step is to think and to do whatever we want, just in a non-metaphysical way.
So, for example, we can worship those or that God we prefer, making clear that we want to do it not because we think that that God metaphysically exists, but just because we like it, we find it good, nice, useful.
We can preach honesty, or well-being, or an art of breathing, but not because they have any objective validity; we do it just because we, subjectively, find doing it good and nice. Even when science says that something is good for us, this does not imply that everybody should cultivate it. For example, sport is scientifically good for our body, but cannot end up to a metaphysics of sport, or a religion of sport.

I think it is good to look for world agreements, that would help all of us, tremendously, for a better life on this planet. I think we just need to keep clear that, whatever agreement we reach, it is not because it has any kind of universality; it is just because, luckily, we, today, in this planet, have been able to find this agreement. Tomorrow we might find a different agreement.

I believe there is universality within humans with reference to facts of innate generic features adapted via evolution that are not likely to change in one generation or even the next 1000 generation as homo-sapiens.
That, 'there should not be universal' is related to ideological beliefs i.e. the "isms".
Just like any evident generic features of humans, I believe there are the not-so-obvious generic functions such as 'optimizing of generic well-being" [or spirituality as qualified], moral potential, wisdom potential which had unfolded and emerged only in very recent evolution.

The above has to be confined [naturally] within specific human-based FSKs which must be assessed and rated in terms of its FSK grounded on rationality and critical thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

Btw, are you into Stoicism?

[Angelo Cannata]

Here is my nuanced views on the above

I was thinking about answering your post, which would involve some discussion about the words we are using. But perhaps we might go to something better.

I think that your categorizations, referred by your abbreviations, such as FSK or p-realism, contain the basis for important development, but they need (and deserve) a better elaboration, to make them more usable, more public. This might go together with some kind of interest that we have about spirituality, but needs as well the elaboration of a better ground. In other words, I think we have the seeds of some clear ideas, that professional philosophers don't have and that deserve serious work on them. I might have written this in a private message, but I would like other people to join this kind of work, if anybody else appreciates what is going here, in this thread.
Now the question might be: what can we do? I think this will come afterwards. At the moment I would like to launch an appeal and check what everyone sees about perspectives of collaboration to make our research more fruitful.

One might ask: what kind of collaboration? As I said, I think it is too early to determine things. Let's see first if there is interest.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here is my nuanced views on the above

I was thinking about answering your post, which would involve some discussion about the words we are using. But perhaps we might go to something better.

I think that your categorizations, referred by your abbreviations, such as FSK or p-realism, contain the basis for important development, but they need (and deserve) a better elaboration, to make them more usable, more public. This might go together with some kind of interest that we have about spirituality, but needs as well the elaboration of a better ground. In other words, I think we have the seeds of some clear ideas, that professional philosophers don't have and that deserve serious work on them. I might have written this in a private message, but I would like other people to join this kind of work, if anybody else appreciates what is going here, in this thread.
Now the question might be: what can we do? I think this will come afterwards. At the moment I would like to launch an appeal and check what everyone sees about perspectives of collaboration to make our research more fruitful.

One might ask: what kind of collaboration? As I said, I think it is too early to determine things. Let's see first if there is interest.

It is a good intention to explore and expand on ideas with hope that something 'positive' could come out of it. That is one of the thing of what philosophy is about.
At present, I have some projects going which are quite out of the way from the intents of your 'appeal' re 'spirituality'.

As I had stated above, whilst I do refer to 'spirituality' at times [often misunderstood, mocked and condemned], I am not too inclined with the term 'spirituality'.
My point is whenever the term 'spirituality' is used, it should not stand-alone but bracketed with to avoid talking pass each other, e.g.
-spirituality(mental not physical, inner life, positive, generic well being, flourishing, eudaimonia and the like)
- conditioned upon a FSK.

At the moment I would like to launch an appeal and check what everyone sees about perspectives of collaboration to make our research more fruitful.

You are likely to get the following response or faced with such attitudes;

Hah! I just googled it [FSK] and the only thing that came up is a link to 'Philosophy Now Forum' and one of your threads It doesn't mean anything. It's just an obnoxious word salad.

That is despite my following explanation;
VA: "An acronym is merely an abbreviation as a convenient symbol in communication and nothing else. Why an acronym is listed by a search engine, acronym or ChatBot, it is first, purely based on popularity and has nothing to do with truth or reality."

Instead of the very loose term 'spirituality' with different people having different meanings of it, 'The Philosophy of Life' [accompanied with explanation, differentiated from academic philosophy] could be an appropriate alternative.
Philosophy [typical meaning] is grounded on 'wisdom' thus unlikely to be negative and evil.

I believe pushing for 'philosophy of life' [aligned with & attuned to Nature] is more effective than 'spirituality' where its negative extreme could end up with Satanism and other evils.

[Angelo Cannata]

Instead of the very loose term 'spirituality' with different people having different meanings of it, 'The Philosophy of Life' [accompanied with explanation, differentiated from academic philosophy] could be an appropriate alternative.
Philosophy [typical meaning] is grounded on 'wisdom' thus unlikely to be negative and evil.

I think that, at this point, there is a methological point that needs to be discussed.

You have clarified on several occasions that we can distinguish two kinds of objectivity: one kind is absolute, the other kind is limited inside a field, such as science.

I agree with this distinction, the problem is that it creates continuous difficulties of ambiguity about the meaning of the words we use. Let’s consider, for example, the word “universal”: it can be used in an absolute sense or in a limited sense.

The problem is made even more difficult because I see in philosophers, including the most famous, academic and professional ones, a temptation, mostly unintentional, to fall back again into metaphysics, objectivity, realism, despite their declared ackowledgement that metaphysics is untenable now. They even say explicitly that what they are going to say is not realism, but, at the end, my impression is that they are just trying, unintentionally, to find new hidden ways to go back into realism. An example of this, in my interpretation, is this very long article about “Postmodern spirituality”, that you can read online.

In this context, even scientific objectivity, that in theory is supposed to be dependent, anyway, on the larger context of philosophical subjectivty, lays itself open to be exploited in ambiguous ways, to reintroduce a philosophically realist mentality through the backdoor.

Another way of being ambiguous is those philosophers who adopt some sort of half-way realism; they build extremely complex systems of ideas that just hide what to me is simply a return to realism.

All of these elements make me continuously and permanently critical on whatever my interlocutors are saying. This way my interlocutors feel that I am continuously criticizing, destroying, demolishing, relativizing whatever they say, so that they feel impossible to build up any constructive discussion, any positive conversation.

Actually, I agree with the idea that, after declaring that we don’t want to give our words any metaphysical meaning, we can say anything, we can even talk freely about “absolute certainties”. This is what makes everyday life possible, because we cannot clarify our non-metaphysical mind every time we say each single word.

Apparently, the consequence of this is all about trust: I trust myself in the sense that I don’t want absolutely fall back into hidden realist ideas, but I don’t trust other people, especially after seeing how ambiguous professional philosophers are about this.

It looks like the situation is that, at the end, we cannot trust anybody. To be consistent, I cannot even trust myself, because I can never know if, at the end, actually, I am unwittingly trying to find and impose my cleverly hidden realist mind.

I think that, in this situation, what is really helpful is the old conception of philosophy as an exercise, as a daily practice, acknowledging that nobody is ever 100% free from philosophical realism, we can only work every day, every moment, to cultivate and improve our non-realist, non-metaphysical way of thinking and acting. This is spirituality.

---------------------------------

About your suggestion of “The Philosophy of Life” as an alternative to “spirituality”, I think that there are some reasons why it doesn’t work so much:
- you added “accompanied with explanation, differentiated from academic philosophy”, which makes it needing clarifications, the same way “spirituality” needs clarifications;
- “spirituality” contains a meaning of action, practice, exercise, while “The Philosophy of Life” is more exposed to be conceived as just a conception, without so much exercise;
- spirituality, in a wide sense that does not imply any belief, is already examined by scholars and I think this meaning will expand more and more, until it will reach the mass of people; there are many books that already conceive spirituality in the wide sense of “inner life”, although they don’t use exactly this expression. In this context, the meaning “inner life” is not my creation from nothing, but an interpretation of how the word “spirituality” is already used now by a lot of researchers.

Here are just a few references:

Lightman Alan, The transcendent brain. Spirituality in the age of science (2023)
Jones Richard H., Secular mysticism (2022)
Ambury - Irani - Wallace, Philosophy as a way of life (2021)
White Richard, Spiritual philosophers (2020)
Kirby Joseph, Varieties of spirituality. A Western philosophical analysis (2019)
Andre Comte-Sponville, The Book of Atheist Spirituality (2009)
Michel Foucault (1926-1984): his works in general.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Instead of the very loose term 'spirituality' with different people having different meanings of it, 'The Philosophy of Life' [accompanied with explanation, differentiated from academic philosophy] could be an appropriate alternative.
Philosophy [typical meaning] is grounded on 'wisdom' thus unlikely to be negative and evil.

I think that, at this point, there is a methological point that needs to be discussed.

You have clarified on several occasions that we can distinguish two kinds of objectivity: one kind is absolute, the other kind is limited inside a field, such as science.

I agree with this distinction, the problem is that it creates continuous difficulties of ambiguity about the meaning of the words we use. Let’s consider, for example, the word “universal”: it can be used in an absolute sense or in a limited sense.

The problem is made even more difficult because I see in philosophers, including the most famous, academic and professional ones, a temptation, mostly unintentional, to fall back again into metaphysics, objectivity, realism, despite their declared ackowledgement that metaphysics is untenable now. They even say explicitly that what they are going to say is not realism, but, at the end, my impression is that they are just trying, unintentionally, to find new hidden ways to go back into realism. An example of this, in my interpretation, is this very long article about “Postmodern spirituality”, that you can read online.

I read Part One of your article and last section in Part V.

In my opinion, I believe your whole thesis is driven by the inherent 'ex nihilo nihil fit' instinct which is an evolutionary default, i.e. there must be 'something' beyond a rationalized 'nothing'. The dilemma is how to avoid any metaphysical trappings re this something, e.g. the void, the witness, the thinking that think itself and the like.

Kant highlighted this alluded "evolutionary default";

Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them {the illusions}.
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
CPR B397

The point is, as long as one is trapped within the strong currents and forces of that evolutionary instinct, one will be led to its metaphysical elements ultimately.
Another point is all humans cannot deconstruct its 13.5 billion years of physical and 3.5 billions years of organic history that is constructed and encoded in its core DNA.
The most one could do is to deconstruct some of the variable "isms" arising from the last 3000 years or so.

You mentioned the significant change in thinking and views towards a sense of 'spirituality' by the various post modernists in the later part of their life.
Note the fact of the natural atrophy of neurons in the brain especially those that act as inhibitors and modulators in the later part of one's life; this is common to all humans, so to post modernists and all others in varying degrees.

• A person’s faith is a deeply personal aspect of life, and many times the beliefs we hold become more of a priority as we get older. A study by the University of Chicago found that faith in God increases as we age, especially in those over the age of 68.
  https://www.snydervillage.com/spiritual ... er-adults/
  
  Across the world, people have varying levels of belief (and disbelief) in God, with some nations being more devout than others. But new research reveals one constant across parts of the globe: As people age, their belief in God seems to increase.
  The new study is based on data collected as part of the General Social Survey by researchers at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.
  https://www.livescience.com/19971-belie ... m-age.html

The above has the same effect for 'spirituality'.

A notable example; the very famous atheist [Anthony Flew] became a deist in the later part of his life. There are many other examples.

The above is what happened to the said postmodernists you mentioned who were inclined towards the 'spiritual' which is very subtle realism [absolute mind independent].

In contrast, note the Pyrrhonian Skeptics [Sextus, etc.], Buddhists and the like, who just suspend judgment or cultivate themselves to be natural and spontaneous to be indifferent to the above dilemma and ex nihilo nihil fit instinct.

In this context, even scientific objectivity, that in theory is supposed to be dependent, anyway, on the larger context of philosophical subjectivity, lays itself open to be exploited in ambiguous ways, to reintroduce a philosophically realist mentality through the backdoor.

Another way of being ambiguous is those philosophers who adopt some sort of half-way realism; they build extremely complex systems of ideas that just hide what to me is simply a return to realism.

All of these elements make me continuously and permanently critical on whatever my interlocutors are saying. This way my interlocutors feel that I am continuously criticizing, destroying, demolishing, relativizing whatever they say, so that they feel impossible to build up any constructive discussion, any positive conversation.

Actually, I agree with the idea that, after declaring that we don’t want to give our words any metaphysical meaning, we can say anything, we can even talk freely about “absolute certainties”. This is what makes everyday life possible, because we cannot clarify our non-metaphysical mind every time we say each single word.

Apparently, the consequence of this is all about trust: I trust myself in the sense that I don’t want absolutely fall back into hidden realist ideas, but I don’t trust other people, especially after seeing how ambiguous professional philosophers are about this.

It looks like the situation is that, at the end, we cannot trust anybody. To be consistent, I cannot even trust myself, because I can never know if, at the end, actually, I am unwittingly trying to find and impose my cleverly hidden realist mind.

I think that, in this situation, what is really helpful is the old conception of philosophy as an exercise, as a daily practice, acknowledging that nobody is ever 100% free from philosophical realism, we can only work every day, every moment, to cultivate and improve our non-realist, non-metaphysical way of thinking and acting. This is spirituality.

I believe;
There are Two Senses of 'Objectivity'
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39326
1. FSK dependent Objectivity
2. Absolute Mind-independent Objectivity - Philosophical Realism.

Similarly there are also Two Senses of Objectivity
1. FSK dependent Scientific Objectivity
2. Absolute Mind-independent Objectivity - Scientific Realism.

The above is a dualistic dichotomy [mutually exclusive], once one accept one, the other is excluded absolutely.
Thus if one accept FSK-Dependent Objectivity [antirealism], there is no way one will adopt realism in any hidden way*.

* there is a nuance to this where a realist can be antirealist and vice versa in different senses.

About your suggestion of “The Philosophy of Life” as an alternative to “spirituality”, I think that there are some reasons why it doesn’t work so much:
- you added “accompanied with explanation, differentiated from academic philosophy”, which makes it needing clarifications, the same way “spirituality” needs clarifications;
- “spirituality” contains a meaning of action, practice, exercise, while “The Philosophy of Life” is more exposed to be conceived as just a conception, without so much exercise;
- spirituality, in a wide sense that does not imply any belief, is already examined by scholars and I think this meaning will expand more and more, until it will reach the mass of people; there are many books that already conceive spirituality in the wide sense of “inner life”, although they don’t use exactly this expression. In this context, the meaning “inner life” is not my creation from nothing, but an interpretation of how the word “spirituality” is already used now by a lot of researchers.

Here are just a few references:

Lightman Alan, The transcendent brain. Spirituality in the age of science (2023)
Jones Richard H., Secular mysticism (2022)
Ambury - Irani - Wallace, Philosophy as a way of life (2021)
White Richard, Spiritual philosophers (2020)
Kirby Joseph, Varieties of spirituality. A Western philosophical analysis (2019)
Andre Comte-Sponville, The Book of Atheist Spirituality (2009)
Michel Foucault (1926-1984): his works in general.

I believe when one use the term 'spirituality' then explains it in an article, talks or books, then it can be clarified to its specific meaning.
But the problem is there are many who are very anti to the term "spirituality" due to various reasons.
They just do not want anything to do with 'spirituality' and they have a deep embedded bias toward 'spiritual' for various reasons.
Thus even if they are influenced, cajoled or forced to read or listen to anything related to "spirituality", their mind is already have 'closed'.

''Philosophy of life" or "Philosophy of Living" is very general because all humans are striving to live a good life. The critical term is 'philosophy' [all encompassing] grounded on wisdom.
Within a 'Philosophy of living' via an iterative model, it is inevitable what is supposedly 'spiritual' [not realist] will naturally ensue to be dealt with.
There ought to be deconstruction and construction activities within a Philosophy of Living model, but it is evitable one cannot attempt to deconstruct what is related the 13.5 billion years of physical and 3.5 billions years of organic history that are pre-constructed and encoded in its core DNA.

[Atla]

I think that a bridge can be made between realists and anti-realists, so that they won't talk past each other. Their debate is infinite because everyone speaks from their own perspective. The bridge is created the moment one of them tries to adopt the others' perspective. In other words, this is simply the procedure of "reductio ad absurdum": in this procedure we adopt the perspective we disagree with, to show that it has problems. This builds a bridge, because in that moment both sides adopt the same perspective, the same logic, the same philosophy.

Now let's go to the content of this bridge. I think that realism can be shown as contradictory after adopting it, so that realists themselves cannot disagree about the existence of a contradiction. Let's go into the steps of the bridge.

1) Realists assume that there is a reality that is absolutely independent from any perspective.

2) The second step is to realize that, this way, reality is considered as universal, which is, it has its own existence, its own validity, that is valid from whatever perspective we consider it. Differences in perceptions are due to the differences in perspectives, while reality remains the same. In this context, we can notice that reality is able to take into consideration any perspective, all perspectives. Reality is universal because it is the same for all perspectives, it is able to challenge any difference, showing that any difference depends on the difference of perspective, not on any difference of reality. For example, if a stone is yellow to me and red to you, we will discover that this happens because we are seeing different sides of the same stone. That stone is actually the same for everyone, it is able to prove at any moment that it is universal and it is able to consider, to challenge, to question, every perspective.

3) So, the third step is to realise that, as a consequence, reality is able to take into consideration the perspective of whoever is talking or thinking about it at any moment. In this step we realise that it is impossible to us to think or to talk about reality without introducing a perspective in the process, without making the process conditioned by a perspective, by a subjectivity. In other words, each of us is forced to realize the they are totally unable to think about absolutely independent reality without, at the same time, making it dependent on us who are thinking, us who are talking. I can't imagine any reality existent independently from any thinker, because, as soon as I try this, I have already, instantly, introduced myself as a thinker of it. A world, existing without anybody thinking of it, is impossible to imagine, because, as soon as we try to think of it, we have already introduced our perspective of thinkers. This means that, when we try to imagine, for example, how the planet earth existed when no living being was there, or when we imagine an insect now flying out there, while nobody is noticing its existence, actually, our perception that we are thinking about something that is not thought by anybody is false, is an illusion, because we have already introduced ourselves thinking about it. This way, the planet we are thinking about is not the planet thought by nobody, because it is already being thought by us, now. We imagine that, in that past, nobody was thinking about it, but we must admit that it is impossible to us to think about that moment in the past without introducing instantly our perspective of thinkers of it in this moment, in the present. We have no way of getting an idea of the planet as it was at that moment, without automatically polluting it with the presence of our perspective now.

This makes us realise that actually nobody in this world has ever been able to think of the concept of "absolute reality", because, whenever they tried to do it, they automatically destroyed that absoluteness by making it dependent on their perspective of thinkers of it. This means that, whenever we think that we are thinking of an object in its own independent existence, actually we aren't, because what we are really thinking of is that object already conditioned by our thinking of it. So, whenever we are talking about reality, we are never talking about it as an independent object: nobody has ever been able to do this. What we are talking about is our illusion of an independent object.

In this context, we can say that independent objects never existed, because nobody has ever been able to think of them. They existed only as illusions of people who thought that they were able to think about them, while actually they weren't.

Now we can consider that our starting point in all of this reasoning was the assumption that reality exists independently. This very starting point has brought us to the conclusion that reality existing independently never existed, because it has always been an illusion of thinkers.
In short, we, as realist philosophers, are forced to conclude that, if reality exists, then it doesn't exist. If reality is, then it is not.

This is a fully realistic reasoning and, as such, realists cannot deny it without automatically denying their being realists. If you are a realist philosopher, you are a philosopher who denies the existence of reality as independent from you.

Have you really crossed that bridge? Any sane realist acknowledges that one/one's perspective is always part of the objective reality, that it can never make sense to try to deal with an absolutely independent reality.

I think this absolute indepence talk went out of fashion maybe 100 years ago when it was even scientifically refuted.

So imo that's not even the main claim of realism today. The main claim is simply that objective reality (probably) exists.

[Iwannaplato]

Whenever P-realists encounter proposals by anti-realists, their first reaction is to condemn the antirealists' views as complete nonsense and in other derogatory terms, e.g.

So, VA, starts his thread with a insulting generalization (no, universalization) about realists. And one that adds no information or substance to a discusion of antirealism/realism.
This is how he begins a discussion.

[Angelo Cannata]

Have you really crossed that bridge? Any sane realist acknowledges that one/one's perspective is always part of the objective reality, that it can never make sense to try to deal with an absolutely independent reality.

I think this absolute indepence talk went out of fashion maybe 100 years ago when it was even scientifically refuted.

So imo that's not even the main claim of realism today. The main claim is simply that objective reality (probably) exists.

This way you are saying that today realists give the words "objective" and "reality" a relative meaning. That's fine, but I am not sure that realists would agree with you. At this point, what we need is just to confirm what you said by analysing single realist philosophers and see how each one means these concepts. Can you mention specific philosophers or philosophy dictionaries that give the concepts of "objective" and "reality" a relative meaning?

[Atla]

Have you really crossed that bridge? Any sane realist acknowledges that one/one's perspective is always part of the objective reality, that it can never make sense to try to deal with an absolutely independent reality.

I think this absolute indepence talk went out of fashion maybe 100 years ago when it was even scientifically refuted.

So imo that's not even the main claim of realism today. The main claim is simply that objective reality (probably) exists.

This way you are saying that today realists give the words "objective" and "reality" a relative meaning. That's fine, but I am not sure that realists would agree with you. At this point, what we need is just to confirm what you said by analysing single realist philosophers and see how each one means these concepts. Can you mention specific philosophers or philosophy dictionaries that give the concepts of "objective" and "reality" a relative meaning?

? "Objective reality" isn't relative, it's a posited absolute.