What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

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odysseus
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Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by odysseus »

Atla wrote
But you haven't put forth anything so far, except vague references about foundations within phenomenology, even though anyone with some grip knows that philosophy has no foundations deep down.
I have reviewed them. Here is one recent one:

But what is anthropic? This is an empirical idea, and as such it fits among the many, the contingent. Metaethical thinking reveals something absolute and carries with an injunction that issues from this. The religious God is a contrived figure, but imagine if it were not, putting aside the complaints of silliness. What is it that God would have that would be so extraordinary? It would be that God would present into the human condition and that of all things, an absolute. The existential core of God is not about any of the, what I call the incidental things in a popular religion, but about an analysis of the material basis of religion, material meaning existential, there, in the fabric of things, no more dismissible than hurricanes or metamorphic rocks, but then, as an absolute, far more real, that is, far more imposing on belief. as logically logical form in the way of tautologies andn contradictions are the most coercive imaginable. Trouble is, they are also vacuous. Here, were Godto actually exist, it would constitute an epistemic imposition that issues from reality and not from abstract logic. The difference is momentous.


When I say the existential core of God is not about the incidental things, but the matter rests with the "material basis" of religion and what is "in the fabric of things" what is it that I am talking about? As with all I write, you don't inquire, or, you don't bring them up at all. Material? What cold I mean by this? In the fabric of things? And this injunction and its metaethical injunctions? Never a word.
Atla
Posts: 6675
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:27 am

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by Atla »

odysseus wrote: Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:02 pm
Atla wrote
But you haven't put forth anything so far, except vague references about foundations within phenomenology, even though anyone with some grip knows that philosophy has no foundations deep down.
I have reviewed them. Here is one recent one:

But what is anthropic? This is an empirical idea, and as such it fits among the many, the contingent. Metaethical thinking reveals something absolute and carries with an injunction that issues from this. The religious God is a contrived figure, but imagine if it were not, putting aside the complaints of silliness. What is it that God would have that would be so extraordinary? It would be that God would present into the human condition and that of all things, an absolute. The existential core of God is not about any of the, what I call the incidental things in a popular religion, but about an analysis of the material basis of religion, material meaning existential, there, in the fabric of things, no more dismissible than hurricanes or metamorphic rocks, but then, as an absolute, far more real, that is, far more imposing on belief. as logically logical form in the way of tautologies andn contradictions are the most coercive imaginable. Trouble is, they are also vacuous. Here, were Godto actually exist, it would constitute an epistemic imposition that issues from reality and not from abstract logic. The difference is momentous.


When I say the existential core of God is not about the incidental things, but the matter rests with the "material basis" of religion and what is "in the fabric of things" what is it that I am talking about? As with all I write, you don't inquire, or, you don't bring them up at all. Material? What cold I mean by this? In the fabric of things? And this injunction and its metaethical injunctions? Never a word.
And as usual, you present nothing, just vague references even though I already showed that there isn't anything ethical about existence in general. "material basis" of religion? another vague reference without actually saying anything. what is in the "fabric of things" well go ahead tell us what is in the fabric of things, make an actual argument already.
odysseus
Posts: 306
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:30 pm

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by odysseus »

Atla wrote
And as usual, you present nothing, just vague references even though I already showed that there isn't anything ethical about existence in general. "material basis" of religion? another vague reference without actually saying anything. what is in the "fabric of things" well go ahead tell us what is in the fabric of things, make an actual argument already.
Tell me about how you showed that there isn't anything ethical about existence. As to the vague references, it is a matter that considers what, in the thoughts about what is and is not the case regarding a sound accounting of what is real. The philosophical attempt to address this kind of thing faces problems in defining what constitutes a thing being what it is, that is, when we call an object a thing and arrive at the most general concept, Being, we are then faced with the question as to what this could be about when said. One wya to talk about what being IS, is to refer to it as the fabric of things, which is really just a metaphor for Being and its properties, Being, being the fabric, and properties being all that it is in the way we can discuss it. Is, e.g., a thought Real? Descartes famously stated it was, but was a different kind of real thing than objects were, the latter being defined as res extensa and the former res cogitans. By this account, being (existence, reality, in this here, it hardly matters) what is "in the fabric of things" has been given a new classificatory designation, inviting the question, what kind of Being is it?

This ontological distinction is met with a lot of trouble, but ethics is not allowed into the club of ontology. Those who think like this are called moral realists. They consider value and its worldly engagements ethics to be "in the fabric of things".

The question then is, what is there in a possible definition of the fabric of things that makes ethics real?

This is what is being presented to you as an interested interlocutor, interested in philosophy, that is (otherwise, why be in a philosophy club?).
Atla
Posts: 6675
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:27 am

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by Atla »

odysseus wrote: Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:35 pm
Atla wrote
And as usual, you present nothing, just vague references even though I already showed that there isn't anything ethical about existence in general. "material basis" of religion? another vague reference without actually saying anything. what is in the "fabric of things" well go ahead tell us what is in the fabric of things, make an actual argument already.
Tell me about how you showed that there isn't anything ethical about existence. As to the vague references, it is a matter that considers what, in the thoughts about what is and is not the case regarding a sound accounting of what is real. The philosophical attempt to address this kind of thing faces problems in defining what constitutes a thing being what it is, that is, when we call an object a thing and arrive at the most general concept, Being, we are then faced with the question as to what this could be about when said. One wya to talk about what being IS, is to refer to it as the fabric of things, which is really just a metaphor for Being and its properties, Being, being the fabric, and properties being all that it is in the way we can discuss it. Is, e.g., a thought Real? Descartes famously stated it was, but was a different kind of real thing than objects were, the latter being defined as res extensa and the former res cogitans. By this account, being (existence, reality, in this here, it hardly matters) what is "in the fabric of things" has been given a new classificatory designation, inviting the question, what kind of Being is it?

This ontological distinction is met with a lot of trouble, but ethics is not allowed into the club of ontology. Those who think like this are called moral realists. They consider value and its worldly engagements ethics to be "in the fabric of things".

The question then is, what is there in a possible definition of the fabric of things that makes ethics real?

This is what is being presented to you as an interested interlocutor, interested in philosophy, that is (otherwise, why be in a philosophy club?).
Ethics isn't a universal feature of the world (obviously), we covered that.

'Being in itself' is void of any nature, asking the question 'what is Being' makes no sense. Saying that 'Being is X' makes no sense. Philosophy has no such foundations deep down, this isn't a particularly deep insight, so I still don't know what you're trying to get at.

I don't see anything here, I don't recognize this as valid philosophy. It's just an illusion to be discarded, while trying to answer: 'why are we here'?

Also, I assume that people on philosophy forums understand that human consciousness is representational, we experience this representration directly, surely someone wouldn't mistake the fabric of human consciousness for the fabric of all Being.
odysseus
Posts: 306
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:30 pm

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by odysseus »

Atla wrote
Ethics isn't a universal feature of the world (obviously), we covered that.
Ethics isn't a universal feature of the world? Why, whatever are you talking about? Universal in the sense of apriority? Or in the sense that ethical issues are present in any and all cultures, in the same sense that, say, political unrest is universal?
'Being in itself' is void of any nature, asking the question 'what is Being' makes no sense. Saying that 'Being is X' makes no sense. Philosophy has no such foundations deep down, this isn't a particularly deep insight, so I still don't know what you're trying to get at.
You say this because you haven't read anything. What is Being? There is Being and Nothingness and Being and Time that leap to mind. Then there is the post Heideggarian postmodernism. To entertain such thinking, you at least have to understand that language, the instrumentality (also see Rorty, and behind Rorty there is Dewey, James, Peirce) of knowledge making is itself a thing of parts, and when you make a claim like "Being is void of any nature," you are first accountable in the structures of what it is to actually make a proposition. Note that when we say something "is" the case (the copulas 'is' has its infinitive form in 'to be' and what is at issue is being. The copula 'is' is the basic funtion of predication itself, as in "it is a snowy day"
I don't see anything here, I don't recognize this as valid philosophy. It's just an illusion to be discarded, while trying to answer: 'why are we here'?
This is because you haven't read anything. If you think something is an illusion, then explain yourself. All I see is complaint, no substance.
Also, I assume that people on philosophy forums understand that human consciousness is representational, we experience this representration directly, surely someone wouldn't mistake the fabric of human consciousness for the fabric of all Being.
Saying consciousness is representational is as easy as my paperboy saying E+MC2. Speak!!! Show thought, argument. People on philosophy forums?? What does this matter at all?
Atla
Posts: 6675
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:27 am

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by Atla »

odysseus wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 1:22 amEthics isn't a universal feature of the world? Why, whatever are you talking about? Universal in the sense of apriority? Or in the sense that ethical issues are present in any and all cultures, in the same sense that, say, political unrest is universal?
Neither apriority features of human minds, nor ethicality of human cultures are universal features of the world, what are you babbling about?
You say this because you haven't read anything. What is Being? There is Being and Nothingness and Being and Time that leap to mind. Then there is the post Heideggarian postmodernism. To entertain such thinking, you at least have to understand that language, the instrumentality (also see Rorty, and behind Rorty there is Dewey, James, Peirce) of knowledge making is itself a thing of parts, and when you make a claim like "Being is void of any nature," you are first accountable in the structures of what it is to actually make a proposition. Note that when we say something "is" the case (the copulas 'is' has its infinitive form in 'to be' and what is at issue is being. The copula 'is' is the basic funtion of predication itself, as in "it is a snowy day"
This is because you haven't read anything. If you think something is an illusion, then explain yourself. All I see is complaint, no substance.
No, I'm saying this because you are a fool who read Being and Time, but you lack the basic intellectual abilities to treat it in context.
Again you are conflating different people's psychological experience of Being, with the universal Being. Universal Being is void of any known nature. You are merely talking about individual psychology/philosophy. No one asked for that, you are not doing 'Philosophy' with capital P.
Why on Earth would I care how a whiny ass like Heidegger personally felt about Being, or how he necessarily had to form the question and the possible answer using his given cognitive functions. I have my own take on 'personal Being' but that's not the kind of personal something that others would be interested in, and it's largely irrelevant.
Saying consciousness is representational is as easy as my paperboy saying E+MC2. Speak!!! Show thought, argument. People on philosophy forums?? What does this matter at all?
If you don't even realize that human consciousness is representational (indirect realism) which is beyond debate in 2020, and you mistake the features of your own mind for the features of the world, then you really are just a sad fool stuck 200 years in the past. But this would actually explain your total confusion, you would be a weird kind of naive realist who is shocked to discover some representative features in the mind and misunderstand them. (and it doesn't matter how many nicks you use)

What a waste of time, he really turned out to have nothing at all. He didn't even make it to the starting line. Byez.

What's with all these people who think that understanding human cognition is the big goal, and not just a side-issue that's necessary to deal with.
odysseus
Posts: 306
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:30 pm

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by odysseus »

Atla wrote
Neither apriority features of human minds, nor ethicality of human cultures are universal features of the world, what are you babbling about?
Apriority refers to apodictic principles that are intuitively coersive. Take causality, or take logic: these do not allow for the possibility of refutation, and this makes them universal and necessary in the very strongest sense. We also speak more loosely when we say, "racial discrimination is universal in racially heterogeneous societies." Here, such pronouncements are merely contingently true, not apriori. You see this? When it comes to ethics, the matter of apriority has a special application, for a statement that is ethical in nature is so because it deals in concrete value, that is, the miseries and the joys of our existence. Read John Dewey's Experience and Nature and his Art As Experience to get a good account of how this dimension of our affairs is ubiquitous: there is no experience without value in the concrete, for in everything we do and think there is caring (of course, Heidegger steps forward), interest, desire, need (incidently, this is one thing that sets existentialists/phenomenologists apart from analytic philosophy, this latter being solely devoted puzzling out the sense of concepts) It is here, in this caring-about-the-misery/well being-of-others that ethics has its foundation, and this puts the matter squarely in the hands of this concrete value-in-the-world: It is there, not in the language we use to contrive rationalizations about things, but "given," uninvented, uninvited (read Kierkegaard's Repetition for a wonderful presentation of this), just there, and we are thrown into this and an infant child is thrown into birth. Quite literally, actually.

Ethics is certainly about the way culture produces its own novel regard for a society's thoughts, feelings, principles. These are infamously variegated. But an examination of the basis of an ethical problem shows that it bears analysis: There is, for example, the rule in one society that says when a person grows to a certain age, s/he should leave willingly so as not to be a burden. Such a thing has existed. Then there are others who think caring for the elderly a privilege. One can conclude from this that ethics is "relative". But then, what is it about ethics that is really relative?

It is not the inherent concrete value features. What does this mean? The rule in a society that says old people should go off and die has to do with ideas passed through generations, contrived, institutionalized and thoughtlessly assimilated by all. This is how we become, to use Heidegger's term, human dasein: a body of language habits that is essentially caring and pragmatic which we "become" in living a life. These institutions are what entangle us in ethical dilemmas. But the foundation of this, the ouch's and yum's of the world remain what they are, untouched. The old man wandering off into the forest has his starvation and its ugliness in no way mitigated by the fact that he feels he is doing the right thing. He may find comfort in the knowledge that he is not a burden to his family, but this is yet another entanglement. Entanglements do effect changes in qualitative value experiences, but the "goodness" and "badness" here are not being measured according to society's rules. Here, it is the "metaethical" analysis of the "good". See John Mackie's ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong; see Wittgenstein Tractatus; see G E Moore's Principia Ethica. See many others.

So, regarding the moral realism, it is not about the relativity of societies' principles, but at the metaethical level of what "good" means when taken up in ethical issues. Here I direct you to the argument I made regardign the children being tortured adn the rest. Read that.
No, I'm saying this because you are a fool who read Being and Time, but you lack the basic intellectual abilities to treat it in context.
Again you are conflating different people's psychological experience of Being, with the universal Being. Universal Being is void of any known nature. You are merely talking about individual psychology/philosophy. No one asked for that, you are not doing 'Philosophy' with capital P.
Why on Earth would I care how a whiny ass like Heidegger personally felt about Being, or how he necessarily had to form the question and the possible answer using his given cognitive functions. I have my own take on 'personal Being' but that's not the kind of personal something that others would be interested in, and it's largely irrelevant.
When you actually consider this in the privacy of your own thoughts and not struggling to insult, remember that it is you who hasn't read this. I've read across the aisle, analytic as well as Continental. Time to grow up, and you do this by reading extensively. Take leave of these mindless postings and deploy your sitting powers. Foucault could sit for ten hours straight and read. That is how you get good.
If you don't even realize that human consciousness is representational (indirect realism) which is beyond debate in 2020, and you mistake the features of your own mind for the features of the world, then you really are just a sad fool stuck 200 years in the past. But this would actually explain your total confusion, you would be a weird kind of naive realist who is shocked to discover some representative features in the mind and misunderstand them. (and it doesn't matter how many nicks you use)

What a waste of time, he really turned out to have nothing at all. He didn't even make it to the starting line. Byez.

What's with all these people who think that understanding human cognition is the big goal, and not just a side-issue that's necessary to deal with.
The idea of representation in philosophy really brings in Kant. He didn't invent it, but he certainly did make it the center piece of philosophy for more than a hundred years and his idealism was really (read Robert Hanna's Foundations of Analytic Philosophy and his Fate of Analytic philosophy) never was refuted, only ignored. Philosophers got tired of trying to refute what was not refutable, so you have Russell, and Moore, and the positivists, and on and on to the dreary condition of analytic philosophy today.

So, to say you are an "indirect realist" is in itself seriously ambiguous, for it is simply filled with more questions about epistemology and ontology. It is vague beyond being useful. do you lean toward Kant? Do you think our ideas are really "about" what is exterior to intuitive space and time? What is real, then? How do we approach this matter of sorting our what we think and what we see and hear and the rest? Do you think there is any merit to the traditional analysis of primary and secondary qualities? How can idea of what is real take themselves beyond what idea can conceive?

And so on.
Atla
Posts: 6675
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:27 am

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by Atla »

odysseus wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 4:17 pm
Atla wrote
Neither apriority features of human minds, nor ethicality of human cultures are universal features of the world, what are you babbling about?
Apriority refers to apodictic principles that are intuitively coersive. Take causality, or take logic: these do not allow for the possibility of refutation, and this makes them universal and necessary in the very strongest sense. We also speak more loosely when we say, "racial discrimination is universal in racially heterogeneous societies." Here, such pronouncements are merely contingently true, not apriori. You see this? When it comes to ethics, the matter of apriority has a special application, for a statement that is ethical in nature is so because it deals in concrete value, that is, the miseries and the joys of our existence. Read John Dewey's Experience and Nature and his Art As Experience to get a good account of how this dimension of our affairs is ubiquitous: there is no experience without value in the concrete, for in everything we do and think there is caring (of course, Heidegger steps forward), interest, desire, need (incidently, this is one thing that sets existentialists/phenomenologists apart from analytic philosophy, this latter being solely devoted puzzling out the sense of concepts) It is here, in this caring-about-the-misery/well being-of-others that ethics has its foundation, and this puts the matter squarely in the hands of this concrete value-in-the-world: It is there, not in the language we use to contrive rationalizations about things, but "given," uninvented, uninvited (read Kierkegaard's Repetition for a wonderful presentation of this), just there, and we are thrown into this and an infant child is thrown into birth. Quite literally, actually.

Ethics is certainly about the way culture produces its own novel regard for a society's thoughts, feelings, principles. These are infamously variegated. But an examination of the basis of an ethical problem shows that it bears analysis: There is, for example, the rule in one society that says when a person grows to a certain age, s/he should leave willingly so as not to be a burden. Such a thing has existed. Then there are others who think caring for the elderly a privilege. One can conclude from this that ethics is "relative". But then, what is it about ethics that is really relative?

It is not the inherent concrete value features. What does this mean? The rule in a society that says old people should go off and die has to do with ideas passed through generations, contrived, institutionalized and thoughtlessly assimilated by all. This is how we become, to use Heidegger's term, human dasein: a body of language habits that is essentially caring and pragmatic which we "become" in living a life. These institutions are what entangle us in ethical dilemmas. But the foundation of this, the ouch's and yum's of the world remain what they are, untouched. The old man wandering off into the forest has his starvation and its ugliness in no way mitigated by the fact that he feels he is doing the right thing. He may find comfort in the knowledge that he is not a burden to his family, but this is yet another entanglement. Entanglements do effect changes in qualitative value experiences, but the "goodness" and "badness" here are not being measured according to society's rules. Here, it is the "metaethical" analysis of the "good". See John Mackie's ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong; see Wittgenstein Tractatus; see G E Moore's Principia Ethica. See many others.

So, regarding the moral realism, it is not about the relativity of societies' principles, but at the metaethical level of what "good" means when taken up in ethical issues. Here I direct you to the argument I made regardign the children being tortured adn the rest. Read that.
No, I'm saying this because you are a fool who read Being and Time, but you lack the basic intellectual abilities to treat it in context.
Again you are conflating different people's psychological experience of Being, with the universal Being. Universal Being is void of any known nature. You are merely talking about individual psychology/philosophy. No one asked for that, you are not doing 'Philosophy' with capital P.
Why on Earth would I care how a whiny ass like Heidegger personally felt about Being, or how he necessarily had to form the question and the possible answer using his given cognitive functions. I have my own take on 'personal Being' but that's not the kind of personal something that others would be interested in, and it's largely irrelevant.
When you actually consider this in the privacy of your own thoughts and not struggling to insult, remember that it is you who hasn't read this. I've read across the aisle, analytic as well as Continental. Time to grow up, and you do this by reading extensively. Take leave of these mindless postings and deploy your sitting powers. Foucault could sit for ten hours straight and read. That is how you get good.
If you don't even realize that human consciousness is representational (indirect realism) which is beyond debate in 2020, and you mistake the features of your own mind for the features of the world, then you really are just a sad fool stuck 200 years in the past. But this would actually explain your total confusion, you would be a weird kind of naive realist who is shocked to discover some representative features in the mind and misunderstand them. (and it doesn't matter how many nicks you use)

What a waste of time, he really turned out to have nothing at all. He didn't even make it to the starting line. Byez.

What's with all these people who think that understanding human cognition is the big goal, and not just a side-issue that's necessary to deal with.
The idea of representation in philosophy really brings in Kant. He didn't invent it, but he certainly did make it the center piece of philosophy for more than a hundred years and his idealism was really (read Robert Hanna's Foundations of Analytic Philosophy and his Fate of Analytic philosophy) never was refuted, only ignored. Philosophers got tired of trying to refute what was not refutable, so you have Russell, and Moore, and the positivists, and on and on to the dreary condition of analytic philosophy today.

So, to say you are an "indirect realist" is in itself seriously ambiguous, for it is simply filled with more questions about epistemology and ontology. It is vague beyond being useful. do you lean toward Kant? Do you think our ideas are really "about" what is exterior to intuitive space and time? What is real, then? How do we approach this matter of sorting our what we think and what we see and hear and the rest? Do you think there is any merit to the traditional analysis of primary and secondary qualities? How can idea of what is real take themselves beyond what idea can conceive?

And so on.
Yeah you couldn't handle my philosophical objections, not that you ever had a chance as someone who read a lot of Western philosophy and got lost in the endless nonsense, instead of learning and unifying all the relevant scientific knowledge, and then working out philosophy from there. You'll never become a good thinker if you don't want to put in the right effort.
odysseus
Posts: 306
Joined: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:30 pm

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by odysseus »

Atla wrote
Yeah you couldn't handle my philosophical objections, not that you ever had a chance as someone who read a lot of Western philosophy and got lost in the endless nonsense, instead of learning and unifying all the relevant scientific knowledge, and then working out philosophy from there. You'll never become a good thinker if you don't want to put in the right effort.
But why be in a philosophy club if you don't like philosophy?
Atla
Posts: 6675
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:27 am

Re: What does it feel like to be Enlightened?

Post by Atla »

odysseus wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Atla wrote
Yeah you couldn't handle my philosophical objections, not that you ever had a chance as someone who read a lot of Western philosophy and got lost in the endless nonsense, instead of learning and unifying all the relevant scientific knowledge, and then working out philosophy from there. You'll never become a good thinker if you don't want to put in the right effort.
But why be in a philosophy club if you don't like philosophy?
What philosophy club? This forum is a cesspool of insanity. I like some philosophy and dislike most, I just comment on forums for fun. I haven't met anyone in at least a decade who could actually challenge me in existential philosophy (in general, not existentialism), as far as I know I've already covered and unified all relevant knowledge and insights form science, Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy (skipped the nonsense which is like 90%), and then went way beyond them into shaky territory. I still haven't solved the main philosophical question though, I only have conjectures. Maybe some people have some relevant insights I missed, who knows. I've been messing around on philosophy forums for 2-3 years but no one gave me a new insight yet.
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