A Chilling Example of Modern Philoshpical Totalitarianism

A Chilling Example of Modern Philoshpical Totalitarianism

A dialogue I once had on a message board when an atheist assaulted me with a little essay on philosophy that I find most depressing. It's depressing because it basically confirms all the most alarming and anti-human aspects of modern thought I have accused the New atheists of harboring, it affirms in an unabashed, proud and defiant manner as though they are so obvious that to state them is prove them. Yet what's being is proving is basically that none of us have the right to think apart form affirming the ideology handed down form the atheist hierarchy. This "atheist hierarchy" is basically scinece. Not that I think science is an atheist hierarchy, I think that's what the new atheist think it is. I am leaving the interlocutor's name out, because I don't him to feel put on the spot. I'll just call him:

SG

Existentialism is an unfortunate example of how philosophy gets side tracked by bad ideas. Existentialism essentially destroys any meaningful conception of knowledge and resorts to subjectivism to explain the human experience. It's not any better than the Idealism it wished to criticize, simply because it just offers the other extreme as a solution.

Meta: Right away we have what I consider to be pure evil. The vilification of existentialism, if it is not centered around the pretentious nature of his French exemplars, will probably be base upon the desire to control the thinking of others. Existentialism rebelled against imposed structures that filter our understanding of world for us and force us to think in prescribed ways. The criticism made here asserts that to undersatnd reality by understanding our own perceptions of it is a mistake can only mean that the author feels that the prescribed and contorted version of reality is the only one that counts as knowledge. In other words, he wants someone to do his thinking for him. He continues with several several misconceptions about Kierkegaard:

SG

Kierkegaard describes religion as a matter of individual subjective passion, unmediated by others. The reason he favored Christianity was because he lived in a Christian culture. His argument for faith is, even by his own admission, absurd. He denies all reason in it and treats it as something that can never be understood, through experience, by others, which more or less means that the study of human psychology is completely fruitless. He just says faith is a miracle, so there. That's not philosophy, it's art at its best and lazy thinking at its worst. He was a product of his time, and utilizes the same inaccurate theory of mind that rational idealists and empiricists of the time had to rely upon, which explains why all three philosophies are incredibly problematic.

Meta: First of all, as always pointing out that "he's a Christian because he lives in a Christian culture" is just not meaningful to someone who thinks God is working in all cultures. It's no different than saying "he's only a Christian because that's the tradition that speaks to him." You see the contradiction in his thinking here. He says the kind of thinking that recognizes the power of the individual to perceive reality and not be forced a prescribed way of thinking is invalid when it challenges the atheist fortress of facts, that's scinece and science is the only form of knowledge, because it backs atheism (supposedly) but religious belief is based upon a prescribed set of premises then that's proof that it's not true. Yet by his way of thinking the cultural norm should be seen as truth a priori, the individual's understanding of what's true should be shunned a violation of the relationship between perceptions and knowledge (as he talks about above). Wait, the difference is with religion it's not coming through his prescribed form of knowledge (science) so it must be wrong either way. Very convoluted way of thinking.

Moreover, his understanding of SK is sophomoric. SK did not mean that faith is irrational in the sense of being stupid and unjustified. That's a standard misconception. He's just saying that logic is hypothetical and unless faith is experienced, the presence of God first hand, it's not real. He disparaged Cartesian coordinates on the basis that unless doubt is real then faith is not real (by this I mean his philosophical coordinates). Doubt is not real when it's a philosophical exercise and one doesn't really doubt. Therefore, it is not establishing faith to overcome phony doubt with hypothetical. New atheist dread the subjective. They are scared to death by experience. My guess is they are aware of the power of religious experience to convict and turn people to God. The first thing they have to crush is the validity of experiencing God.

He goes on to give a lot phony talk about the history of philosophy which I don't he understands:

SG:

This theory of mind I'm talking about is the nineteenth century paradigm that sees the mind relating to the environment through sensory perception, so experience is seen as passive and observational. Experience can only be described as participatory action with one's environment, which is something that the rational idealists, empiricists, and existentialists failed to recognize. Empiricism grasped the spirit of the modern age, but it lacked the teeth to actualize it. Rational idealists like Kant and existentialists like Kierkegaard understood empiricism to be destructive to knowledge and went in separate directions, the former relying on a transcendental realm of Being that is responsible for absolute truth to restore knowledge and the latter retreating into subjectivism in the personal sphere.

Meta:"Experience can only be described as participatory action with one's environment," I think if I put my mind to it I could describe experience in other ways. What he's really doing there is setting up a the need to actively control things as the basis for knowledge. Anything that doesn't imposes an ideology of atheism is not knowledge. The only proper knowledge is the imposition of control. Defining experimentally based philosophy as a passive reception of sense data is a mistake in understanding the nature of experience. That does not mean, however, the only alternative is the impossition of a pre coincided view.Now to undersand his comments fairly we should probaly think of what he is saying as an active hands-on search for what's out there rather than the imposition of control. Yet what he's prescribing is control because it assumes a set of percipience steps that the only valid steps and screening out of all else that is not part of ht steps (hence the dread of subjective experience). I can relate the notion of knowledge as an active search but why must it be limited to his active search and other those of others? Why just scinece and not all forms of knowledge? Why must it always be active search why can't it be a dialectics where passive gathering of sense data and informed watchful reception is combined with active searching in a global way rather than a prescribed way?

SG:

All of these notions, by today's standards, ought to be considered silly.

Meta:In other words, "all of these notions" existentialism, Phenomenology, experience, individuals thinking for themselves perhaps? Very silly.

SG:

All deny, implicitly, the role of intelligent practice in acquiring knowledge. Sensory perception is merely a stimulus to action, it is not knowledge. Knowledge results from the intelligent modification of habits in relation to environmental stimuli. Knowing is not a matter of passively observing reality, it is a manner of interacting with it... probing it, controlling it, etc.

Meta:Probing it hu? Seriously, this statement confirms all my worst fears. It's a frank admission that it's talking about control. The future belongs to us! How about this definition, knowledge results form "intelligent modification of habits in relation to stimuli " In ohter words knowledge is not about knowing things Perish the thoguht, who would ever think that? Knowledge is about knowing what i want you to know. It's about being trained to look at the world the way we want you to see it. But of course we should just accept that it's all meant for he best, those wonderful science wouldn't do anything wrong would they? They weren't any scientists developing racial scinece for Hitler were there? It's ok to erase the ability of the individual to think for himself, and to decliar everything opposed to out ideology as "non-knowledge." That's just that philosophy stuff that can't get us in any trouble.


SG

This understanding of mind, which is scientifically current, offers a solution to the major criticism of empiricism. The need for transcendental realm of Being in order to have knowledge of the world is gone, which was only needed when the thought was that experience was atomized instead of unified through the very necessities of life.

Meta:What did he just say now? He said the current understanding of mind, which what? According to most new atheist the current understanding of min is that there is none. That mind is just an illusion or a side effect (if it's anything at all) brought on by brain chemistry and it means nothing. So in other words the idea we can erase the mind and thinking of ourselves as deterministic robots is solution to the problem of knowledge. Of cousre it is. There's no problem of knowledge if you dont' seek to know anything. After all his definition of knowledge leaves out the idea that knowledge is about knowing things. Of course he asserts hat transcendental stuff is just an old fashioned for things we don't have any more because scinece has replaced the need. That need was born of pretending that truth is somewhere out there and we have to seek it in ways that are not prescribed by the ideology. So course we course we don't need that now because we have the ideology. Because the ideology frees us form needing it the potential reality of it just goes away. There is no reality in transcendent realm because we we don't need it with the ideology telling us what to think. Yet the worse is still to come:

SG

The absolute subjectivity of human experience disappears because knowledge exists as real interactions... one can judge whether their actions are ones informed by knowledge or not.

Meta:

Subjectivity disappeared? Our qualia and sense data are no longer subjective? We cut that off an let it go away. It's not there we don't have to think about it. I can see how we can ignore the subjective and pretend that all becomes objective. Yet how do we get your experience of it into my head? you can dictate that I must think as you do but you cannot dictate that I experience what you expedience. my experience is still mind. I still perceive the world though my own perceptions and not yours. Now matter how ardently you seek to pretend that all now share the same perceptions we do not. Subjectivity can't ever go away. That's just the epistemological fallacy. you can't get outside your own perceptions to check them and you can't make them become those of others just by trying to impose the same ideas upon the thinking of others. The subjectivity of human experience disappears. What extreme arrogance and nonsense. We don't all start having the same experiences just becuase one imposes a party line.

SG:

While there is still room for authenticity in this view, the notion of it in the existentialist view is overblown.

Meta: Room for authenticity where? Where can there be authenticity when subjectivity is gone? There can only be authenticity if we accept that we have different view points and different sets of perceptions. But we he just said subjectivity is gone. After all, like the transcendent, if we don't need it anymore it must go away.

SG:

Much of what existentialists refer to as "authentic" is merely a product of culture as opposed to something really authentic to that particular individual. It is true that each individual has his own unique impulses, but how he acts on them is largely a product of the given social environment. Kierkegaard, for instance, decided that Christianity was authentic to him, when in reality it was a product of the habits and customs of his culture.

Meta: So in other words there's still some authenticity but only the bit that agrees with the party line. The bit that doesn't is "merely product of culture." There's that contradiction again. He's supposed to think that knowledge is imposing an active view point where everyone has these objective facts that makes them right and they don't need to wonder about things, anything we have to wonder about is not worth keeping around. We reduce knowledge to just the answers that result from the question we can answer our way. There's some authenticity around but not the kind that disagrees with the party line?

web definition of existentialism:

ex·is·ten·tial·ism/ˌegziˈstenCHəˌlizəm/

Noun:

A philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining...

isn't that what's being replaced, the silly idea we don't need anymore? So where's this authenticity going to come from?
part 2 on friday.

Atheist's misconceptions about Metaphysics

Atheists have many misconceptions about the term. Most of the time they seem to think it means some special way or argument for God, or that's synonymous with their screwed up understanding of "supernatural" (which is not the right definition of that term either but that's another story).

standard misconception that Metaphysics is about "things beyond the physical" that's not true. AT least not necessarily. For exampel the question of free will is a metaphysical question and the will is a real thing it's not a concrete thing in the physical. The question about mental vs physical is a metaphysical question.

Stanford encyclopedia.
"Metaphysics"

It is not easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject matter: metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change.” It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, and for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging things—would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Secondly, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things; the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.

Conversely the idea that metaphysics is just making things up is also obviously false since the will and the mental and the physical are not made up.

Misconceptions:

I. Metaphysics is about magic, supernatural or made up stuff

That's was disproved in the things said above. In Heidegger's version of metaphysics scinece is a form of metaphysics.

II. we can't test or verify anything about metaphysics

Modal logic is a limit on any metaphysical construct. Other kinds of logic as well, also assist. We don't need to empirical investigation to know that there are no square circles. We can rule them out with logic. so logic can tell us things. Obviously we are not going to build a rock with just logic. We can use logic to screen metaphysical ideas.

III. That metaphysics is about magic and psychic powers.

Nope it's not, not at all. As I said in Heidegger's view science is metaphysics.


IV. That Christians have to support metaphysical thinking.

false. Especially if one is a Heideggerian Christian because in Heidegger's terms metaphysics is a bad thing. For Heidegger metaphysics is herding or grouping sense data into pre conceived categories. That's actually what reductionism is doing. Reductionism and naturalism are both metaphysics.

There are two major thinker's whose views of metaphysics I go by. One is Heidegger the other is Bruce Wiltshire.He is a professes emeritus at Ruttger's University.



He wrote a book called Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosphy

He defines metaphysics as talk about talk about the world. That's tricky because you might think it's just "talk about the world." It's not talking about the world, it's talking about how to talk about the world. so metaphysics for him is a methodological procedure.

I think what both of these views have in common is that they are about how to organize knowledge about the world. For me that's my idea of metaphysics how to organize knowledge, organizing it in a way that it's all put into preconceived categories.

So the same reasons that make me dislike reductionism also make me dislike metaphysics.
For me as with Heidegger the alternative is phenomenology, which means allowing the sense data to suggest their own categories.When one says "Metaphysics is no good it's just making things up," Or "there's no God" or "scinece is the only form of knowledge" one is doing metaphysics. You guys don't even know it but most of you are doing metaphysics all the time.

An example of metaphysics would be Tillich's ideas about the depth of being. Tillich's theological method, is a good example of metaphysical work that's almost scientific and offers more than just speculation. Depth of being is an example of metaphysics.

Tillich equates knowing that being has depth with knowing that God is real. This will be the basis of the “realization” that is the end goal and object of my work in this regard. The development of an alternative to endless arguments that must be taken on faith before they prove anything is moving toward an understanding of realization as the alternative to argument. We have seen this quotation before but I will use it here again:

"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."[i]

This is not a literal one-to-one correspondence. When one concludes that being has depth one has not proved the existence of God in the sense that the ontological argument is supposed to do. This is not a priori truth. It is more than just a “rhetorical” statement. The statement is hermeneutical and ontological although not literal. The quotation itself tells us why he says that if we know being has depth we can’t be atheists. He equates depth of being with the source of being, the source of life, and he tells us that the term “God” means depth. Literally the word “God” does not mean “depth.” He’s saying that the concept of God in modern theology and in the Christian tradition has always been that God transcends the level of mere things in creation. Depth of being means that being is not just the fact of things existing, nor is it only a surface understanding of the causes of things around us. The depth of being is the big picture, the idea that being is more than what we observe empirically, it is the spiritual sense, depth in in profundity. He actually uses the term “depth” in more than one sense; suffering as in depth of despair, profundity, as in “deep meaning,” and transcendence, beyond the surface level. All of these uses are embodied in his essay.[ii] According to this statement, when we come to realize that there’s a lot more to being than just surface fact of existence, then we understand that God is real. Thus God and the depth of being are equated. This is because God is not a big man in the sky, but rather, God is the power of being, that to say the ground upon which all is has come to be and in which it coheres and continues. In the last chapter I discussed the possibility that this is the power of mind to perceive or to think the universe. The connection between the possibilities of consciousness as the basis of reality and the philosophical questions raised by this notion, as well as others related to it, form the basis of a good place to start exploring the depth of being.

In the previous chapter I discussed the hard problem of human consciousness. In the opening chapter I discussed philosophical questions at the epistemic level that science cannot answer. The fact that these questions cannot be answered by empirical research or observation is a good indication that there is a depth being beyond the surface of things existing. This in and of itself proves that being has depth. The fact that we have these questions to ask, they mean something to most people, and we can answer them through science, which is to say, through empirical observation of the surface of fact of existence or thing-hood, indicates that there is a depth there that be probed through reason. The hard problem of consciousness is one of those issues. There are many focal points that highlight these kinds of questions and demonstrate the depth of being. Many of these can be used as God arguments, and the traditional God arguments can be used as focal points for reflection upon the depth of being. In the subsequent chapter I will deal with God arguments. For now I want to focus upon the major issues of the depth of being. The point is that in understanding the depth of being one is forced to confront the realization of the reality of God. Since my overall point is to produce a theology of the realization toward a new apologetic, these “focal points,” are like stepping stones that lead us down the path to realization.

In his essay The Shaking of the foundations,[iii] Tillich discusses depth of benig and some things have been said about that already (chapter 3). At this point, however, I will depart from Tillich’s organizational scheme but not from is basic thought and intent. There are what I like to call “deep structures” in reality that can be observed, or teased out. These deep structures can be organized into ideas that might serve to illustrate the point of depth of being, or might ever serve the function of arguments either for the reality of God or for the rational nature of belief. This is what I call the “focal points,” or a term of my invention I also like, “signifiers of depth.” The signifiers of depth highlight the deep structures. These consist of Tillich’s ontological categories. These categories are empirically derived forms of speaking. Because they are ontological, considered with the nature of being, they are in everything, not limited to religion. We make our world out of the categories, which determines the content. When I say “our world” I mean the world of our constructs, the world in our minds that consists of what we understand and how we understand it. The cause of the big bang is not part of this world because we don’t understand it or observe it. The attitudes we perceive in others may be mysterious or they may be understood wrongly or rightly but what we perceive about them is part of the world of our constructs because we perceive and it registers upon our understanding in some way. It is out of this amalgam of understood constructs that the categories are forged. This is all empirically deduced by Tillich.[iv] The categories do not include the unconditioned (God) because it transcends our understanding. But we have ideas about God that are derived from experiences and teachings and these are part of the categories, but they are not the uncontained, they are not the reality of God they are perception of God.

The categories are:

Being and non being, and the forms finitude.[v]

The forms of finitude:

*time: central to finitude because it limits being

*space: to be special is to be limited by the possibility of non being

*causality: determinate of being enables symbol and logical interpretation

*substance: the nature or mode of being

When Tillich gets even more specific forms of finitude include at some point self and the world. Much was said about self and the world in chapter 3. Tillich teases out problems of insecurity relating to each category:

*temporal (finitude) = we die.

*spatial = limitation of space (another form of finitude) remind us that we are limited in duration and in reach.

*causality = remind us of being and non being

*substance = we limited to accidents of being;

All of these produce anxiety at the prospect of non being (death). This is where Tillich plugs in the object of ultimate concern. The fact that we have an ultimate concern and that we can be bothered by the prospect of our finitude and cessation of being points to the deep structures of reality; it shows us that there’s more there than just the fact of existence, there’s the fact of cessation of existence and that it bothers us. Sometimes atheists try to deny that they have an ultimate concern or that they care about death. Even if one doesn’t feel the ultimate concern it’s logically there, and all one need do is to read the literature of the world to know that for most of humanity death is the ultimate concern.

Some atheists or skeptics might be inclined to say this is all just speculation and can’t be proved. Actually there is no reason to doubt any of this so far. We can deduce all of this; Tillich says it’s empirical, from the universally expressed observations and aspirations of humanity. These ideas, there is time, there is space, there is ultimate concern, time and space are forms of finitude and they remind us we are going to die, this is hardly arcane metaphysics or the ravings of a mad man. These are things most great writers throughout human history have said in one way or anther. The relationship of duration to finitude is deductive and hardly brain surgery. From these categories, that are more or less universally understood, we derive equally basic epistemological questions. These basic epistemological questions are indicative of the meaning and nature of being; they are born out of the way our insecurities about our own being strike us. We caused to reflect upon what we know and how we know it. The fact that we are caused to reflect upon such basic aspects is indicative of deep structures in being; since being is more than just a surface inventory of things that exist, but must be understood in relation to how we know what we know, there is reason enough to consider that being has depth. These questions may sound silly to the uninitiated in philosophy, but they have a serious purpose in being asked. This has already been presented in chapter 1. Questions such as “why is there something rather than nothing?” “Why am I here?” “What is life about?” The very fact of these questions, and that they are asked seriously and at times with great longing indicates to us the depth of being.

Deep s

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[i] Tillich, Shaking of the foundations 0p cit, (see chapter three) 52.

[ii] Ibid, 52-53

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Tillich, Systematic I. 197

[v] Tillich, Shaking… op cit 197=200

Atheists Have Problems With God Beyond Our Understanding

Poster on CARM Mary Jane argues that the mystical tradition and it's claim that God is beyond our understanding is contradictory. I said something about her assumptions...

CARM Ath/agnostic board
no.9 ...4/28/11

Originally Posted by MaryJane

What meaning did I give it? What did I assume? I said it seemed contradictory to me.

Meta
saying that God is beyond our understanding has a long hsitory going back to the roots of the Bible. It indulges all the major mystics and philosophers. Instead of reaching about that you just assume it means total absolutely any single thing. we cant' one single thing about God in any way.

then you assert If you claim to know anything at all then you are contradicting yourself. But no,it's not a contradiction it's just part of the tradition.

MJ

And then I asked questions. Feel free to answer them. Explain to me what the non-literal understanding is. Explain how 'God is beyond our understading' can be understood in any other way than it was presented.

Meta
Understanding doesn't mean to have a reasonable hypothesis it means to control, to know completely and exhaustively. So to say "God is beyond our understanding" means we can't deconstruct God, we can't reduce the concept of God to something else, we can't explain the physics of God, we can't know what he's made of or if he snores, but most of all it means we can't know his reasons for what he does.

It means we can't control God, we can't know him the way we seek to know physics and nature.

it does NOT mean we can't know anything about god and doesn't mean we can't formulate reasonable ideas about God.

of you are also ignoring the whole of point of the tradition, which is that we cant' understanding anything about God exhaustively, but also we can't know it in a rational or discursive way--in words. It DOES NOT MEAN that we can't know God through experience.

The whole idea is to have experiential knowledge of God. We can't pass that kind of knowledge on in words to others without giving them the experience. So we speak in metaphors and try to draw people into seeking the expediences themselves.


Mary Jane

I'll adjust it to your interpretation: How can you say God is beyond our understanding and then claim to know that he is 'ground of being'? How can you possibly know this if he's beyond your understanding?

Meta

Again, if you are taking the phrase in a litterateur fashion, you can make a metaphorical connection based upon correlations because experience and theory. In this case I'm including doctrine as "theory."

We know about the ground of being through logic and through our own participation in being. The link from Ground to God is through our experience of the ground of being in relation to the divine.

That's what the argument I had up there was about.