Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[GaryLouisSmith]

You could simply have said that when you have a headache you need the filter of aspirin or when kids in the next room are making too much noise or the neighbors are playing their music too loud then you need ear plug filters. Or when you have money worries you need a fairy godmother. None of that is what I am talking about. I was answering a philosophical question, not the psychology of everyday life. In particular I was arguing against Kant.

If you are using those examples, you are not understanding my point. Our mental filters make life possible.

I guess I am not understanding your point, unless you are a Kantian.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: Nonetheless, that individuation is different from a particular individual exemplifying that abstract form. I am acquainted with Sleep and Tree apart from individual instances of each.

Transpersonal psychology supports this view, e.g., Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but of course it is contrary to the theory of evolution. I suppose Plato would have said this is to be expected because the materialist can only see the play of phenomenal shadows projected on the wall of the Cave.

I am no fan of the theory of evolution as it is usually described today. It is basically Hegelianism. I do, however, love the book Origin of the Species by Darwin. I know nothing about transpersonal psychology. It sounds horrid. And I only vaguely know Jung. I am not writing about psychology, only ontology.

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith: I am not writing about psychology, only ontology.

Psychology is part and parcel of ontology, it is one of the mental filters to which Greta referred, a lens through which ontology is viewed. If a man is wearing bifocals, but refuses to believe he is, his denial will not prevent them from affecting his vision.

[Sculptor1]

GaryLouisSmith: Nonetheless, that individuation is different from a particular individual exemplifying that abstract form. I am acquainted with Sleep and Tree apart from individual instances of each.

Transpersonal psychology supports this view, e.g., Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but of course it is contrary to the theory of evolution.

Precisely how?

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: I am not writing about psychology, only ontology.

Psychology is part and parcel of ontology, it is one of the mental filters to which Greta referred, a lens through which ontology is viewed. If a man is wearing bifocals, but refuses to believe he is, his denial will not prevent them from affecting his vision.

This is a good example of what I am talking about and which I am arguing with. Consider the prepositions “through” and “at”. We can look through psychology or at psychology. I am looking at it, not through it. Is a psychological theory “in the mind” and we look at the world through it? Or is it a thing out in the world, one more piece of furniture in this grand living room we are seated in? An Idealist will say it is an ideal thing in the mind. A Realist will say it is a real thing out in the world.

[Felix]

Felix: Transpersonal psychology supports this view, e.g., Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but of course it is contrary to the theory of evolution.

Sculptor1: Precisely how?

In the discipline of transpersonal psychology, the same motifs and themes are seen repeatedly throughout various cultures, their psychological meaning seems to be nearly universal.

GaryLouisSmith: Is a psychological theory “in the mind” and we look at the world through it? Or is it a thing out in the world, one more piece of furniture in this grand living room we are seated in? An Idealist will say it is an ideal thing in the mind. A Realist will say it is a real thing out in the world.

Those same questions could be asked about ontological theories. But to categorize human psychology as either idealist or realist makes no sense, it is both.

[Consul]

I am no fan of the theory of evolution as it is usually described today. It is basically Hegelianism.

???

I know nothing about transpersonal psychology. It sounds horrid.

"Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person in intimate relationship with an interconnected and evolving world; it pays special attention to self-expansive states as well as to spiritual, mystical, and other exceptional human experiences that gain meaning in such a context."

(Hartelius, Glenn, Geffen Rothe, and Paul J. Roy. "A Brand from the Burning: Defining Transpersonal Psychology." In The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, edited by Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius, 3-22. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. p. 14)

"Altered, expanded and transpersonal consciousness. The counter-culture of the 1960s, with its interest in Eastern meditative traditions, New Age cosmology, and psychoactive drugs, displayed a 'romanticist' interest in bizarre extremes of conscious/unconscious altered states. The Journal of Altered States of Consciousness was launched in 1975, with a grand mix of '1960s' topics and neuroscience. The meditative tradition might be seen as an 'applied' component of modern consciousness science, in much the same way that surgery and counselling are applied components of their respective sciences. Benson has conducted electrophysiological studies of Tibetan meditators since the 1970s, and more recently Dunn and Lutz have used functional brain imaging to study subjects during various meditative states inolving 'focused attention', 'emptiness', and 'reflexive consciousness'.

Deriving from Brentano's act psychology, humanistic psychology emerged in the 1950s as a 'third way' reaction against deterministic psychoanalysis and the 'rat psychology' of behaviourism. Transpersonal psychiatry derived from Jung, with his concepts of the collective consciousness, and was furthered by Maslow. These paradigms were highly attuned to the 1960s counter-culture, with awareness-training groups, Esalen Institute, and EST [Erhard Seminars Training]. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology made its debut in 1969, and the formation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology followed three years later. The Institute of Noetic Science (founded in 1973 and with its own journal) has been a co-sponsor of Tuscon conferences."

("Consciousness, Modern Scientific Study of." In The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, edited by Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, and Patrick Wilken. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 186)

[Consul]

The words "more real and less real" mean nothing to me. It seems to me that something is real or it isn't. Perhaps you mean more determinate or less indeterminate.

The thin concept of reality is synonymous with the concept of existence, and "I do not have the slightest idea what a difference in manner of existing is supposed to be." (Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. p. 2)

The thick concept of existence is synonymous with the concept of independent existence. Everything either exists or doesn't exist, but there can be different (nonbinary) degrees of independence of something from something else in some respect or other. So "x is more real than y" can be read as "x is more independent (from z) than y".

Realism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

[GaryLouisSmith]

I am no fan of the theory of evolution as it is usually described today. It is basically Hegelianism.

???

I know nothing about transpersonal psychology. It sounds horrid.

"Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person in intimate relationship with an interconnected and evolving world; it pays special attention to self-expansive states as well as to spiritual, mystical, and other exceptional human experiences that gain meaning in such a context."

(Hartelius, Glenn, Geffen Rothe, and Paul J. Roy. "A Brand from the Burning: Defining Transpersonal Psychology." In The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, edited by Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius, 3-22. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. p. 14)

"Altered, expanded and transpersonal consciousness. The counter-culture of the 1960s, with its interest in Eastern meditative traditions, New Age cosmology, and psychoactive drugs, displayed a 'romanticist' interest in bizarre extremes of conscious/unconscious altered states. The Journal of Altered States of Consciousness was launched in 1975, with a grand mix of '1960s' topics and neuroscience. The meditative tradition might be seen as an 'applied' component of modern consciousness science, in much the same way that surgery and counselling are applied components of their respective sciences. Benson has conducted electrophysiological studies of Tibetan meditators since the 1970s, and more recently Dunn and Lutz have used functional brain imaging to study subjects during various meditative states inolving 'focused attention', 'emptiness', and 'reflexive consciousness'.

Deriving from Brentano's act psychology, humanistic psychology emerged in the 1950s as a 'third way' reaction against deterministic psychoanalysis and the 'rat psychology' of behaviourism. Transpersonal psychiatry derived from Jung, with his concepts of the collective consciousness, and was furthered by Maslow. These paradigms were highly attuned to the 1960s counter-culture, with awareness-training groups, Esalen Institute, and EST [Erhard Seminars Training]. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology made its debut in 1969, and the formation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology followed three years later. The Institute of Noetic Science (founded in 1973 and with its own journal) has been a co-sponsor of Tuscon conferences."

("Consciousness, Modern Scientific Study of." In The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, edited by Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, and Patrick Wilken. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. p. 186)

These excerpts you gave are exactly the style of writing that I find so horrid. I read them and I feel numb. Complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity - it grows like a cancer. That too is Hegelianism. Organic and monstrous.

[Felix]

That's a real egghead description of transpersonal psychology. It's an extension of Jung's discoveries on the collective unconscious and mythological archetypes, and it deals with unconscious drives and feelings re: birth, death, sexuality and creativity.

[GaryLouisSmith]

That's a real egghead description of transpersonal psychology. It's an extension of Jung's discoveries on the collective unconscious and mythological archetypes, and it deals with unconscious drives and feelings re: birth, death, sexuality and creativity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0HqZ9Lkek8&t=1241s Today, just what those unconscious, mythological archetypes are is unimportant. What we are interested in now is a way of collating, editing, and archiving them. This is not the age of information, but of information processing. Information is dead - to paraphrase Nietzsche. Ways of handling information is now everything.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:



Thank you.

The problem with direct realism is knowing what is a "piece". As far as I can understand direct realism, the boundary between a "piece " and another "piece" is a subjective and arbitrary boundary.

True, a lover may make a poem to his mistress's eyebrow; and a pianist may play a definitive performance of the nocturne. Jesus may be the paradigm of the perfect man. That particular fox I saw hunting the chickens that night was uniquely the most perfect example of its species and I will never again feel what I felt when I saw it creeping beside the hen pen. All of these are subjective.

The anti-realists, those who say that universals don’t exist, assume that in the world of things outside the minds, all things are determinate. Universals are indeterminate, therefore they are not real, i.e. among the things outside the mind in the world.

To be determinate, means to be well-defined, all properties specified, all relations clearly seen, all boundaries exactly demarcated, no indecision. The only way to completely determine a thing is by having all of its relations to everything else, to the Whole, to the Gestalt present and accounted for. It is the Gestalt that determines what a thing is and therefore that it is.

Let me, as a philosophical realist, say that I agree that universals are indeterminate. In the case at hand, without considering the Whole it is rather vague just what a fox or jackal is, or a brood of chickens or the idea of threatening. Those things isolated from the Gestalt are as nothing.

Not exactly nothing. They are each something, but a vague something, indeterminate, unspecified, without particularity as this or that.

There are two paths we could take in considering this. One is to say that those vague universals are subjective and the other is to say they are objective. What would it mean to say they are objective or real outside the mind, as I have said? Consider a jackal. They figure prominently in Hindu mythology. A jackal spirit. Very vague indeed. And if real, certainly scary.

So here you are a farmer with chickens. The Jackal spirits are out and about. Which means that real, material jackals are threatening your chickens. You put up a fence, but you also utter mantras that will chase away the Jackal spirits. And for good measure you call in the higher gods to protect you. Of course the religious, spiritual part of that is all very vague. Your head swims in cosmic dust. You tremble. Uncertainty is everywhere. You hope, but you just don’t know for sure.

Universals as real things are troubling. If you could just shove them all into the subjective consciousness and be rid of them, it would be a blessing. But can you? I don’t think so. They will just rumble around in there and you will go mad.

It's true that hopes, fears, and also a unique hope. and a unique fear of a pack of jackals are all real. They are all within natural causality and therefore necessarily exist. It's also true that the farmer's reification of this or all packs of marauding jackals is real. Reification constantly occurs in religions and obviously has personal and social functions " Universals as real things are troubling. If you could just shove them all into the subjective consciousness and be rid of them, it would be a blessing. But can you? I don’t think so. They will just rumble around in there and you will go mad." Is your more expressive and interesting .

[Belindi]

Psychology is part and parcel of ontology, it is one of the mental filters to which Greta referred, a lens through which ontology is viewed. If a man is wearing bifocals, but refuses to believe he is, his denial will not prevent them from affecting his vision.

This is a good example of what I am talking about and which I am arguing with. Consider the prepositions “through” and “at”. We can look through psychology or at psychology. I am looking at it, not through it. Is a psychological theory “in the mind” and we look at the world through it? Or is it a thing out in the world, one more piece of furniture in this grand living room we are seated in? An Idealist will say it is an ideal thing in the mind. A Realist will say it is a real thing out in the world.

Psychology happens, therefore it's part of nature, therefore it is "a thing outside in the world".
We "look at the world through it" , therefore it's 'in the mind'.

It's both of those and they are not mutually exclusive.

[Belindi]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I am no fan of the theory of evolution as it is usually described today. It is basically Hegelianism.

I suppose you mean(if I may) it's basically;

Struggle for existence = thesis

Random mutations = antithesis

natural selection = synthesis.

Hegel may have indicated an end to the process (for all I remember) but natural selection is open, there is no end implied in the theory of evolution by natural selection.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I am no fan of the theory of evolution as it is usually described today. It is basically Hegelianism.

I suppose you mean(if I may) it's basically;

Struggle for existence = thesis

Random mutations = antithesis

natural selection = synthesis.

Hegel may have indicated an end to the process (for all I remember) but natural selection is open, there is no end implied in the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Today nobody reads Hegel. To get through even one page is a chore. So much difficult verbiage just for the purpose of elevating German middle-class bourgeois life to being the way God wants us all to live. And as for evolution, nobody has any idea what the scientific foundation for that is. It has become a marker of being liberal and educated. Belief in evolution elevates people above the ignorant religious riffraff. Today, instead of reading, people just point at something that is a symbol of who they are. It's like this "philosophical" forum. People come here and say the words that they think will mark them as educated intellectuals. No one actually believes what they say, they just want to be seen as believing that. They really have no idea what they believe. Certain words are badges that people wear.