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

[Sculptor1]

You're right about history,Sculptor1. It cannot be objective because humans cannot be objective. What has occurred gets filtered through the writer's subjectivity. So, what gets recorded, and the meaning given to what is recorded, depends a lot on who writes it. History can be interesting, and perhaps somewhat instructive, to read. All the dates and places and names may be correct, but when we read it, we are not doing much more than reading an historical novel.

Yes there are objective things about history.
Ceasar died in the middle of March 44BC. I'm trying to be as objective as possible here, but already this statement is with respect to the birth of Christ!
And chosing "died" points to me as a fence sitter.
The account of his death was stabbed with a dozen daggers in the Forum. But to I use the word assassination - that would have connotation. It is an Arabic word so is anachronistic. DO I use the word "murdered" - that would put me on his side and the populist party, rather than the "rebels" - yet another loaded with.

[Sculptor1]

You're right about history,Sculptor1. It cannot be objective because humans cannot be objective. What has occurred gets filtered through the writer's subjectivity. So, what gets recorded, and the meaning given to what is recorded, depends a lot on who writes it. History can be interesting, and perhaps somewhat instructive, to read. All the dates and places and names may be correct, but when we read it, we are not doing much more than reading an historical novel.

Yes there are objective things about history.
Ceasar died in the middle of March 44BC. I'm trying to be as objective as possible here, but already this statement is with respect to the birth of Christ!
And chosing "died" points to me as a fence sitter.
The account of his death was stabbed with a dozen daggers in the Forum. But to I use the word assassination - that would have connotation. It is an Arabic word so is anachronistic. DO I use the word "murdered" - that would put me on his side and the populist party, rather than the "rebels" - yet another loaded with.

[Pattern-chaser]

Pattern-chaser wrote
In the simplest and most approximate terms, couldn't we see spirituality as a diluted, and much wider-ranging, version of religion? I don't mean to offend atheists by saying that, but only to offer a simple definition that might help? Description is difficult because religion, spirituality, emotion, and countless other things/qualities, are non-physical. That is perhaps their prime defining characteristic? They can't be seen or measured, but only imagined and described.

You mean something like an interfaith movement?

No, I meant something a great deal broader and more diffuse than that. Imagine a spectrum. At one end is organised religion and churches/mosques/temples. At the other extreme of the spectrum are things like meditation. That spectrum is spirituality? "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature" are spiritual concepts.

[Hereandnow]

Stoppelmann wrote
What I understand as non-religious spirituality involves exploring and experiencing a sense of meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than oneself, and doesn’t require adhering to traditional religious beliefs or practices. But non-religious spirituality often depends on an individual's personal beliefs and values and therefore asks where we acquire them. It is sometimes difficult to say where a historical religious tradition stops and non-religion takes over.

Is it so hard to discern where the one leaves off, or is it rather that most don't want to put in the time and work? What one is looking for is a grounding that is respectable and reliable, which means the world of incidental claims of public religions is out, referring to scriptures and dogmas and extravagant metaphysics. I think the way to approach this need for a genuine grounding is to do a reduction: after that smoke has cleared, and the historical narratives are sidelined, what is really there, in our midst standing before the human condition: the reductive residua, if you will, that is the unconditioned presence of the world. This is where inquiry into the nature of religion has to go. The OP refers to "non religious spirituality" but this implies the two are separable, as if on the one hand there is the historical narrative while on the other there is the spirituality, and if one draws this line, I understand, but then, talking about religion as exclusively the popular vacuous beliefs is to divest religion of all substantive meaning. I don't go this way, because those beliefs that gather around a religious idea and practice are precisely what is being analyzed in determining what generates evidence for authentic grounding. I mean, this "standing before the human condition" as I put it, is where these popular religions "stand" in their construction of their myths and general content. They are not just disembodied absurdities; they are embodied absurdities, if you follow.

The most immediate way people find a sense of spiritual connection is by immersing themselves in nature, spending time in natural settings, appreciating the beauty of the natural world, and feeling a sense of awe and interconnectedness with the environment. This is of course dependent upon having basic needs fulfilled, and having no necessities, afflictions, or dangers. I would suggest that most religions grew under such beneficial conditions, speculating upon the drama they saw unfolding in the natural world.

But then, this kind of thing altogether lacks the rigor we seek. For this we require a philosophical method, and philosophy ain't easy (though I hasten to add that these experiences of awe and wonder at the beauty of the natural world and the like are by NO means part of what is being sidelined in this "reduction" as I call it (above); quite the opposite: the dimension of affectivity--read ethics and aesthetics--in our existence in this rigorous examination of the grounding of religion is exactly what steps forward and claims priority).

However, the journey of self-discovery, personal growth, and self-improvement can also be a deeply spiritual experience for some. It involves exploring one's values, passions, and potential. Practices like mindfulness and meditation can help individuals connect with their inner selves and the present moment have long been independent of religious tradition. These practices are often associated with a sense of inner peace, self-awareness, and transcendence of everyday concerns. The Stoics, practised various forms of self-examination, reflection, and meditation, as did Eastern philosophical traditions like Taoist and Confucian philosophers in ancient China. While Buddhism and Hinduism are known for their meditation practices, in the Christian and Jewish mystical traditions, not all mystical practices were strictly tied to religious orthodoxy.

Don't get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for a lot of what these traditions hold. I am convinced that the Buddha was the quintessential phenomenologist! But, to borrow from these Eastern traditions, in Hinduism is found several "yogas" (that which "yokes" or "joins" one to God, speaking loosely), among which is jnana yoga, or the way of knowledge, which is philosophy. In the East they have their language and culture settings, and I strongly suspect in this there is an understanding of human existence that is truly penetrating into a profundity that is non cognitive, that is, non derivative of naturalistic language. But we stand in a position, here as genuine objective inquirers, that looks at such things as a kind of destiny of philosophical work. This work needs clarification and method, an intellectual method. This is the reduction introduced above (and the it goes without saying that thoughts here presented are based on the writings of giants in continental philosophy).

Non-religious individuals often find spiritual meaning in the exploration of philosophy, ethics, and the search for purpose through the lens of human reason and rationality. For some, an understanding and appreciation of the wonders of the natural world, as revealed through science, can be a source of non-religious spirituality. It doesn't necessarily require a belief in the supernatural or a higher power, but it does involve a recognition of the profound and meaningful aspects of human existence and the world we live in.

But this leaves spirituality altogether unexamined as spirituality, and has not risen above the incidental facts and language. It is as if you are saying, spirituality is just whatever you feel "that way" about. The question for the philosopher is, what is this spirituality all about as such?

[Hereandnow]

I don't understand this, Hereandnow. You say philosophy tells us there is nothing. And you say that religion tells us there is something. But what is this something that religion actually tell us? And why should we believe it? You say that religious affirmation is not just blind faith. Can you enlarge on that? If it is more than just blind faith, what is this "more". I'd like to understand what you mean. And then I'd like to ask whether, even if religion were just a matter of blind faith, would that matter?

Sorry about that, and I was just thinking out loud with some of that. May suggest wiping the slate clean? Consider the way Husserl opens his Cartesian Meditations:

Philosophy wisdom
(sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It must
arise as his/her wisdom, as his/her self-acquired knowledge tending
toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from
the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute
insights. If I have decided to live with this as my aim the
decision that alone can start me on the course of a
philosophical development I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge. Beginning thus,
obviously one of the first things I ought to do is reflect on how
I might find a method for going on, a method that promises to
lead to genuine knowing.

So we come into matters of religious meanings with a great deal already in place. Husserl wants us to put everything on hold, "bracketing" is his term (in English). This approach is what makes Eastern thinking come to mind, the sitting quietly and doing nothing with the aim of some important disclosure or even revelation. But it is hard to suspend thinking about the world since the world, so to speak, jumps in whenever we engage it, and this is very important to my designs here: the world, when we acknowledge it in this way of that, is always interpretatively determined. Now, there is a lot to say about this, mountains of literature on just this notion, as it is pivotal to discovery of a ground for religion and its spirituality. You know, every meaningful scientific thesis or paradigm has its grounding in observation, so here the question begins with, what is it we are observing?

I don't think this is unclear. Obvious really, that if one wants ot inquire about something one has to isolate it and observe it for what it is, apart from whatever has been said about it. Where would Copernicus have gotten had he only attended to the dogma of the church? Is it such an impossible question to ask, therefore, what religion IS apart from all the dogma and historically story telling and bad metaphysics? There is, of course, the claim of the atheist that once these trappings are removed, there really is nothing there, and theology was just a power play or "the opiate of the masses"; but this can't be right, this reduction to nothing at all.

When I say religion is the foundational indeterminacy of the ethical and aesthetic modes of our existence, I did say a mouthful (and it is important to note that everything I say is derivative of the Kierkegaard through Michel Henry stain of thinking), but the devil is in the details, and this is the way it should be as we have to get beyond vague accounts. A lot of what comes forward in analysis will negative, an apophatic weeding out of things that have no place in a disciplined inquiry. The question as to what the nature of spirituality is begins with a discarding what is clearly no spiritual, and this goes pretty quickly to the vast body popular beliefs. Certainly, to make it obvious, the actual belief in Zeus or Apollo, and I refer to the how a proposition might express this belief, the belief content with nouns and predications and so forth, is not relevant to the spirituality that might be associated with it. And I'll make this into a principle: all that can be easily identified as culturally constructed with no real grounding in "scientific observation" will be dismissed as irrelevant to a determination of spirituality qua spirituality.

Science?? This may seem like the wrong term, but it isn't. What is science if not just a commitment to what lie before to be witnessed? Spirituality may not be about the atomic weight of a proton, or any such empirical fact (paradigmatically determined, I should add), but science only requires an unyielding commitment to what is there, and all else placed in suspension. So, does spirituality have such a possibility for analysis?

I say it does. It takes an argument of a philosophical nature. But you may find questions in this I have already said.

[Hereandnow]

Pattern-chaser wrote
No, I meant something a great deal broader and more diffuse than that. Imagine a spectrum. At one end is organised religion and churches/mosques/temples. At the other extreme of the spectrum are things like meditation. That spectrum is spirituality? "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature" are spiritual concepts.

But they are concepts that don't pin down spirituality when one really asks about what it is. What is the formal definition? Mother nature, well, is seriously ambiguous. Meditation, but is this just sitting quietly and doing nothing (as Alan Watts once put it), or is there some higher dimension to this. I've3 read (certainly not in Pali) the Abhidhamma Pitaka, and though I no scholar on this, I find some of the most extraordinary things. For example, speaking of the rising adept:

As he is thus absorbed in meditation, a day comes
when, to his surprise, he witnesses an aura emanating from
his body (Obhàsa). He experiences an unprecedented pleasure,
happiness, and quietude. He becomes even-minded
and strenuous. His religious fervour increases, and mindfulness
becomes perfect, and Insight extraordinarily keen.
Mistaking this advanced state of moral progress for
Sainthood, chiefly owing to the presence of the aura, he
develops a liking to this mental state. Soon the realisation
comes that these new developments are only obstacles to
moral progress and he cultivates the ‘Purity of Knowledge’
with regard to the ‘Path’ and ‘Non-Path’ (Maggàmagga-
¤àõadassana Visuddhi).


Pretty wild! Can we say the depths of spirituality are being explored here? But what if this "aura"? I have never seen an aura, and it is not my interest here to discuss such a thing. Who knows. But "insight" and unprecedented happiness and quietude, these are in play. The Bible's Paul speaks of an unspeakable peace. These kind sof things are interesting to me because they are radical modes of value. On the other side there is, of course suffering. But this dimension of our existence really has to be examined, and this means taking it in a serious process of discovery, the kind of thing scientists do all the time.

Note in the Abhidhamma it really does get into truly demanding, if esoteric, thinking. Hard to follow, this text, nigh impossible in places. I say it can be tamed down to accessibility, talked about.

[Gee]

Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

You could not be more wrong.

I disagree. I could be and have been more wrong, but not about this.

If we are going to have a serious and worthwhile discussion then we should set some ground rules, the first of which is agreement on the subject. I am discussing conscious life, which relates to spirituality and emotion; I expect you are discussing human consciousness, which is mostly about the brain and has nothing to do with spirituality. Is this so?

The sciences of psychology, neurology and psychiatry are all concerned with such things. One could argue that with the excption of neurology that are wholly concerned with such things.

Actually, neurology tried to understand consciousness and failed, so it incorporated psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and a half dozen other sciences into its study, and it still does not know what emotion is, or how emotion works -- just how it feels, and how to regulate (control) it with chemistry.

Science does not ignore emotion and probabl has more and meaningful things to say about it - things that you can trust as being verifyable - than any other discipline.

Propaganda. The only thing that science studies with regard to emotion is behavior, because science is looking for control.

Perhaps you have a suggestion for an area of serious study that has more to say about those characteristics of the human experience?

About "characteristics of the human experience?", what about law -- that is a pretty serious study. And law did not get its basis concepts from science, it got them from religion.

All of these things do in fact require a brain.

Nonsense. How do you think that life evolved before a brain evolved? Or maybe you think that evolution was just random luck until humans and consciousness evolved. Maybe it was magic? Or "God" did it?

There is no life without a brain and all evidence points to this as the primary organ for all conscious experience, though the heart and digestive tract also play a minor role in this process.

So are you saying that plants are not alive, or maybe you are saying that plants have brains? Or is this a solipsist view?

Hormones play a significant role as to neurotransmitters - all because of receptors in the brain where they act to alter "Awareness, feeling, and emotion".

Or maybe it is because the brain is swimming in a hormone soup?

ALL examples, without excption of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion." are found in step with a worling brain, and the cessation of the healthy activity of the brain always lead to disruptions of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion". Brain damage leads to changes in feeling and emotion, and can tragically change your awareness; drugs that are shown to act on the brain also support this line of reasoning.

Not "ALL examples". Maybe all examples that you and neurology have looked at, and I am not sure that is true, but this does not apply to all human examples and is not even close to applying to all life.

When science is not trying to use emotion to control behavior, then it is treating it like it is some kind of disease that needs to be corrected/cured through psychiatry or psychology. This is not studying emotion -- but this is what I see.

Look up "plant communication". It is interesting. Once you get past the science jargon which tends to confuse the issue, ask yourself the reason for the communication. It is always the same, it is for the purpose of survival and indicates that said plant has awareness of a danger and feeling and emotion regarding the danger. It also communicates this to others in the same species. Remember, consciousness is just communication.

Gee

[Gee]

Gee wrote
Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

[mention}Gee[/mention}, I don’t understand how can be so and I'm hoping you will explain. How can “Awareness, feeling, and emotion … not require a brain”?

Actually it is pretty easy. Plants do not have brains, but they are often aware of danger and will work to protect themselves from that danger. Look up "plant communication" in Wiki, or try YouTube to get similar information. I am told there are a lot of videos that make the concept clear without a lot of jargon and time spent.

Try being aware of anything, or feeling anything without your brain and tell me if it works. If we are under general anaesthetic, the brain is partly shut down and consciousness, awareness, feeling etc all disappear. I know this is true because I’ve had general anaesthetic several times.

This is also pretty simple. When you are under a general anesthetic, that means that someone has unplugged your antenna. It does not change what is going on with your body, it just means that you no longer know about it.

There is just nothing. So I just don’t understand your reasoning here. Like you, I don't think we can "think ourselves conscious" or "feel ourselves conscious". Either our brain is functioning at a level sufficient for consciousness or it's not.

But you did not die, did you? So even though your consciousness was unplugged, your body was still aware of the need to continue your life processes. Every cell in your body is aware of the need to maintain itself, divide when necessary, process food, etc., with or without a brain.

Gee

[Sculptor1]

Awareness, feeling, and emotion are big time players in the game of life, but you don't find science stating that. They are all about thought and the brain and maybe AI. Awareness, feeling, and emotion do not require a brain. This is why I stated that science pretty much ignores emotion. They seem to forget that we can not think ourselves conscious, we feel ourselves conscious.

You could not be more wrong.

I disagree. I could be and have been more wrong, but not about this.

If we are going to have a serious and worthwhile discussion then we should set some ground rules, the first of which is agreement on the subject. I am discussing conscious life, which relates to spirituality and emotion; I expect you are discussing human consciousness, which is mostly about the brain and has nothing to do with spirituality. Is this so?

The sciences of psychology, neurology and psychiatry are all concerned with such things. One could argue that with the excption of neurology that are wholly concerned with such things.

Actually, neurology tried to understand consciousness and failed, so it incorporated psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and a half dozen other sciences into its study, and it still does not know what emotion is, or how emotion works -- just how it feels, and how to regulate (control) it with chemistry.

Science does not ignore emotion and probabl has more and meaningful things to say about it - things that you can trust as being verifyable - than any other discipline.

Propaganda. The only thing that science studies with regard to emotion is behavior, because science is looking for control.

Perhaps you have a suggestion for an area of serious study that has more to say about those characteristics of the human experience?

About "characteristics of the human experience?", what about law -- that is a pretty serious study. And law did not get its basis concepts from science, it got them from religion.

All of these things do in fact require a brain.

Nonsense. How do you think that life evolved before a brain evolved? Or maybe you think that evolution was just random luck until humans and consciousness evolved. Maybe it was magic? Or "God" did it?

There is no life without a brain and all evidence points to this as the primary organ for all conscious experience, though the heart and digestive tract also play a minor role in this process.

So are you saying that plants are not alive, or maybe you are saying that plants have brains? Or is this a solipsist view?

Hormones play a significant role as to neurotransmitters - all because of receptors in the brain where they act to alter "Awareness, feeling, and emotion".

Or maybe it is because the brain is swimming in a hormone soup?

ALL examples, without excption of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion." are found in step with a worling brain, and the cessation of the healthy activity of the brain always lead to disruptions of "Awareness, feeling, and emotion". Brain damage leads to changes in feeling and emotion, and can tragically change your awareness; drugs that are shown to act on the brain also support this line of reasoning.

Not "ALL examples". Maybe all examples that you and neurology have looked at, and I am not sure that is true, but this does not apply to all human examples and is not even close to applying to all life.

When science is not trying to use emotion to control behavior, then it is treating it like it is some kind of disease that needs to be corrected/cured through psychiatry or psychology. This is not studying emotion -- but this is what I see.

Look up "plant communication". It is interesting. Once you get past the science jargon which tends to confuse the issue, ask yourself the reason for the communication. It is always the same, it is for the purpose of survival and indicates that said plant has awareness of a danger and feeling and emotion regarding the danger. It also communicates this to others in the same species. Remember, consciousness is just communication.

Gee

PLONK!!!

[Gee]

Huxley, "The Doors of Perception"

I am going to love this book! Thank you for telling me about it.

Gee

Several things I would like to add about one of my favorites, as a speaker, author and philosopher, since you showed some interest...

You can find the book online for free. Just search "pdf Huxley Doors of Perception" and you'll find it on a web page and you can print it up if you prefer.

Too late, I already ordered it. It was not too bad, less than $10, and my printer broke anyway. I expect that this book is something that must be studied, rather than simply read, so I expect hours of thinking and maybe challenging fun.

He also wrote, "A Brave New World", which you may know. This is something of a counterpoint to "1984", by George Orwell, who was a student of Huxley. While Orwell warns us of the horrors of totalitarianism, Huxley warns of a different method of control.

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution”― Aldous Huxley

Yes, I have heard of "A Brave New World". Reading the above quote, I can see his point and acknowledge that there could be some truth in it, but I don't see it as a "final revolution". I think that Huxley may be too much the scientist and did not give enough credit to the self-balancing reality of life. Nothing is final.

Also, there are many videos on YouTube of Huxley's speeches and university classes. They are very much worth the time, I would say.

Interestingly, I think, he comes by his quest for knowledge quite honestly. Here is a quote from Huxley's granfather, a leading anthropologist, supporter of Darwin and the one who coined the term "agnostic":

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle... the fundamental axiom of modern science... In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration... In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable., Thomas Henry Huxley

Interesting man. Very much the scientist, but when science does not serve, he refuses to choose a position and instead becomes a fence sitter. I can respect that a lot more than a choice made through bias.

I love Aldous Huxley's use of English in his speaking and writing. He is both painstakingly clear and eloquent. He is, to my eyes and ears, both very wise and very humble, which are qualities that should go together like peanut butter and jelly. I'll just nod off with one of my favorite quotes from him which seems to prove the point:

“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.”
― Aldous Huxley

Very good advice. I am not there yet.

Gee

[Sy Borg]

Science does not ignore emotion and probabl has more and meaningful things to say about it - things that you can trust as being verifyable - than any other discipline.

Propaganda. The only thing that science studies with regard to emotion is behavior, because science is looking for control.

This is not quite right. Science is about increasing control over phenomena, not people.

You do science. I do science. Everyone does science. It's simply checking out reality and trying to work out what's going on, to detect patterns. I worked with scientists for many years. You will never find a straighter bunch. Alas, given how bent most people are, this is far from a claim that they are completely trustworthy. Scientists certainly do get up to shenanigans at times, but I suggest the percentage of dodgies is far lower than in most professions.

It's the nature of the field. If you are to be good at science, you need to ruthlessly examine and counter your biases. So it's disappointing to see so many people blaming science for the sins of corporations and politicians.

If science is the enemy, then all we have left is a dictator to tell us what's true, eg. Stalin, Kim or God's latest alleged representative.

Gee, the issue you are identifying is a conflict of interest between properly conducted science and the vested interests of those with the capacity to provide project funding.

Another issue is historical, because those aligned with churches have long resented the field of science for disproving dogmas. Even today, more Americans believe that God magicked up the universe and created a woman from Adam's rib than they believe in evolution.

It's not because they are all stupid (a Bell curve applies) but there is a hangover of Church resentment against science, so it doesn't take much provocation for that to flare up. It's similar to anti-Semitism, which seems to pop up at every opportunity, for some reason.

Another issue is media. Science reporting is extremely variable. Many of the headlines are either misleading clickbait, a mountain made out of a molehill or simply a misinterpretation of science too complex for the journalist to comprehend. Then there are suppressed findings, eg. that EVs are worse for the environment if they draw from coal-fired power, or that masks don't work, or that the COVID vaccines did actually have problems, that COVID did not start in Wuhan, despite being next to a facility that designed coronaviruses, etc.

Then there's a daily articles about the latest medical "breakthroughs" - none of which ever seem to flow down to the general public, while being routinely accessed by VIPs.

I expect that a percentage of people who distrust science had their trust eroded by the conduct of journalists and editors rather than that of scientists.

Trust in all public institutions generally has been eroded, and rightly so, given the rapidly widening wealth gap. The institutions we once trusted all proved themselves to be trustworthy. We live in interesting times.

Personally, I'm not sure what spirituality is. I suspect I'll find out a whole lot more when I'm gasping my last on my deathbed. (I'm not looking forward to the "life review" stage! *cringe*).

I try not to take myself too seriously these days. I know what I am and I see a lot more impressive people out there than me. Good for them! Acceptance of one's relative mediocrity brings a measure of peace, especially when balanced against the fact that all life, and the planet that exuded that life, are extraordinary, with astonishing a complexity and depth.

Our minds, of course, evolved to survive and reproduce. While we/science have noticed a tremendous amount about our reality, we also clearly miss an awful lot.

[Lagayascienza]

This thread has become wide ranging and the discussion of religion and spirituality has, of necessity, gotten onto consciousness and phenomenology:

I’m still a bit at sea about phenomenology. As I understand it from SEP, phenomenology is concerned with “intentionality”, with first-person, subjective experience. According to SEP, phenomenology is based in the idea that, “our experience… represents things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etcetera make up the meaning or content of a given experience and are distinct from what the things perceived are in themselves. We don't (or can't?) know what the things are in themselves.

I'm not sure I agree with this. What if we are not interested in “intentionality”? What if the meaning or content of a given experience, say, seeing a cup, is of no interest to me and, instead, I’m interested in what the cup is in a physical, quantitative sense? Why does phenomenology focus only on what the cup represents or “intends”. And, if we are talking about an experience such as pain, wouldn’t my priority be not what the pain “means” but to understand its physical basis and make it stop? Why would I be interested in what it “means”?

Phenomenology, as I understand it, asserts that there are no mind independent objects. But why? Why does knowledge have to arrive only via a representational medium? Why does phenomenology say that concepts are interpretations of sensory input derived from a real external world? Why must the concept of, say, pain, be an interpretation of sensory input and not just the sensory input? What’s wrong with direct realism? Why can’t the world generated by our conscious experience be, more or less, a true or reasonably accurate, representation of the real world? And if it’s not, what’s doing the interpreting? An homunculus?

If the world generated by our conscious experience can be, more or less, a true or reasonably accurate representation of the real world, what would this mean for religion and spirituality?

[Lagayascienza]

I've been reading a bit about phenomenology and I see that I was mistaken as to what it is. It's not some silly continental concoction but an interesting way of approaching the study of reality. I have been too engrossed for too long in the Austro-Anglo-American analytical philosophical tradition. So please disregard what I wrote above.

[Lagayascienza]

I mistook phenomenology to be one and the same as the worst of post-modernism - shades of the Sokal Affair. But I see that there is a lot more to phenomenology than that.

[Belindi]

There are no such things as things in themselves; there is only subjective experience.
Homo sapiens ' experience includes individuals' attitudes towards the future.