whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
Useful article! I enjoy her weekly summary on Sundays but missed this one, so thanks. I liked this part from the very beginning of that article too (my bolding):
We are never simply seeing what’s ‘really there,’ stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom — the product of deep-set predictions.
Aha, another area of mutual interest. Yes, Maria does have a talent of capturing the essence with few words, which makes her weekly offering so good and worth more than the contribution I make.
whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
It reminds me again of how McGilchrist describes belief in God in TMAHE as
having an attitude, holding a disposition to the world, whereby that world, as it comes into being for me, is one in which God belongs. The belief alters the world but also alters me..
He goes on to say that every human being must have a disposition to the world but none can be shown to be verifiably true. But since, as this article you've shared argues, we are hard wired to perceptually select for what we expect to see, it might make some difference what expectation we harbor.
If I may, I would expand that quote to the whole paragraph:
This helps illuminate belief in God. This is not reducible to a question of a factual answer to the question ‘does God exist?’, assuming for the moment that the expression ‘a factual answer’ has a meaning. It is having an attitude, holding a disposition towards the world, whereby that world, as it comes into being for me, is one in which God belongs. The belief alters the world, but also alters me. Is it true that God exists? Truth is a disposition, one of being true to someone or something.
McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary (p. 170). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
It is more than an opinion, he says, but rather a tendency towards a behaviour, an attitude, and you can’t be without. It is just a question of which disposition we choose, and they all have benevolent or malevolent consequences, depending on how we implement them in our lives. So you can be a compassionate or malicious theist, just as you can be a kind or spiteful atheist, depending on the focus or orientation of our disposition. So in answer to your question:
whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
… should a society or family deliberately attempt to implant in its young a disposition to the world? And, if so, what criteria ought guide the selection of disposition to be aimed at, if we decide it is too important to leave to chance.
The disposition towards a particular behaviour depends on your interpretation. There are Christians who focus on the judgemental and punishing God of the OT, rather than the benevolent redeemer, which reveals the reason why the Roman Catholic church was built on the foundations of the Roman empire, and employed the jurisdiction that they inherited, rather than spreading the message of non-duality, unanimity, and love. We still see this division in the various Christian groups.
Just as throughout history, there have been instances where the implementation of materialist philosophies has been associated with negative consequences which we can perceive as malevolent, for example communist regimes in the 20th century, such as in the Soviet Union, China, and others who adopted Marxist-Leninist principles, which were influenced by materialist ideas. I am quite convinced that Marx would have turned in his grave if he knew what had become of his manifesto and his concern for the working class. But authoritarianism, human rights abuses, suppression of dissent, and other malevolent consequences have been caused by other ideologies as well.
The disposition must find interpretation, and we know of multiple examples of the second-generation conflicts that have arisen despite the initiator of a movement having clear benevolent ideas.
whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
So religious belief might be viewed as a culturally selected for expectation held and encouraged not because it is true (that not being really applicable), but because it encourages societal coherence and individual flourishing. I would think those would be the characteristics most prized for any wisdom tradition.
While I think this is extremely important, I see many religious traditions having a primordial beginning in one prime idea, that of the unanimity of humanity – indeed of all organic life – despite the cultural diversity. An idea which contradicts much of what humanity has done historically (which is why many sages and thinkers, prophets and saviours, were fugitives, incarcerated and killed). Indeed, the diversity should be understood as a gain, rather than a loss, if we have the prime idea that we belong together and are all expressions of the mysterious life-force that we give various names, connected by compassion and consciousness.
whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
Thinking more about how philosophy helps and possibly hinders a fair investigation of religious practice and experience, I happened to read this in Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things last night about the writing of Henri Bergson. (My bolding.):
Bergson sees the key move that philosophers – and all thinking people – need to make as ‘turning this attention aside from the part of the universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turning it back toward what serves no practical purpose’. But, of course, by this he doesn’t mean abandoning a sense of purpose. He means not being caught up in the utilitarian purposes of the left hemisphere; instead aiming to attend in a way that is not already committed or attached (‘stuck’ in the case of the left hemisphere) to a particular focus selected for its usefulness. ‘This conversion of the attention’, he says, ‘would be philosophy itself.’60 The mistake that is made by many traditional philosophers, he suggests, is to believe that freeing one’s attention up in this way necessitates turning one’s back on practical life, rather than, in fact, embracing it.61 ‘One should act like a man of thought’, he wrote, in a memorable formulation, ‘and think like a man of action’.62
Yes, this last sentence has wisdom in it. I often come across people who are one or the other. I admit to being not as pragmatic as my wife and more the analysist, but those who apply themselves to thought and action normally have an advantage. Although it grew more out of confusion and less an act of wisdom, the fact that I have been both soldier and a nurse, or that I left school with little to show for the time spent there and later rose to become a regional manager over 600 staff, has inadvertently given me an outlook by which I take much into account that others don’t and given me a somewhat different attitude, which I assume has to do with the balance between left and right hemispheres. Having started MBSR in 2002, this also trained my concentration, and contemplative practise has helped me in my studies.
whateverist wrote: ↑June 26th, 2023, 1:39 pm
I take that last sentence as emphasizing that what we act on should reflect a careful evaluation of all the salient facts but that in what and how we think we should be practical or even strategic. Later he quotes Bergson as writing:
Change, if they consent to look directly at it without an interposed veil, will very quickly appear to them to be the most substantial and durable thing possible. Its solidity is infinitely superior to that of a fixity which is only an ephemeral arrangement between mobilities ... if change is real and even constitutive of reality, we must envisage the past quite differently from what we have been accustomed to doing through philosophy and language.63
At least since Heraclitus we could have known that the world is in a constant state of flux and transformation, "everything flows, nothing stands still." We need to accept change is an inherent and universal characteristic of existence and recognise that all things are in a perpetual process of becoming, constantly evolving and shifting. But McGilchrist goes on to talk about depth, and how Bergson wanted to see things from the philosophical “point of view of eternity” and “grasp afresh the external world as it really is, not superficially, in the present, but in depth, with the immediate past crowding upon it and imprinting upon it its impetus.”
The flow of change is inherently visible in religion, although you wouldn’t think so if you listen to Christians. The development visible as the OT proceeds is pointing to a change of paradigm, which becomes visible in the Prophets and in particular in Jesus, who continues in that paradigm. It is a movement away from the blood sacrifice, which had become a mindless slaughter, towards observing the widow whose two farthings are a greater sacrifice. It was about a change in the mind of God, for example in Hosea 6:6, the prophet speaks on behalf of God, saying, "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."
The prophets challenged and reinterpreted existing religious practices and beliefs, introducing new ways of understanding and relating to the divine, and in the case of Jesus, his teachings emphasized the inner disposition of the heart, love for God and neighbour, and the importance of justice, mercy, and compassion. This paradigm shift can be understood as a progression from a primarily external and ritualistic understanding of religion to a more inward, ethical, and relational approach. Owen Barfield, known as "the first and last Inkling" who had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis and an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien, wrote that the human experience of life shifts fundamentally over periods of cultural time.
Our awareness of things evolves. Our consciousness changes dramatically across history.
He proposed that it happens in three phases. The first, he called “original participation” – the word “participation” referring to the felt experience of participating in life. Original participation dominates when there is little distinction between what’s felt to be inside someone and what’s outside because the boundaries of individual self-consciousness, which today we take for granted, are not in place. Life is therefore lived at the level of the collective. It’s experienced as a continuous flow of vitality between what is “me” and “not me,” between mortals and immortals, between past and present, and also between other creatures and the human creature. The inner life of the cosmos is the inner life of the people. “Early man did not observe nature in our detached way,” Barfield writes. “He participated mentally and physically in her inner and outer processes.”
It determined life in ancient times and can sometimes be glimpsed today. It’s in the waves of emotion that sweep across a crowd as, then, there’s a temporary dissolution of the boundaries between the individual and others. It’s an experience that’s akin to stepping back in time. A second phase away from original participation is marked by what he called a “withdrawal of participation.” It happens when there’s a shift from the sense of being immersed in the life of others, nature, and the gods. An awareness of separation, even isolation, is felt. A person will begin to sense that they have an inner life that is, relatively speaking, their own.
Vernon, Mark. A Secret History of Christianity (p. 3). John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.
I think I had better stop here, since I have been getting carried away.
) path.
But I still understand you, I just disagree.