Philosophy Discussion Forums

Belindi wrote: ↑June 25th, 2019, 7:36 am The sexual metaphor reminds me of another similar one The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. I suspect they are sublimations of sexual need. This is not a complaint , but my attempt to show that longing to transcend nature is itself natural. In this regard poetry at its best is as concise and as precise as the language of mathematics and physics. Poetry is a linguistic register that uses its peculiar form to transcend the "darkness" of natural human feelings.

GaryLouisSmith, I understand your references to the beautiful boy of Apollonian statues and the emergence of the feminine and Dionysian in the Aphrodite. These aren't in opposition but are two means to the most good or God if you like. How would you class the best historiography, Apollonian or Dionysian?

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

The difference between a god and a concept is that the former has a heaviness to it. It is out there and it bears down on you with erotic pressure. It is opaque and thick. It is frightening. It knows you. A concept, though, is full of intellectual light. It is transparent and literally nothing of itself. It refers to something else. It is very very demure. There is no chance that it knows you.

The word 'God' is so encumbered with what you deprecate that we need another name for the concept of the good. Because people don't believe in that old Idol any more, or trust it. I contend that life is better than death and so we should aim for life to continue on Earth. To do this we need a global consensus on the Concept of good.And another word for it.

I'm writing this just to make sure you understand where I stand. In the last few postings I drew a distinction between Platonic theism and Aristotelian conceptualism. I was on the side of Plato and against Aristotle. For theism and against nominalistic conceptualism. Conceptualism is or attempts to be all light and intellect. While theism has a dark, heavy, tumescent, opaqueness to it. That is to say, theism has matter as that which individuates. Conceptualism does not believe individuation is real, therefore it dematerializes the world. As I said, it mathematicizes existence. Matter is enchantment and magic. The dematerialized world of conceptualism is all an inter-relating into one organic whole. It is science. There is no dark matter, only rationalization. Platonic theism is enchantment and unreason. You are right that the word "God" is encumbered, but that is why it is still a good word. I would not get rid of that encumbrance. I like that "old idol".

So now about St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. They are not dealing in sublimations. There really is a god or God there that has possessed them and they tremble under that heavy weight. We must not psychologize what is happening there. It is not a metaphor. It is not a linguistic register that helps us transcend the "darkness" of natural human feelings. And that brings me to my aesthetic theory of literature.

It is not true that good writing is always clear and well-constructed so the understanding can comprehend it. When one is writing about religious things, about the gods, about the numinous, the writing must be unclear with strange constructions that lead the understanding astray. Such are the gods. Aestheticism in art is generally deprecated because it is scandalously incomprehensible. It seems to be hiding something. It is immoral and purple. Good writing, it is said, is easy to comprehend and well-ordered. But the gods are not that. And I am always on the side of the gods, against mathematicizing and conceptualization. I retain the enchantment. And the unreason.

As for the Greek Beautiful Boy, remember that Greek pederasty was a religious thing. Between the ages of twelve and seventeen the boy was taken, by his lover, outside the walls of the city and initiated into a Phallic Cult. Today, of course, it would all be illegal and immoral and sickening to people. But that is religion. The ancient Israelites had the same thing. As for Aphrodite or Hecate, she was originally Queen of the Underworld, the chthonic realm, the realm of Medusa. The Greeks were terrified of Hades, the Underworld. They tried to raise Aphrodite up onto Olympus and make her a sky goddess, but it never really worked. So they devised the Beautiful Boy, who was later to become the Virgin Mary. To the end and even today, the Underworld threatens. Even here in Hinduland. It's a twisted tale. Now the psychologists are trying conceptualize all that and take the sting out of it. But psychology is still a pseudo-science. It's not working. Conceptualism fails miserable. The gods wait and grin.

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I'm writing this just to make sure you understand where I stand. In the last few postings I drew a distinction between Platonic theism and Aristotelian conceptualism. I was on the side of Plato and against Aristotle. For theism and against nominalistic conceptualism. Conceptualism is or attempts to be all light and intellect. While theism has a dark, heavy, tumescent, opaqueness to it. That is to say, theism has matter as that which individuates. Conceptualism does not believe individuation is real, therefore it dematerializes the world. As I said, it mathematicizes existence. Matter is enchantment and magic.

Well I don't understand . Aristotle was a marine biologist and how can a biologist not believe that individuation is real? How could Darwin not believe that individuation is real? True, Aristotle did not know about origin of the species via natural selection, however both those biologists described individual species. Maybe you will say a species is not an individual. Yet Aristotle and Darwin generalised from observations of individuals so individuals were basic . When Thomas Aquinas Christianised Aristotelian form Thomas said God had decreed the perfections of the forms.

What matters is life. For human life to continue we need societies and societies are not societies unless they support cultures, and religions are expressions of cultures.Societies are in rapid change, and Christianity needs the sort of Platonism that posits the form of the good. However it's unlikely that modern people will accept a pseudo material existence of Plato's forms.

GaryLouisSmith: "Now the psychologists are trying conceptualize all that and take the sting out of it. But psychology is still a pseudo-science. It's not working. Conceptualism fails miserable."

Just the old school, Freud and his followers, with their obsessive focus on biology, but he's been eclipsed by Jung and the transpersonal psychologists.

Belindi: "Yet Aristotle and Darwin generalised from observations of individuals so individuals were basic."

But that's how science works: it infers general principles from particulars, so the particulars are, in a sense, a means to an end. Evolution is not a respecter of species and, as it says in the Bible, God is not a respecter of persons. Respect requires bonding, empathizing, with life, as opposed to examining it like a microbe under a microscope.

Belindi: "Christianity needs the sort of Platonism that posits the form of the good."

No, it just needs to become Christian, to understand and follow Christ, the immanent avatar of the transcendent God. That's not an Aristotelian path.

Belindi wrote: ↑June 25th, 2019, 2:54 pm

GaryLouisSmith wrote:

I'm writing this just to make sure you understand where I stand. In the last few postings I drew a distinction between Platonic theism and Aristotelian conceptualism. I was on the side of Plato and against Aristotle. For theism and against nominalistic conceptualism. Conceptualism is or attempts to be all light and intellect. While theism has a dark, heavy, tumescent, opaqueness to it. That is to say, theism has matter as that which individuates. Conceptualism does not believe individuation is real, therefore it dematerializes the world. As I said, it mathematicizes existence. Matter is enchantment and magic.

Well I don't understand . Aristotle was a marine biologist and how can a biologist not believe that individuation is real? How could Darwin not believe that individuation is real? True, Aristotle did not know about origin of the species via natural selection, however both those biologists described individual species. Maybe you will say a species is not an individual. Yet Aristotle and Darwin generalised from observations of individuals so individuals were basic . When Thomas Aquinas Christianised Aristotelian form Thomas said God had decreed the perfections of the forms.

What matters is life. For human life to continue we need societies and societies are not societies unless they support cultures, and religions are expressions of cultures.Societies are in rapid change, and Christianity needs the sort of Platonism that posits the form of the good. However it's unlikely that modern people will accept a pseudo material existence of Plato's forms.

The question concerns individuation. What makes an individual an individual. There are two main ideas in philosophy. One says that matter is what individuates. The other says that it is the uniqueness of the bundle of properties that makes the individual just that one. That second way is the so-called Bundle Theory of Individuation.

What is an individual object? Is it a universal Form individuated by matter or is it a unique bundle of properties, including spatial-temporal properties? If it is the first then when we encounter the individual it remains mysterious and other because matter is opaque and just there, without properties. If it is the second then the individual becomes intelligible because we conceptually know those properties that make it up.

Let me go back to that first way. Consider the Form that is there. It too is rather mysterious and other. It is an individual Form separate from all other Forms. It seems to have internal individuating matter. Strangeness piles on strangeness. We encounter matter, Form and their unity and we just stare at it. And if you are particularly attuned to all that you may feel a certain nausea. Then you understand Sartre’s Existentialism.

The second way has no nausea, no mystery, no otherness. One doesn’t encounter the object so much as come to understand it through examination. The individuals of biology are merely bundles of properties waiting to be understood. Biology is not mysticism. It is an attempt to build of system of inter-relating. The world becomes one organic whole. We are doing systems analysis.

Now for Darwinism. That is a very different thing from today’s Hegelian version of evolutionary biology. The Origin of the Species is a beautiful piece of poetry. The Struggle for Existence is an orgy of killing. Biology becomes Violence. Bio and Vio are etymologically the same. On Youtube you can find the movie Mondo Cane which marvelously illustrates the real Darwin, not today’s Hegelianism of universal inter-connection.

"The Struggle for Existence is an orgy of killing."

No, it's an orgy of reproduction (a redundant phrase), but death keeps the wheel of life rolling. And if existence were it's only end, it would not keep rolling, for existence is a carousel, ever revolving but never arriving anywhere - rather like your writing, to my tastes anyway.

Felix wrote: ↑June 25th, 2019, 10:50 pm "The Struggle for Existence is an orgy of killing."

No, it's an orgy of reproduction (a redundant phrase), but death keeps the wheel of life rolling. And if existence were it's only end, it would not keep rolling, for existence is a carousel, ever revolving but never arriving anywhere - rather like your writing, to my tastes anyway.

Yes, our tastes are different. Is that OK? Do you think I should be shot? Do you think God will abandon me? Do you think I should put ketchup on my eggs? I am obsessed with metaphysics. Is that immoral? I have no family and no property and the world just has to keep going without me. I always have an eye out for beauty. Beauty is a difficult child. You have such a commonsense, mature, civil way of thinking. You probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow. I’m sure you are. Do you think God has about had enough of me? My room is always a mess. Do you think it was poor toilet training that made me the way I am? You are wrong about one thing. I am ever arriving. The conclusion is always near. I grab it and then wait to play the game again. I am played.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 12:37 amYou probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow. I’m sure you are.

I bet you are as wrong as you were in predicting that I was a science officer rather than a baked muso, pop artist and wannabe writer glorying in her freedom from the daily grind.

Other people aren't nearly as "normal" as you imagine, just because they are a little less backward in coming forward than you - especially philosophy forumites. Self-absorption and lunacy is the norm in such places with reasonableness a refreshing breath of spring air!

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 12:37 amDo you think God has about had enough of me? My room is always a mess. Do you think it was poor toilet training that made me the way I am? You are wrong about one thing. I am ever arriving. The conclusion is always near. I grab it and then wait to play the game again. I am played.

Signs and symptoms that God has had enough of you:
- gasping for breath
- absence of heartbeat
- feeling bodiless as you fall into an endless void.

Greta wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 12:58 am

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 12:37 amYou probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow. I’m sure you are.

I bet you are as wrong as you were in predicting that I was a science officer rather than a baked muso, pop artist and wannabe writer glorying in her freedom from the daily grind.

Other people aren't nearly as "normal" as you imagine, just because they are a little less backward in coming forward than you - especially philosophy forumites. Self-absorption and lunacy is the norm in such places with reasonableness a refreshing breath of spring air!

GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 12:37 amDo you think God has about had enough of me? My room is always a mess. Do you think it was poor toilet training that made me the way I am? You are wrong about one thing. I am ever arriving. The conclusion is always near. I grab it and then wait to play the game again. I am played.

Signs and symptoms that God has had enough of you:
- gasping for breath
- absence of heartbeat
- feeling bodiless as you fall into an endless void.

I think your description of yourself is just a cover. I'm quite sure you are a science officer in the Empire. I am an expert in deception. i was a Boy Scout Leader for years. And an observer of "freedom lovers". I bet you even know how to drive a pick-up. And you are a consort of the Man in the Moon. Ha. What do you think Felix really is? I have no doubt but that he is another science officer. And walks at night in the dark. Be careful, God's angels are feeding you false information. As for the forumites, it seems that none of them know how to read ciphers. I know exactly what you mean by a baked muso. And so do the pedophile priests in that church near you. The time is near.

GaryLouisSmith wrote: "Do you think I should put ketchup on my eggs?"

Depends on how they're prepared, might be fine on an omelet, but on scrambled eggs, I don't recommend it - and make sure they are free range.

"Do you think God will abandon me?"

Nah, Jesus loves you, he told me so. But he also told me he will decline your breakfast invitations, two of his two least favorite foods are chicken embryos and ketchup, which is why you never hear them mentioned in the Bible - multiplying loaves and fishes, sure, but eggs or tomatoes? Never!

"You probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow."

Actually, I've always been an outsider: dreamer, musician, animal confidant. I just come here to practice rationality - I seem to be making some progress.

"You are wrong about one thing. I am ever arriving."

Well good, I'm happy to hear that, really I am. The welcome home cards must be piling up though.

Greta: "Signs and symptoms that God has had enough of you...."

Gosh, Greta, I was told those are signs that God misses you and wants you to come visit him, I hope that wasn't a tall tale!

Felix wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 3:13 am GaryLouisSmith wrote: "You probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow."

Actually, I've always been an outsider: dreamer, musician, animal confidant. I just come here to practice rationality - I seem to be making some progress.

Gary. I. Told. You. So.

Felix, good that you are an animal confidant. Other species, especially birds and large mammals, are terribly underestimated. I am a decent dog whisperer but cannot cope with humans. They are difficult beasts. Even cats are more reasonable.

Felix wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 3:13 amGreta: "Signs and symptoms that God has had enough of you...."

Gosh, Greta, I was told those are signs that God misses you and wants you to come visit him, I hope that wasn't a tall tale!

I did wonder about the old trope as I wrote the above but I figured that Big G has plenty of access to us whether we are in this vale of tears or singing with the choir invisible. I'm afraid you were probably lied to.

However, when one's particular self wears out or is irreparably damaged, then it is summarily replaced. God is a bit like Stock, Aitken and Waterman, who wrote almost the same song over and over in the 80s, hoping to create the perfect pop song. They never did. It was all rubbish. Another similarity to God.

However, the fat lady has not yet sung. There is still hope that the creation of Saggitarius A*, the Sun and the Earth (aka life on Earth) will achieve wisdom, finding less destructive and more sustainable ways of being.

Theists don't yet realise that God will most likely bless AI and cyborgs with the serenity that evaded almost all humans. They are halfway there with the anti-Biblical "prosperity gospel" where they figure that wealth is a reward for goodness. The meek will not inherit the Earth. They will become compost for those capable of surviving the tests that nature will send - and they will be the super rich, no doubt enhanced by medical nanobots or whatever.

So part-mechanoids appear most likely to be the chosen ones once the rest of us are scoured from the Earth in the Apocalypse. Those who live when the climate faeces hits the fan will be those who can live at that time. The blessed, so to speak.

There may even emerge a class of beings cloned from Ray Kurtzweil who, in realising that living forever was unlikely, will eventually decide to improve his chances with hundreds of little Rays. Perhaps, like the Unsullied, a colony of Rays could band together to start their own house?

Greta wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 3:40 am
I am a decent dog whisperer

I asked my village friend, a boy who can cut off the head of a buffalo with one sacrificial whack, if he thought that cats can see ghosts. He said he didn't think so, but he did think dogs could. What do you think? I'm beginning to think maybe you are a ghost.

Felix wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 3:13 am I just come here to practice rationality -

Why do you want to practice rationality? That seems totally wrong-headed to me.

Today, GaryLouisSmith wrote to Felix:

I always have an eye out for beauty. Beauty is a difficult child. You have such a commonsense, mature, civil way of thinking. You probably have a good job and your colleagues think you are a fine fellow. I’m sure you are. Do you think God has about had enough of me? My room is always a mess. Do you think it was poor toilet training that made me the way I am? You are wrong about one thing. I am ever arriving. The conclusion is always near. I grab it and then wait to play the game again. I am played.

You are right Beauty identifies herself by frisson. Frissons are necessary but not sufficient for Beauty who infiltrates unified order and chaos.

Belindi wrote: ↑June 26th, 2019, 6:07 am
You are right Beauty identifies herself by frisson. Frissons are necessary but not sufficient for Beauty who infiltrates unified order and chaos.

George Saintsbury in his History of English Prose Rhythms writes:

“It has, I have no doubt, occurred to other students of elaborate rhythmical prose that curiously large proportions of the most famous examples of it are concerned with dreams; and I should not suppose that many of them have failed to anticipate the following suggestion of the reason. Dreams themselves are nothing if not rhythmical; their singular fashion of progression (it is matter of commonest remark) floats the dreamer over the most irrational and impossible transitions and junctures (or rather breaches) of incident and subject, without jolt or jar. They thus combine—of their own nature and to the invariable experience of those who are fortunate enough to have much to do with them—the greatest possible variety with the least possible disturbance. Now this combination, as we have been faithfully putting forth, is the very soul—the quintessence, the constituting form and idea—of harmonious prose. Unfortunately it is not every one who has the faculty of producing this combination in words; fortunately there are some who have.”

There are a number of ways to achieve unity in a piece of writing, philosophical or otherwise. For philosophy, one of those ways is a clean, logical progression, another is a steady dialectical peeling back, but, as in that quote above, it can also be had in numerous prose, the rhythm of dreams, captivating metrical variation, telling repetition, the smooth jolt of the irrational. Something is awry. The thing itself is close at hand. The eye works into itself. And the soul is beside itself. The night trick. Fearsome, fearless philosophy.

Saintsbury says this is one of the most beautiful sentences in all of literature. It is by De Quincey. Notice how the rhythms constantly vary until they are almost chaos, but they are the smooth order of a dream.

"And her eyes if they were ever seen would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams and with wrecks of forgotten delirium."

"And her eyes if they were ever seen would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams and with wrecks of forgotten delirium."

De Quincy has already indicated the form by using semicolons.

A and C are basically made up of seven iambs , and B is three iambs.It's like musical sonata form exposition , development, and recapitulation. But it's better because besides having recognisable form the sentence means something;