The senses tell us what is (and is) right here & right now, although hearing certainly gives us a sense of the passage of time, especially music, which, as they say, is time made audible.
But there is no knowledge per se at the level of the senses, since knowledge is immaterial and transcendent, i.e., vertical.
Oh by the way, we're still working on the cosmic flowchart, starting this morning at the bottom, where science lives:
Modern science, by and large, ignores those phenomena which are not within the reach of man's sensory faculties (Bina & Ziarani, heretofore BZ).
I don't know what's worse, when science stays in its lane because it insists there are no other lanes -- as if all of reality is some hick town with only one road passing through -- or when it changes lanes and pretends to be capable of a deeper metaphysic.
To establish a scientific law is less satisfying that to discover evidence that destroys it.
If one is going to be logically consistent, to say I am a materialist is equivalent to saying I do not exist, and why would we pay attention to the opinions of someone who doesn't even have the courtesy to exist? First exist, then we'll talk.
The top of our flowchart is reserved for necessary principles that do not rely upon any other principles, and presuppose no prior truth.
A proposition is false when it obstructs truer propositions.
These propositions are in us by nature( i.e., they are self-evident), nor can we deny them without falling into absurdity -- for example, beginning the flow chart with the pseudo-principle that "there is no truth," which is false if true, thus violating the principle of noncontradiction. Sad!
Conversely, everything may be reduced to the principles in our cosmic flowchart, and if not, to hell with it. Our flowchart, whatever it turns out to be,
should be able to account for all beings in such a way that it cannot be refuted by evidence (BZ).
Note the whatever it turns out to be. Sounds like I'm presupposing the success of our quest, but it's true: I am certain the map exists, and that the search for it will bear fruit, even if I am not literally holding it in my hands. I know that if I take the time and trouble to draw the thing, it will be there.
Why so confident?
Oh, just a feeling.
Not an emotion, mind you. Rather, like walking along a plain and seeing a rising mountain way off in the distance. You can't make out any details, but you know it's there, obviously.
Could it be a mirage? Hmm... If you're going to go in that direction, might as well ask, "could I be a mirage?"
Could everything be an illusion?
Nah, because then you would have the absolute certitude that everything is an illusion, and whence this certitude? How did it, of all things, get in here? There is just no way to get around the Absolute, even if you absolutely deny it.
The mountain is the Absolute. You may insist it's nothing, but
Nothingness is the shadow of God,
and shadows are a necessary consequence of the Light. Even absurdity presuppsoes the Intelligible.
So let's get on with the climb. Where's our purple sherpa?
Most philosophies are obstacles to avoid enroute but a few are mountain ranges that one is forced to cross.
Especially this one. By the way, a mountain is not a 45º degree wall staring us in the face, rather, more like a rising plain. Just keep walking toward it and before you know it, you're on it. Isn't this the common experience?
It reminds me of when I was studying psychology way down in grad school. There was a point at which I was no longer looking at it from down below, but inside and on top of it (not at the very top, but at least the foothills). The awarding of a Ph.D. is supposed to be a formal ceremony to signify that one has climbed this particular mountain, but...
But what if it means one has only internalized a certain map of the mountain? Worse yet, what if the map is totally detached from the actual mountain? Yes, it gets worse, because what if it is required that one pledge allegiance to a map that is not only unreal but cannot possibly be real?
Lucky for me, I graduated before that happened, but just barely.
Back to the flowchart. Here is a helpful passage:
The notions of reality and being are interrelated. That is real which is, and that which is is thereby real. Therefore, to speak of reality is to speak of being, and vice versa.
Tautology, or hate crime?
The latter: for example, sex is no longer anchored in the reality of biological and scientific fact, rather, according to the American Psychological Association,
to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions and behaviors....
Some who do not identify as either male or female prefer the term “gender nonbinary” or “genderqueer.”
"Prefer," meaning You had better affirm my delusion, or no Ph.D. for you! I'm a little skeptical, but that's a hate crime too.
12 comments:
A kinda sorta out-of-the-blue question: did McGilchrist ever get to the philosophical dichotomy of the RH/LH distinction? As you've been writing about it, I keep wondering about how the analytic/continental divide in philosophy plays into all this.
He really likes Bergson, and process philosophy more generally.
...why would we pay attention to the opinions of someone who doesn't even have the courtesy to exist? First exist, then we'll talk.
Ha - I'd love to see someone come out and put it this bluntly in one of those podcast debates (any one where it's essentially Person of Faith vs. Flatland Knowitall, almost regardless of topic), then sit back with a bowl of popcorn.
Sounds like I'm presupposing the success of our quest
Well we're here, so somehow it all has to work out...
Clown World strikes again: Wodehouse now comes with trigger warnings. Time to make sure you have copies of his complete works stashed away before he gets canceled, or worse - "updated" to suit modern sensibilities.
The left should love the idea of a white servant.
I know a really good trigger for leftists:
"Death of the American Dream."
Best said with an arrogant sneer. And don't forget to blame them for all of it.
Process philosophy, eh? Sounds like another variation on Heraclitus.
Yes, I'm very much a layman.
Yes, it's ultimately warmed over Heraclitus. To quote our friend Nicolás, "It is not so much that men change their ideas, as the ideas change their disguises. In the discourse of the centuries, the same voices are in dialogue."
Obviously we need a philosophy that accounts for both being and becoming, hence, common sense realism.
Common sense is the father's house to which philosophy returns, every so often, feeble and emaciated.
Except for Plato/Socrates (who get the Pioneer exception on their goofs), Aristotle, and Aquinas, they're pretty much all warmed over Sophists. BTW, Aristotle's take down of the various positions of the sophists in his Metaphysics, never gets old.
So to speak.
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