Argument From Desire

[Robert F. Smith]

..............................................................................

....................................................................................., nothing more.

Merely this, and nothing more. (Poe)

[cursor]

Actually, Edgar Allen Poe's character was just a bit more questionable than ...

[Calm]

"Every natural or innate desire corresponds to some objective state of affairs that fulfills it"

But what makes something natural or innate? A baby is unlikely to have a desire for something "greater"...kids often see God as another type of parent or friend and the younger they are the closer and simpler God seems to them, they talk much more of Jesus because of pictures.

If one assumes the innate desire demonstrates the existence of the object, then a partly incorporeal one in three does not seem the likely form of that desire.

What desire to something greater would a human that has been raised in very restricted, non loving, non communicative ways have?

Without being taught, what desire towards God does someone who is deaf and mute and blind have? Is it the words given to people that create the desire, the knowledge that others have the desire for God that creates it or the desire that creates words?

How would it even be possible to know without some rather cruel research beginning with newborns to find out what desires are really innate or natural outside of the cultural imperatives are that are placed upon them and what desires are inherited from society.

[3DOP]

cursor, hi again.

 

Yours was a perfectly valid complaint. Mine was not intended as a complaint but sincerely expressed my limitations with regards to the conversation at hand. I certainly do understand your legitimate position regarding my participation. I am vacationing away from my books at the moment but as it happens, I brought one with me that I was working on this afternoon. I didn't expect it in a book which seems primarily devoted to trying to help readers to be less wicked, but the next chapter is about Plato, and Aristotle and Aquinas and our....I have to go look at Christmas lights....anyway, no worries about your objections. I completely understand. God bless.

 

Rory   

[Garden Girl]

I always found it interesting that no matter the environment or people, i.e.,the darkest corner of Borneo for example, many of the inhabitants will erect a pile of rocks or place a rock or some object in a prominent place and "worship" it... to me this is an innate desire... something from our deepest selves, which...  IMO... is part of our psyche whether conscious or unconscious that is a throwback to our origins in premortal realms...  TheTyler said it didn't necessarily equate with "God" but perhaps just the desire or need to look to something larger than ourselves... but even in that sense, IMO it is based on something echoing in the far reaches of our deepest selves that causes almost all people wherever they are to turn to "something"...

For those of us in the "civilized" world we have articulated this in our various religious approaches leading to "God."

 

GG

Edited December 12, 2014 by Garden Girl

[mfbukowski]

Merely this, and nothing more. (Poe)

That reference is pretty profound - and fits very well with the point I was making- thanks for that, I would not have noticed it without you pointing it out.

 

In fact Poe seen as a romantic poet was the precursor to what has become "American Philosophy"- James, Dewey, and ultimately Rorty, Putnam arguably, et al.

 

The philosophy grows out of American Literature, so there are very direct roots in Romanticism.

 

Henry James was of course William's father and a Swedenborgian, and Joseph of course has been suspected of plagiarizing Swedenborg which is a preposterous notion.  But clearly Joseph's pragmatism was in the American culture and was in fact a predecessor to all of these movements, though it seems no one recognizes that.

 

Poe here puts forth the concept that emotion is indeed one of the most important building blocks of human experience, not to be ignored or given second-class status to what we now call "science".   That bleak poem indeed is about a character building his own reality - not the ideal we are speaking of in Mormonism, but one quite the opposite.  It's bleak protagonist projects darkness as much as Joseph projected light- really it is the yin to Joseph's yang.

 

Pretty cool insight- thanks again for that.

[3DOP]

Mark, Hi again.

 

Your reply puzzles me. Why do you speak of the "dictionary gods"? I don't think I place any extraordinary reliance on dictionaries. I cannot recall having ever proposed that a dictionary proves my positions. 

 

But to the substance of what you mentioned after talking about my presumed belief regarding dictionaries. You point out that there is an English dictionary that defines a noun as a word that identifies a person, place, or thing. You then point out the obvious, that a noun is a word, according to the dictionary. I didn't need a dictionary to know that but so far, so good. Except that is how you conclude. I don't get it. How does that disprove that nouns identify things? Nouns are words. Of course. But what do they identify? Things or nothings?

 

I am trying to understand you. Let me also ask, not just for this thread, but in general, do you think you understand what I say? I sometimes have doubts that I made myself understood to you and find myself surprised at your disagreeing with me about something that seems to me to be obvious as well as innocuous.

 

I am wondering if our inability to understand each other stems from a rigorous materialism on your part, which is not necessarily as rigorous for other LDS, who I seem to understand perfectly well. From the point of view of a rigorous materialism, the only things that are real are material. To qualify as a thing, it has to be made out of matter. I recall having a conversation years ago at ZLMB, perhaps a more than usually rigorous materialist, where the LDS party was willing to say that love was made out of matter, rather than acknowledge that love was nothing. If you would indulge me in a short multiple choice quiz, it might help me understand you better.

 

Q. Which answer most accurately answers the question, "What is love?"

 

A. Love is an immaterial thing.

B. Love is a material thing.

C. Love is nothing. 

D. Love is something else.

 

---------------------------------

 

Cursor, anyway to continue my conversation of last night, I will be reading a chapter by a prominent Dominican of the 20th Century who alludes to the argument from desire. The book is titled, Providence. I thought it was pretty wild that there should be a chapter in this book about the subject at hand. Anyway, I shouldn't be so stubborn. I will not comment further on the argument from desire until and unless I watch the video.   

Edited December 12, 2014 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

Mark, Hi again.

 

Your reply puzzles me. Why do you speak of the "dictionary gods"? I don't think I place any extraordinary reliance on dictionaries. I cannot recall having ever proposed that a dictionary proves my positions. 

 

But to the substance of what you mentioned after talking about my presumed belief regarding dictionaries. You point out that there is an English dictionary that defines a noun as a word that identifies a person, place, or thing. You then point out the obvious, that a noun is a word, according to the dictionary. I didn't need a dictionary to know that but so far, so good. Except that is how you conclude. I don't get it. How does that disprove that nouns identify things? Nouns are words. Of course. But what do they identify? Things or nothings?

 

I am trying to understand you. Let me also ask, not just for this thread, but in general, do you think you understand what I say? I sometimes have doubts that I made myself understood to you and find myself surprised at your disagreeing with me about something that seems to me to be obvious as well as innocuous.

 

I am wondering if our inability to understand each other stems from a rigorous materialism on your part, which is not necessarily as rigorous for other LDS, who I seem to understand perfectly well. From the point of view of a rigorous materialism, the only things that are real are material. To qualify as a thing, it has to be made out of matter. I recall having a conversation years ago at ZLMB, perhaps a more than usually rigorous materialist, where the LDS party was willing to say that love was made out of matter, rather than acknowledge that love was nothing. If you would indulge me in a short multiple choice quiz, it might help me understand you better.

 

Q. Which answer most accurately answers the question, "What is love?"

 

A. Love is an immaterial thing.

B. Love is a material thing.

C. Love is nothing. 

D. Love is something else.

 

---------------------------------

 

Cursor, anyway to continue my conversation of last night, I will be reading a chapter by a prominent Dominican of the 20th Century who alludes to the argument from desire. The book is titled, Providence. I thought it was pretty wild that there should be a chapter in this book about the subject at hand. Anyway, I shouldn't be so stubborn. I will not comment further on the argument from desire until and unless I watch the video.   

Sorry for being confusing.

 

I agree we have trouble communicating exactly because I have spent 40 years learning how not to think the way a Neoplatonist thinks.  I love you as a friend and fellow traveler through this "vale of tears", and I used to think the same way you do, but along my journey I took a different turn and now see all of life and reality itself in a different way.  Totally.

 

And in this video, we find the good father speaking exactly a highly refined version of exactly what you are saying and thinking, so in a real way we have a collision of word-worlds here, so there is bound to be confusion.  And our little problem here is not just between you and me, but shows the difference between Western philosophy as it now exists, opposed to the history of western philosophy.

 

If we were together sitting in a restaurant right now, I would have you look around and see and feel what was happening around you.

 

I will now put in italics my imaginary monologue- I tried messing with quotes and getting the syntax right, but gave up- I just now throw it all into italics.  Pretend we are in a restaurant.  Read it at the pace of a conversation.  Imagine stops for emphasis.  Imagine pointing around and gestures and some low-level socially acceptable enthusiasm attached. 

 

 

Tap on the table.  Listen to the babble of voices.  Smell the cooking food.  Look at the people sitting around us.  Look at me waving my arms in front of you.    I would say to you- "Rory- all of THIS (tap table, wave of arms, voice raised a little) all you see hear and feel is what is REAL.  Where is all this happening?   Out here!! BUT WHERE IS ALL THAT YOU CAN POSSIBLY KNOW ABOUT IT?  It's in here!!" 

 

Now I point to your head.  I draw a little box in the air with my hands about the size of your head.  "All you can know about it all is in your head. All you can know about all this is brought into it by the wonderful equipment God gave you to see, hear smell and taste.   And now we are talking about it - all that is in your mind and soul and heart and head- we are talking about it using a very poor medium- WORDS.  WORDS are vibrations in the air my tongue makes and then those vibrations go into your ears and head and heart, and soul and you use all those to try to decode the message."

 

I would continue "There are no "things" in your head. I can see your head- no chairs in there!  Wouldn't fit!! (smile)  ALL WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IS LANGUAGE ITSELF, BECAUSE FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, TO COMMUNICATE, ALL WE HAVE IS LANGUAGE..  There ARE no "things" there are only words- there are vibrations in the air.  WHAT WE EXPERIENCE- RED BLUE YELLOW- THE SOUND OF TINKLING SILVERWARE- THE SMELL OF SIZZLING STEAK- ALL WE EXPERIENCE IS NOT "IN" THE WORDS.  God is not in the words.  The steak is not in the words,.

 

Look here on the menu!  New York steak- $15.95.  THOSE ARE WORDS.  You say them and they bring you this wonderful "thing" that smells wonderfully, Onions, baked potato- ALL OF THOSE EXPERIENCES ARE IN YOUR MIND HEART AND SPIRIT-  they are not on the menu where it says "New York Steak"!

 

All you have to "represent" all that are a few letters- squiggles in black ink on a white background 11 letters that say "New York Steak"

 

So where's the beef? 

 

Is it out here- or in your mind?  WHAT DO THOSE WORDS THEMSELVES EVEN MEAN?  HOW CAN WE SAY "WHERE" THE BEEF IS??  The question itself when you think about it, is meaningless.

 

IS THE BEEF OUT THERE? YES.  If you want to look at it that way- there it is on the plate.  IS THE BEEF IN HERE?  (pointing to my head) YES it's in here. Is the beef in THERE? (pointing to your head) YES .  Can that guy over there come over here and have the same beef in his head at the same time we all do?  YES.in a sense he can.

 

So where's the beef?  IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT- THE QUESTION ITSELF DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE.  We know what 'where' means- we know what 'the beef' is, and if we were using that question to find whether or not the steak was in the refrigerator or on your plate, the question would make sense.  But abstractly- Where IS the beef- in a metaphysical, abstract, sense- the question does not make sense.

 

And if you think really hard about it, NO questions make sense if you get all introspective about them and make up castles in the air.

 

It's all just words.

 

So stop worrying about words like "real" and "truth" and "exists" and all those words that we can't really define ultimately.  We know what they mean, we can use them in a sentence.

 

Did the waitress bring you your steak?  We know what that means.  You answer yes or no.  That answer is true or false, either she brought the steak or she didn't.

 

But "what is truth"??  I have no clue.  Is the steak out there or in my head?  I have no clue how to answer that.

 

Is love a thing?  I have no clue.  There is no way to answer that.  Love is a word and thing is a word- is "love" in the category of "things"?

 

It all depends on what you want to say about it, I guess."

 

So that is my perspective- hope it helps, but it may not.  So am I a "materialist"?  Yes, I guess so.  Hashtag materialist.

 

But since LDS believe that spirit is matter, I guess we all are, but others just don't know it because they haven't thought it through. 

 

I can only do so much. 

Edited December 12, 2014 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Incidentally I stole the above from William James

 

Proposition of value versus existential judgment

James believed that the study of the origin of an object or an idea does not play a role in the study of its value. He asserted that existential judgment, or the scientific examination of an object's origin, is a separate matter from that object's value. As an example, he alluded to the Quaker religion and its founder, George Fox. Many of the scientists in James' audience immediately reject all aspects of the Quaker religion because evidence suggests that Fox was schizophrenic. Calling this rejection medical materialism, James insisted that the origin of Fox's notions about religion should not come into account when assessing the value of the Quaker religion. James proposed, somewhat sarcastically, that his audience's atheism was perhaps a dysfunction of the liver. Some believe science to be superior to religion because of religion's seemingly vain, unfounded, or perhaps insane origin. In his lectures, James asserted that these claims, while perhaps historically or epistemologically interesting, play no role in the separate question of religion's value.

Reality versus symbols of reality

The lectures discussed the distinction between symbolism and reality. Symbols, such as the word "steak" on a menu, do not embody the actuality of the objects they represent. The word "steak" on a menu merely points to some slab of meat in the back of the restaurant. In a similar way, James posits that all of science is fundamentally detached from reality since the tools of science are merely pointers to some actual objective realm. He criticized his audience for the scientific tendency to ignore the unseen aspects of life and the universe. As an example, he discussed the way the notion of a lemon causes salivation in the mouth of an individual; while there is no lemon, there is clearly a process occurring worthy of academic inquiry.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience

[3DOP]

Okay...I now qualify to discuss the subject matter having watched the video which was a painless exercise as cursor had suggested.

 

So Mark...did you notice Fr. Baron had a volume on his bookshelf that was either written by William James or was about him? It was on the left side of the screen.

 

I am afraid I still don't understand. Goodness does everybody else but me understand? Nobody ever challenges you but me it seems, and yet none of them seem to talk like you, and it doesn't seem like you ever have the same problems with what they say as you do with me...maybe I have missed it. 

 

What is confusing now is that I knew I disagreed with how you presented the discussion in the restaurant. To the question, "Where is the beef?", I would always answer, "On the plate", unless I had some reason to think you were referring to the word instead of what the word identifies. To the question "Where is the idea of beef?", I would certainly say it was not confined to the plate. I don't think ideas are material and so I would not limit its location, except in an imprecise way to where it might be relevant to say, "It is in the head of someone who is pondering the idea." But the idea would exist without my head thinking about it. In fact, the idea of beef was around before I was born so obviously it cannot be confined to my head.

 

But back to my confusion. It is that I think I like some of the second paragraph from William James where he draws the distinction between the symbol, usually word(s), and reality. It seems to me like you are trying to make them one and the same thing. I don't suggest that I would have comprehensive knowledge of anything, but it seems like I can distinguish between a New York Steak as reality and New York Steak, the symbol (words). Both are real, and one is ideal. 

 

Mark, you know I have been a truck driver for a long time now. I haven't been schooled as to how to think about these things like you have. I have read a little bit. Just a little. I am very far from being able to show you any academic credentials for being in opposition to your long pondered and studied points of view. Despite my own feelings of academic inadequacy, I find your persistence and conviction to be much more compelling than your arguments. Why do you think I am the one who constantly arrives at these "wrong ways of thinking" (from your perspective of course) without even trying? Am I the only person here with this problem? I can't be the only person on this board who would think, that a significant reality would be ignored if I denied after the waitress brought it, that the steak, not the idea, was on the table?

 

I beg you not to be frustrated with me. Your patient willingness to try to help me is very evident, and I think you do it out of a good spirit that only wants to open my eyes to a world that I cannot see. I can admit that being "deaf and blind" to your way of thought might have an element of choice in it. I fear how you think. I don't know how I could understand the Gospel if I had such doubts about what is real as you seem to indicate I should have. Even about truth and love. If Jesus had communicated your way, how could He have revealed that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life? It seems like with the same confusion that is cast on whether there is a steak on the table, we would if we were consistent, need to be much more critical, and probably dismissive of the "truths" that Jesus and His Apostles claimed to bring by means of symbols, and the ideas that represent the realities they taught. 

 

In other words, I have to wonder how one who doesn't "have a clue" about "What is truth?", or whether "love is a thing", gives the Jesus Christ revealed in the Scriptures a pass. It seems like a similar application of your way of thinking about our hoped for steak luncheon, should result in the overthrow of religion revealed in words.

 

God bless, Mark. Say what you need to say. I can take it. Or out of understandable frustration, say nothing. You are not obliged. Thank you very much for your long suffering efforts. You have such an admirable fervor for what you believe, and maybe that is the greatest mystery for me.

 

The heat is on and the rain is coming down in SoCal. A great day to go find that book I was talking about with the chapter on Argument from Desire.

 

Later,

 

Rory 

[mfbukowski]

Rory you are a very intelligent person, don't put yourself down for any reason, least of all because you have not chosen to fill your mind with this stuff.  I am clearly the weirdo around here.

 

You said:

 

But the idea would exist without my head thinking about it. In fact, the idea of beef was around before I was born so obviously it cannot be confined to my head.

Certainly the word for "beef" in some language was around before you were born, but where was the idea for beef or cows even when there were no people to make up words?

For your "idea" to be correct, the idea would have to exist independently of anyone thinking it.

Where are all the ideas that have not been thought yet?

I cannot even tell you what has not yet been discovered. I could say "time travel"- but that is an idea that already "exists", so is the idea of unicorns and in my book is in the same category as "substance" in the Neoplatonic sense that we always argue about. Words. That's all they are.

Do you think there is a realm of ideas independent of people to think them, floating around waiting to be found?

Plato would say "yes" and perhaps you would too. I am not buying it!

There are symbols floating out there that point to nothing yet existing? What does that even mean?

Edited December 12, 2014 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Another point is that I think we are drawn to religions that make sense to us.

Catholicism does not make sense to me. This video does not make sense to me. You are Catholic, maybe it makes sense to you. If it does you are in the right place. You are in the minority here because you think differently than we Mormons do.

Nothing wrong with that. God made us all and gave us all different ways of seeing the "elephant", and he teaches us the way we need to be taught.

[3DOP]

Oh goodness. I think an idea presupposes a thinker. No thinker, no idea. We agree! I am a Wittgensteinian yet?

Edited December 12, 2014 by 3DOP

[mfbukowski]

Oh goodness. I think an idea presupposes a thinker. No thinker, no idea. We agree! I am a Wittgensteinian yet?

Getting there!! Fantastic!

Now think about the implications of that. How do we express ideas? How are they communicated?

Words. Language.

Can you think an idea without words? Can you see where I am going with this?

[mfbukowski]

The last step:

If we can only express "ideas" in language, confused language makes for confused ideas.

 

If you get THAT far, you will be a Wittgensteinian!

[mfbukowski]

Father Barron thinks that food is an "unconditioned desire" as opposed to a "conditioned desire".  If I understand him correctly, conditioned desires are desires for things like sports cars etc, which are put into our minds by advertising and our culture whereas unconditioned desires are desires which flow somehow from nature.

 

Think about that.  He is saying that because a desire comes from nature, it is not "conditioned".

 

This of course depends on the definition of "conditioned".   It sure seems to me that I have learned that eating makes me be no longer hungry.  I guess it's ok to be conditioned by "nature" but not ok to be conditioned by culture.

 

I suppose that is because culture is bad and nature is good.  But why is nature good?  Aren't we here to overcome the natural man?

 

There are so many loose ends and rabbit trails- so many questions with no answers.  I would love to sit down with him and do some linguistic analysis and deconstruction of these semantic confusions.

 

Hunger proves the existence of food.  Our organs of desire "participate" in their object- food. 

 

That is a very strange way of saying that our stomach is built to digest food.

 

It's hard to imagine that our having a stomach proves the existence of God.  Very hard.  You really have to do some serious gymnastics to even get close.

 

It's amazing what words can do to your head.

[Robert F. Smith]

That reference is pretty profound - and fits very well with the point I was making- thanks for that, I would not have noticed it without you pointing it out.

 

In fact Poe seen as a romantic poet was the precursor to what has become "American Philosophy"- James, Dewey, and ultimately Rorty, Putnam arguably, et al.

 

The philosophy grows out of American Literature, so there are very direct roots in Romanticism.

 

Henry James was of course William's father and a Swedenborgian, and Joseph of course has been suspected of plagiarizing Swedenborg which is a preposterous notion.  But clearly Joseph's pragmatism was in the American culture and was in fact a predecessor to all of these movements, though it seems no one recognizes that.

 

Poe here puts forth the concept that emotion is indeed one of the most important building blocks of human experience, not to be ignored or given second-class status to what we now call "science".   That bleak poem indeed is about a character building his own reality - not the ideal we are speaking of in Mormonism, but one quite the opposite.  It's bleak protagonist projects darkness as much as Joseph projected light- really it is the yin to Joseph's yang.

 

Pretty cool insight- thanks again for that.

I was just trying to be cute, and had no idea that it was an insight until you pointed it out.  I  hope that you are going to include this powerful notion in your book.  If so, note these references:

 

Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.  The 15 years “during which the matrix of the modern world was largely formed” (xvii), was a period of peace marked by the shift “from the Age of Reason to the Age of Romanticism” (111) – admitting the necessity of religion (111) and “the centrality of the irrational” (112);

 

Terryl Givens, “‘Lightning Out of Heaven’: Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community,”BYU Studies, 45/1 (2006):4-23, on Joseph’s Romantic legacy.

 

Robert Rees, “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” Dialogue, 35/3 (2002):83-112.

[mfbukowski]

I was just trying to be cute, and had no idea that it was an insight until you pointed it out.  I  hope that you are going to include this powerful notion in your book.  If so, note these references:

 

Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.  The 15 years “during which the matrix of the modern world was largely formed” (xvii), was a period of peace marked by the shift “from the Age of Reason to the Age of Romanticism” (111) – admitting the necessity of religion (111) and “the centrality of the irrational” (112);

 

Terryl Givens, “‘Lightning Out of Heaven’: Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community,”BYU Studies, 45/1 (2006):4-23, on Joseph’s Romantic legacy.

 

Robert Rees, “Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and the American Renaissance,” Dialogue, 35/3 (2002):83-112.

Thanks for the references!

It amazes me when I make something up and find out later that I didn't.