The Book of Mormon's Use of the Tower of Babel and the Adamic Language as the Power of God

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Ahab said:

Whatever works to convey the idea, I think. Different strokes for different folks is fairly obvious, which pretty much rules our the idea that there is only one best method to communicate ideas about truth or reality.

Even direct revelation from God doesn't work with everybody with most people needing at least some experience with Satan before they learn the difference between Satan and God.

Yes- and that is what we mean when we say "truth is relative"- not that the perfect path itself is relative, just that the linguistic expression of what seems to be the best method to communicate ideas ABOUT truth is relative to "different strokes for different folks"

If you are a drunk on skid row, the Salvation Army may be the best path for you at the moment.   If you are a Buddhist, meditation which gets your closer to experiencing God might be the best path for you.   If your culture is Catholic, perhaps you need transubstantiation to get the wheels turning to thinking about reality.

If you are a Pragmatist perhaps that is what you need to get beyond logic to true experience of God Himself.

But I am convinced that this Mormon philosophy is the most "useful" path for all humanity, were they able to understand that directly for themselves, once they get past the "different strokes" level of understanding.

To me, that is the meaning of "the only true and LIVING church"

The bottom line for me is giving up on reason and logic to reach these ends altogether and simply "grok" God beyond language.

That is also totally Wittgensteinian.  Language is useful but it is not "reality", it is not "things as they are".  Only direct experience, not language, is "things as they are" except perhaps if we postulate Adamic as "things as they are" and that postulate is a religious belief of course, not itself based on logic, but a total leap of faith into what is unknowable linguistically or logically

Edited March 22, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

Hmm, so what was the reason that God gave for confounding the one language that was used by the people at the tower of Babel who did not communicate with him for understanding? How was that reason described?  Or why is it that God is given the credit for confounding the language of people who were trying to get (back) to heaven?

Seems to me that they were way off base, as a whole.  They understood each other (before their one language was confounded), but they (as a whole) did not correctly understand God or God's way of getting them (back) to heaven.  And, as a whole, they weren't communicating with God, otherwise they like the brother of Jared would have been appealing to God for help and understanding.

So there we have it, I think.  Those who were communing and communicating with God and thus maintained the pure language of Adam, and on the other hand, those who were left to their own understanding however far off base they as wanderers happened to be. 

Moral of the story? Proverbs 3, to me.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/prov/3?lang=eng

[mfbukowski]

On 3/15/2017 at 6:30 PM, notHagoth7 said:

Your comments bring to mind the movie Arrival, where studying/learning the visitors' language altered the way the linguist perceived/experienced time. Fascinating concept. It's a known fact that the words/languages we use alter the way we think/live.

Agreed, also loved that film.  I think that the fact that language is sequential - one-word-at-a-time- possibly conditions us to think in terms of time and one event following another.

I know that in religious experience you can get many concepts "at once" like an explosion of intelligence revealing many "pieces" of information which can be sorted out for days.

Symbolic understanding in visual art can also deliver non-sequential concepts through the proximity of placing symbols on top of each other etc.  Imagine perhaps a swastika superimposed over a hammer and sickle which might to some instantly convey the tyranny of a system designed to make workers free.

Or perhaps this kind of symbol which conveys much information wordlessly and instantaneously, but most importantly, non-sequentially.

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, Ahab said:

Hmm, so what was the reason that God gave for confounding the one language that was used by the people at the tower of Babel who did not communicate with him for understanding? How was that reason described?  Or why is it that God is given the credit for confounding the language of people who were trying to get (back) to heaven?

Seems to me that they were way off base, as a whole.  They understood each other (before their one language was confounded), but they (as a whole) did not correctly understand God or God's way of getting them (back) to heaven.  And, as a whole, they weren't communicating with God, otherwise they like the brother of Jared would have been appealing to God for help and understanding.

So there we have it, I think.  Those who were communing and communicating with God and thus maintained the pure language of Adam, and on the other hand, those who were left to their own understanding however far off base they as wanderers happened to be. 

Moral of the story? Proverbs 3, to me.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/prov/3?lang=eng

Frankly I see the story of the Tower of Babel as an allegory against expecting human effort through technology to enable us to get closer to God, as the tower was expected to enable the builders to get closer to God.   It is like today's atheists looking for objective scientific "evidence" for God's existence, without understanding that the only way to God is through faith and spirituality, not human technology.   It reminds me of guys like Dawkins who think theists are idiots for believing in a being without evidence that He "exists" in the only definition of existence they understand- objective evidence.  It is exactly like launching a space probe with the intention of taking a picture of God- it is using the wrong tools to achieve an objective they can never achieve.   You cannot get to God by building a tower no matter how high you build it.

Thinking you can is a category error, as much as thinking that you can make an intelligent description of all God's attributes

We LDS speak about the "philosophies of men" vs scripture, which to me actually means the Holy Ghost.  For me even scripture, though inspired and able to INDUCE the presence of the Holy Ghost is itself a "philosophy of men" since it is linguistic- reading it is NOT the experience of the presence of God though of course it does point the way to correct conduct etc.   But you cannot EXPERIENCE God by reading ABOUT Him- that takes prayer and direct personal revelation.

Our language IS confounded today- and that is the point of this thread- at least my comments on it.  Language is hopelessly ambiguous and unable to describe the most inconsequential direct experiences, like even just the experience of seeing color.  As I have mentioned many times, you cannot describe the difference between red and green to a blind man, much less describe the experience of knowing God on a personal basis using language.   Scripture is wonderful but it can only take you so far- it has to be applied in your heart to have any real effect in your life.

Wittgenstein was a fideist and profoundly aware of these issues as was William James and Kierkegaard and others.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism

I have benefited much from reading these authors, and they have taught me all I know, which is only common sense when you see it.

But they understood perfectly the "confounding of language" when discussing spiritual matters.  They essentially saw philosophy itself as the Tower of Babel.

 

[Ahab]

19 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Frankly I see the story of the Tower of Babel as an allegory against expecting human effort through technology to enable us to get closer to God, as the tower was expected to enable the builders to get closer to God.   It is like today's atheists looking for objective scientific "evidence" for God's existence, without understanding that the only way to God is through faith and spirituality, not human technology.   It reminds me of guys like Dawkins who think theists are idiots for believing in a being without evidence that He "exists" in the only definition of existence they understand- objective evidence.  It is exactly like launching a space probe with the intention of taking a picture of God- it is using the wrong tools to achieve an objective they can never achieve.   You cannot get to God by building a tower no matter how high you build it.

Thinking you can is a category error, as much as thinking that you can make an intelligent description of all God's attributes

We LDS speak about the "philosophies of men" vs scripture, which to me actually means the Holy Ghost.  For me even scripture, though inspired and able to INDUCE the presence of the Holy Ghost is itself a "philosophy of men" since it is linguistic- reading it is NOT the experience of the presence of God though of course it does point the way to correct conduct etc.   But you cannot EXPERIENCE God by reading ABOUT Him- that takes prayer and direct personal revelation.

Our language IS confounded today- and that is the point of this thread- at least my comments on it.  Language is hopelessly ambiguous and unable to describe the most inconsequential direct experiences, like even just the experience of seeing color.  As I have mentioned many times, you cannot describe the difference between red and green to a blind man, much less describe the experience of knowing God on a personal basis using language.   Scripture is wonderful but it can only take you so far- it has to be applied in your heart to have any real effect in your life.

Wittgenstein was a fideist and profoundly aware of these issues as was William James and Kierkegaard and others.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism

I have benefited much from reading these authors, and they have taught me all I know, which is only common sense when you see it.

But they understood perfectly the "confounding of language" when discussing spiritual matters.  They essentially saw philosophy itself as the Tower of Babel.

I totally agree with you on all of that, and was essentially saying the same thing in my own way.  We all need a source to give us a greater understanding of reality and when we rely too much on our own understanding we don't really understand our own selves, who and what we are and where we came from, even when we may think that we do understand.

[mfbukowski]

Here is an interesting journal which explores the frontiers of some of the ideas I am suggesting.

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/special/np/

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/special/np/

About

 

Quote

 

Nearly 20 years ago, Francisco Varela launched a research program called neurophenomenology (Varela 1996). This project aimed to develop a science of consciousness that includes, as active and explicit components, methodologies that account for the, so far neglected, subjective aspect of experience. Thus neurophenomenology proposed to incorporate an experiential approach into scientific research, based on techniques that allow the first-person exploration and account of experience, such as phenomenology and meditation practices. In addition, this program also proposed a conceptual shift from representationalism to an “enactive” view, passing from the vision of a pre-existing world that is independent from the observer, understanding cognition as the computation of symbols that represent the outside world, to a vision that places the subject as an active agent that participates in the emergence of his world, which adheres to the co-dependency and co-determinations of subject-object.

Since its release, this research program has undergone the typical reactions to any vanguard and innovative proposal: it has been contested (e.g., Bayne 2004; Kirchhoff & Hutto 2016), defended (e.g., Bitbol 2012; Petitmengin et al. 2013; Bitbol & Petitmengin 2013), and it has matured. But mostly neurophenomenology has developed, through specific and concrete investigations, as a consolidated and valid research program in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience (e.g., Desmidt et al. 2014; Lutz et al. 2002; Valenzuela-Moguillansky et al. 2013; Petitmengin et al. 2006).

In the development of this research program some new questions have arisen:

A first type of question is methodological: Given that the working hypothesis of this research program is that phenomenology and cognitive science relate to each other through reciprocal constraints:

Q1. How can one deal with the different technical requirements and different criteria of validity of these two approaches?

A second type of question is about the ontology of consciousness: Given that, according to neurophenomenology, the phenomenal aspect of consciousness is irreducible to its physical aspect:

Q2. What is sought, after all, with the integration of the first- and third-person approaches?

Q3. Is it an explanation of the phenomenon of consciousness? Is it a more complete description of it?

Q4. Or is it an explanation of the relationship between the physical and the phenomenal descriptions?

Finally, a third type of question is epistemological. As recently pointed by Sebastjan Vörös (2014), the introduction of phenomenology into cognitive science should not be merely a quantitative addition to and extension of a pre-determined framework of natural science, but it should involve a qualitative transformation of our fundamental understanding of nature and science. So far we have seen the first person approach demonstrating a rigorous method that allows it to be part of scientific endeavor.

Q5. However, has scientific endeavor been transformed by the phenomenological stance, as Varela expected?

Thus the aim of this special issue is to reflect and discuss, from different approaches and disciplines, the current state, problematic, and possibilities of neurophenomenology. More particularly, this special issue is an invitation to:

1. Revisit the original intention of neurophenomenology and assess how much of it has been satisfied;
2. Revise the current methodological, ontological, and epistemological problems of carrying out the integration of the first- and third-person approaches; and
3. Share conceptual reflections and methodological solutions to carry such integration forward.

 

In other words, ol bukowski is not making this stuff up.

I see fundamental problems with all this but it is interesting to follow to see if this can be done.  For me, using language itself limits the investigation to the third person

 

Edited March 23, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

12 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Here is an interesting journal which explores the frontiers of some of the ideas I am suggesting.

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/special/np/

http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/special/np/

About

 

In other words, ol bukowski is not making this stuff up.

I see fundamental problems with all this but it is interesting to follow to see if this can be done.  For me, using language itself limits the investigation to the third person

 

So basically some people (called scientists?) are trying to develop some methods to try to understand why some people say they experience some things that some other people say they do not experience? 

Sounds interesting. In the final analysis though I think there will still be people who understand vs people who think they understand but really do not, whether they agree or do not agree with each other.

But yeah something interesting to watch to see how much they will figure out.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

So basically some people (called scientists?) are trying to develop some methods to try to understand why some people say they experience some things that some other people say they do not experience? 

Sounds interesting. In the final analysis though I think there will still be people who understand vs people who think they understand but really do not, whether they agree or do not agree with each other.

But yeah something interesting to watch to see how much they will figure out.

This perhaps misguided effort is one of the latest shots in a battle going on for a long time- about how much we humans "synthesize" reality through our perceptions and intelligence and it is not as if there is an answer to this- certainly it is both true that the world "reveals itself" AND that we "organize" it through perception and thought, again, the problem is language and how we distinguish these two perspectives.

To me though I simply have a proclivity to weigh the "organizing" part more than the "revealing" part when looking at objects and reflecting on how we turn the data of perception into chairs and tables, cars and trees, and EVERYTHING else as well.

It is not as if any linguistic description can capture this fully.  But of course others think otherwise.   I simply feel that my way of seeing it- that humans in a small way "organize matter unorganized" as our Human God does in a big way.  I think this way of seeing it fits better with our Mormon view.

This is an excellent article and kind of a summary of how this discussion has progressed historically

http://www.iep.utm.edu/phenomsc/

 

Edited March 23, 2017 by mfbukowski

[CV75]

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

This perhaps misguided effort is one of the latest shots in a battle going on for a long time- about how much we humans "synthesize" reality through our perceptions and intelligence and it is not as if there is an answer to this- certainly it is both true that the world "reveals itself" AND that we "organize" it through perception and thought, again, the problem is language and how we distinguish these two perspectives.

To me though I simply have a proclivity to weigh the "organizing" part more than the "revealing" part when looking at objects and reflecting on how we turn the data of perception into chairs and tables, cars and trees, and EVERYTHING else as well.

It is not as if any linguistic description can capture this fully.  But of course others think otherwise.   I simply feel that my way of seeing it- that humans in a small way "organize matter unorganized" as our Human God does in a big way.  I think this way of seeing it fits better with our Mormon view.

This is an excellent article and kind of a summary of how this discussion has progressed historically

http://www.iep.utm.edu/phenomsc/

I think language is a tool used by all forms of life as a means to interact with other forms of life, survive in their environments, or change their environments to facilitate survival. Its formatting can be as basic as photonic or chemical/genetic (as among lower forms of life); gestural, sonic or sign-building as with animals; or spoken, written and otherwise non-verbal means as in the various other forms and symbols we use. A virus changes (and kills) its environment genetically; we change it mechanically (and kill it too, come to think of it!).

I think all these various languages use “sentences” with some level of intelligence and intent or another; some acting and some being acted upon, and some doing a bit of both. Where sentences are conceivably elements of any language, and the sentences are created by the living entity that uses the language, and his kind “created” the language (intentionally or not; who can tell?), the truth can also be considered to be “out there,” or rather “everywhere.” But since I didn’t create or use the language of viruses for example, I can only take that on faith!

This causes me to consider that the physical world (environment) is evolved along a continuum with the spiritual world, the former being built on a more fundamental language, and the two not being so separate after all.

[mfbukowski]

23 hours ago, CV75 said:

I think language is a tool used by all forms of life as a means to interact with other forms of life, survive in their environments, or change their environments to facilitate survival. Its formatting can be as basic as photonic or chemical/genetic (as among lower forms of life); gestural, sonic or sign-building as with animals; or spoken, written and otherwise non-verbal means as in the various other forms and symbols we use. A virus changes (and kills) its environment genetically; we change it mechanically (and kill it too, come to think of it!).

 

I think all these various languages use “sentences” with some level of intelligence and intent or another; some acting and some being acted upon, and some doing a bit of both. Where sentences are conceivably elements of any language, and the sentences are created by the living entity that uses the language, and his kind “created” the language (intentionally or not; who can tell?), the truth can also be considered to be “out there,” or rather “everywhere.” But since I didn’t create or use the language of viruses for example, I can only take that on faith!

 

This causes me to consider that the physical world (environment) is evolved along a continuum with the spiritual world, the former being built on a more fundamental language, and the two not being so separate after all.

 

Interesting thoughts- I think I would want to restrict my definition of "language" to communication between like kind of beings and not as simple interaction with the environment.

That would I suppose include a chemical trail indicating a food source for ants and certainly the "dance" of bees indicating information about a food source.  Dolphins and whales obviously have complex communications systems which I think go far beyond anything we now know about them.   For all I know, with repeated recorded whale songs that are inter-generational, that could represent a "culture".  I can imagine all kinds of things in kind of a science fiction context for dolphins and whales, singing out genealogies or ballads or who knows what!?

Perhaps it is a question begging definition but I like the idea that "language" only includes the intelligent formation of a way of perceiving the world that can be passed to other similar beings, perhaps across generations.

Right now I am dealing with an example of that- we have had sparrows which create a nest directly over our back door that keep buzzing our heads everytime we go in or out.

One year we removed the baby birds from the nest and relocated it 50 feet or so to a better location, and the parents accepted the new location, the babies grew up and took off as adults.

But now EVERY YEAR we get the start of a nest in spring time at the exact obnoxious location above the door from which we moved the original nest!

Now we anticipate their arrival which is made clear the first time we get buzzed and squawked at for walking out the back door.   Now we take a broom and knock down the few twigs and mud balls they have put above our door before the nest is even constructed, and wave them off with the broom, and then they voluntarily move the nest.  No birds are ever harmed.

But every year- there they are, and we go through the same ritual again and again!

At this point the birds building the nest could not possibly be the original nest builders- they would have to be living twice their lifespan at least.

SOMEHOW now there is an inter-generational memory to nest in that exact spot!  It cannot be that that is just a good spot to nest - the sparrows have been here forever, and we have lived in the same house for a long time before the sparrows found that spot.  But now, every year like clockwork, the sparrows are back!

Now I would qualify that behavior as a kind of "cultural knowledge" of "seeing matter unorganized, and going down to create a world" in that exact spot.  I cannot imagine another explanation at this point.

 

[CV75]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Interesting thoughts- I think I would want to restrict my definition of "language" to communication between like kind of beings and not as simple interaction with the environment.

That would I suppose include a chemical trail indicating a food source for ants and certainly the "dance" of bees indicating information about a food source.  Dolphins and whales obviously have complex communications systems which I think go far beyond anything we now know about them.   For all I know, with repeated recorded whale songs that are inter-generational, that could represent a "culture".  I can imagine all kinds of things in kind of a science fiction context for dolphins and whales, singing out genealogies or ballads or who knows what!?

Perhaps it is a question begging definition but I like the idea that "language" only includes the intelligent formation of a way of perceiving the world that can be passed to other similar beings, perhaps across generations.

Right now I am dealing with an example of that- we have had sparrows which create a nest directly over our back door that keep buzzing our heads everytime we go in or out.

One year we removed the baby birds from the nest and relocated it 50 feet or so to a better location, and the parents accepted the new location, the babies grew up and took off as adults.

But now EVERY YEAR we get the start of a nest in spring time at the exact obnoxious location above the door from which we moved the original nest!

Now we anticipate their arrival which is made clear the first time we get buzzed and squawked at for walking out the back door.   Now we take a broom and knock down the few twigs and mud balls they have put above our door before the nest is even constructed, and wave them off with the broom, and then they voluntarily move the nest.  No birds are ever harmed.

But every year- there they are, and we go through the same ritual again and again!

At this point the birds building the nest could not possibly be the original nest builders- they would have to be living twice their lifespan at least.

SOMEHOW now there is an inter-generational memory to nest in that exact spot!  It cannot be that that is just a good spot to nest - the sparrows have been here forever, and we have lived in the same house for a long time before the sparrows found that spot.  But now, every year like clockwork, the sparrows are back!

Now I would qualify that behavior as a kind of "cultural knowledge" of "seeing matter unorganized, and going down to create a world" in that exact spot.  I cannot imagine another explanation at this point.

Yes, it does appear the birds are passing information to their offspring. There’s an interesting book, “The Genius of Birds” by Jennifer Ackerman that gets into that, and another, “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben, only with regards to the plant kingdom, and now that I think of it, one called “The Gene: An Intimate History” by Siddhartha Mukherjee (which gets into all forms of life) – they each get into the various types of communication systems (“language”) that pass information not only from ancestors to descendants, but also both ways between living multiple generations and even between species.

I’m thinking also that sheep know the shepherd’s call and the dog his master’s command. The tree book I mentioned above was a difficult slog for me to get through, but it shows the relationships (involving communication through various signals ranging from vibrations to chemicals) between tree species, other plant life, birds, insects, fungus, bacteria and even viruses. We create hybrids by genetically telling other forms of life how to express themselves.

I agree that language is the intelligent formation of a way of perceiving the world that can be passed to other like beings for one set of practical purposes (sharing the gospel), but also passed on to unlike beings for other purposes (barking dogs warning their masters, purring cats getting their masters to feed them), and that on a fundamental level all beings share a fundamentally common language (the light which governs all things)—I’ll add that because we’re on MDDB.

Since no person comes into the world alone, I think we formulate (give meaning to) our developing perceptions with significant influence from our mothers and others, and since this is a religious discussion board, I’ll add the light of Christ. Once we developmentally move past instinct, the earliest meanings we assign seem to portend benefit and threat to us, and we learn that very quickly and do that with a non-verbal language of course.

[CV75]

@mfbukowski

I hope that rep point wasn’t just to get me to be quiet! LOL

In your opinion, are the ideas you shared from Rorty apply to nonverbal language, or is he referring only to human oral / written / symbolic communication (including that which one uses in communicating to/with himself – finding meaning in the world -- as a precursor to sharing that world thus created in his mind with others)?

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, CV75 said:

@mfbukowski

I hope that rep point wasn’t just to get me to be quiet! LOL

 

In your opinion, are the ideas you shared from Rorty apply to nonverbal language, or is he referring only to human oral / written / symbolic communication (including that which one uses in communicating to/with himself – finding meaning in the world -- as a precursor to sharing that world thus created in his mind with others)?

 

Heck no, I thought your comment was right on the money!  And this is an incredibly perceptive question- assuming you are a novice to this area of philosophy, which I do not know for sure.

This is an area in which Rorty and I depart.

For research purposes, if you want to find quick answers about this problem, google "Rorty raw feels".  Long story short, in Rorty's terminology, "raw feels" are direct experience uninterpreted by language, like perhaps a sudden pain in your knee.  You know you are feeling it and it is "real" but you have not expressed it linguistically.  Notice this kind of experience also includes a "burning in your bosom"- a phrase we all know as a proxy phrase for a spiritual experience, a feeling of peace and warmth testifying of the spirit.  THOSE kind of experiencing Rorty would call "raw feels"- or raw feelings and experiences which cannot be represented in language.

Rorty believes in the contingency of language AND the contingency of the self, and this is crucial to his brand of atheism.  This means, to shorten the explanation to the point of perhaps distorting it all, but to go on in spite of that, one might say that because of his understanding of the contingency of language and the contingency of the self, he cannot admit of the possibility that we can speak about "raw feels".

"Contingency of language" means that language exists and is totally made up and does not tie to any "thing".  It has evolved randomly through use in culture and is a totally human invention coming perhaps from grunts and pointing and non-verbal communication through Indo-European and other world cultures into the random hodge-podge it is today   In LDS terms it is "confounded" as it says in the Bible story about Babel.  It is all metaphor and "poetry", an important term for Rorty which will be evident in the next paragraph.  So language cannot possibly "represent" things, it only expresses metaphors and "poetry" or interpretations of things.

"Contingency of the self" means that we as humans are totally programmed by our language and culture- which is random and so our programming is random- and in a sense do not really exist as humans because we are just robots with the exception of the few who are called "ironists"- those who KNOW they are programmed by their culture and are about to KNOW THAT while simultaneously breaking free of those bonds.  So only "Ironists" appreciate the irony that while being contingent and programmed, they have still been able to define their own reality and create their own "vocabulary" which therefore means they are able to create their own worlds.  These people are also termed "strong poets" who, though still being "poets" have risen to understand their own contingency.

When I first investigated Mormonism, I found a parallel between this idea of strong poets or "Ironists" and the idea that an immanent God who is in a sense enculturated by the "Council of the Gods" in Godly culture which has existed forever, and yet is able to "organize matter unorganized" and create worlds of his own.  Because I have had numerous important spiritual experiences, I knew the power they have in our lives.  This is the bridge we have between transcendence of God and his immanence- a purely transcendent God could not communicate with humanity, He must also be immanent to feel empathy.  Christ can be seen as pure empathy.

But Rorty does not understand the importance of "raw feels" and therefore spiritual experience, and this is why I depart with Rorty on this issue and others.  I see "raw feels" as seeing this "as they are" unmediated by language, and that is where I place spiritual experience, as well as the LDS notion that reality is "things as they are"

So now we have defined both contingency of language and contingency of the self.  Back to raw feels- unmediated experience, the pain in the knee.

Raw feels are therefore ineffable and for all practical purposes non-existent for Rorty.  This is clear in the little video that I always post and no one listens to.

You can't talk about them in the sense of representing them.  You go to the doctor and he asks you to rate the pain on a 10 point scale- which of course is totally arbitrary and means nothing, yet it communicates to the doctor how miserable you are.

So for Rorty there is no intelligible way to speak of "raw feels" and therefore except for medical issues like the above, they are irrelevant

Here is an interesting quote by Rorty on this very point, and notice how he includes in it a point made by Dennet, a militant atheist.

Remember atheists cannot affirm the importance of "raw feels" in our lives because raw feels do not produce scientific evidence.   Only experiences which can be communicated in language can give us scientific "evidence"- experiments must be replicated which exactly MEANS that their results can be communicated.   Water boils at 212 degrees- that is a scientific fact and anyone can replicate that experiment in your own kitchen.

Note also the source of this quote- it is on a Marxist website and so this Rorty article is taken to be a support FOR atheism.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm

The article is somewhat technical, I hope it communicates to you.

 

Quote

 

The same question arises about the other philosophical problems which Nagel brings under his “Subjective-Objective” rubric. The clash between “verificationist” and “realist” intuitions is perhaps best illustrated by Nagel’s celebrated paper “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Nagel here appeals to our intuition that “there is something which it is like” to be a bat or a dog but nothing which it is like to be an atom or a brick, and says that this intuition is what contemporary Wittgensteinian, Rylean, anti-Cartesian philosophy of mind “fails to capture.” The culmination of the latter philosophical movement is the cavalier attitude toward “raw feels” – e.g., the sheer phenomenological qualitative ipseity of pain – suggested by Daniel Dennett:

Quote

 

I recommend giving up incorrigibility with regard to pain altogether, in fact giving up all “essential” features of pain, and letting pain states be whatever “natural kind” states the brain scientists find (if they ever do find any) that normally produce all the normal effects... . One of our intuitions about pain is that whether or not one is in pain is a brute fact, not a matter of decision to serve the convenience of the theorist. I recommend against trying to preserve that intuition, but if you disagree, whatever theory I produce, however predictive and elegant, will not be in your lights a theory of pain, but only a theory of what I illicitly choose to call pain. But if, as I have claimed, the intuitions we would have to honour were we to honour them all do not form a consistent set, there can be no true theory of pain, and so no computer or robot could instantiate the true theory of pain, which it would have to do to feel real pain... . The inability of a robot model to satisfy all our intuitive demands may be due not to any irredeemable mysteriousness about the phenomenon of pain, but to irredeemable incoherence in our ordinary concept of pain.

 

Nagel is one of those who disagrees with Dennett’s recommendation. His anti-verificationism comes out most strongly in the following passage:

Quote

 

... if things emerged from a spaceship which we could not be sure were machines or conscious beings, what we were wondering would have an answer even if the things were so different from anything we were familiar with that we could never discover it. It would depend on whether there was something it was like to be them, not on whether behavioural similarities warranted our saying so... .

I therefore seem to be drawn to a position more ‘realistic’ than Wittgenstein’s. This may be because I am drawn to positions more realistic than Wittgenstein’s about everything, not just the mental. I believe that the question about whether the things coming out of the spaceship are conscious must have an answer. Wittgenstein would presumably say that this assumption reflects a groundless confidence that a certain picture unambiguously determines its own application. That is the picture of something going on in their heads (or whatever they have in place of heads) that cannot be observed by dissection.

Whatever picture may use to represent the idea, it does seem to me that I know what it means to ask whether there is something it is like to be them, and that the answer to that question is what determines whether they are conscious – not the possibility of extending mental ascriptions on evidence analogous to the human case. Conscious mental states are real states of something, whether they are mine or those of an alien creature. Perhaps Wittgenstein’s view can accommodate this intuition, but I do not at the moment see how.

 

Wittgenstein certainly cannot accommodate this intuition. The question is whether he should be asked to: whether we should abandon the pragmatical “verificationist” intuition that “every difference must make a difference” (expressed by Wittgenstein in the remark “A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism”) or instead abandon Nagel’s intuition about consciousness. We certainly have both intuitions. For Nagel, their compresence shows that the limit of Understanding has been reached, that an ultimate depth has been plumbed – just as the discovery of an antinomy indicated to Kant that something transcendental had been encountered. For Wittgenstein, it merely shows that the Cartesian tradition has sketched a compelling picture a picture which “held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

 

I often also refer to Nagel- he affirms the centrality of what Rorty would call "raw feels"- in other words he would affirm the nature of spiritual experience and yet is himself an atheist.  He has expressed that he "hopes" that there is no God because he would not like such a universe- so he is essentially an atheist with a faith position- that on faith he believes there is no God.

So for me the answer to your question is crucial.  

The ability to affirm non-linguistic raw experience as "real" is crucial to affirming the reality of spiritual experience.  Rorty and Dennet do not affirm the reality of non-linguistic experience since we are essentially "robots" programmed by language and therefore are atheists.

Nagel on the other hand, though also an atheist affirms the "reality" of non-linguistic experience yet "hopes" there is no God, but he understands that it is entirely possible that spiritual experiences "really" happen.

Perhaps some here remember my on line feud with John Williams on this point exactly.  I had thought he affirmed the contingency of the self due our inability to have thoughts not programmed by language and I strongly disagreed.  At this point I do not care what he thought or believed- it is just that many pages here were devoted to that discussion.  But this was the reason I was so vehement in attacking the contingency of the self I thought he was defending.

Edited March 25, 2017 by mfbukowski

[CV75]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Heck no, I thought your comment was right on the money!  And this is an incredibly perceptive question- assuming you are a novice to this area of philosophy, which I do not know for sure.

This is an area in which Rorty and I depart.

For research purposes, if you want to find quick answers about this problem, google "Rorty raw feels".  Long story short, in Rorty's terminology, "raw feels" are direct experience uninterpreted by language, like perhaps a sudden pain in your knee.  You know you are feeling it and it is "real" but you have not expressed it linguistically.  Notice this kind of experience also includes a "burning in your bosom"- a phrase we all know as a proxy phrase for a spiritual experience, a feeling of peace and warmth testifying of the spirit.  THOSE kind of experiencing Rorty would call "raw feels"- or raw feelings and experiences which cannot be represented in language.

Rorty believes in the contingency of language AND the contingency of the self, and this is crucial to his brand of atheism.  This means, to shorten the explanation to the point of perhaps distorting it all, but to go on in spite of that, one might say that because of his understanding of the contingency of language and the contingency of the self, he cannot admit of the possibility that we can speak about "raw feels".

"Contingency of language" means that language exists and is totally made up and does not tie to any "thing".  It has evolved randomly through use in culture and is a totally human invention coming perhaps from grunts and pointing and non-verbal communication through Indo-European and other world cultures into the random hodge-podge it is today   In LDS terms it is "confounded" as it says in the Bible story about Babel.  It is all metaphor and "poetry", an important term for Rorty which will be evident in the next paragraph.  So language cannot possibly "represent" things, it only expresses metaphors and "poetry" or interpretations of things.

"Contingency of the self" means that we as humans are totally programmed by our language and culture- which is random and so our programming is random- and in a sense do not really exist as humans because we are just robots with the exception of the few who are called "ironists"- those who KNOW they are programmed by their culture and are about to KNOW THAT while simultaneously breaking free of those bonds.  So only "Ironists" appreciate the irony that while being contingent and programmed, they have still been able to define their own reality and create their own "vocabulary" which therefore means they are able to create their own worlds.  These people are also termed "strong poets" who, though still being "poets" have risen to understand their own contingency.

When I first investigated Mormonism, I found a parallel between this idea of strong poets or "Ironists" and the idea that an immanent God who is in a sense enculturated by the "Council of the Gods" in Godly culture which has existed forever, and yet is able to "organize matter unorganized" and create worlds of his own.  Because I have had numerous important spiritual experiences, I knew the power they have in our lives.  This is the bridge we have between transcendence of God and his immanence- a purely transcendent God could not communicate with humanity, He must also be immanent to feel empathy.  Christ can be seen as pure empathy.

But Rorty does not understand the importance of "raw feels" and therefore spiritual experience, and this is why I depart with Rorty on this issue and others.  I see "raw feels" as seeing this "as they are" unmediated by language, and that is where I place spiritual experience, as well as the LDS notion that reality is "things as they are"

So now we have defined both contingency of language and contingency of the self.  Back to raw feels- unmediated experience, the pain in the knee.

Raw feels are therefore ineffable and for all practical purposes non-existent for Rorty.  This is clear in the little video that I always post and no one listens to.

You can't talk about them in the sense of representing them.  You go to the doctor and he asks you to rate the pain on a 10 point scale- which of course is totally arbitrary and means nothing, yet it communicates to the doctor how miserable you are.

So for Rorty there is no intelligible way to speak of "raw feels" and therefore except for medical issues like the above, they are irrelevant

Here is an interesting quote by Rorty on this very point, and notice how he includes in it a point made by Dennet, a militant atheist.

Remember atheists cannot affirm the importance of "raw feels" in our lives because raw feels do not produce scientific evidence.   Only experiences which can be communicated in language can give us scientific "evidence"- experiments must be replicated which exactly MEANS that their results can be communicated.   Water boils at 212 degrees- that is a scientific fact and anyone can replicate that experiment in your own kitchen.

Note also the source of this quote- it is on a Marxist website and so this Rorty article is taken to be a support FOR atheism.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm

The article is somewhat technical, I hope it communicates to you.

Yes, I am quite the novice to philosophical disciplines. I’m going from what you have posted in this thread, which fortunately you have had the patience to explain in other threads as well, and o

ver the years, now, I'll add! Time flies.

So Rorty keeps language to the realm of human linguistics. The “raw feels” would be the types of things I was surmising an infant must feel, but not only physically but emotionally / psychically / spiritually as well. I like how you frame “raw feels” in terms of spiritual experience that requires no words, such as the deeper “conversion sensations” of sanctification, purification, forgiveness, wholeness, etc.

It is interesting to me that he views all programming for language and the self as random, since for example certainly we observe mothers intentionally programming their children all the time (and propagandists do this too !) unless he’s saying the programmers are randomly programmed to program others (???). But then an infant’s reaction from “raw feels” will program his mother without any intent on the infant’s part, and the mother may develop nurturing instincts only in response to his cries, and in nurturing him, programs him.

From an evolutionary standpoint I can understand a role for randomness, but then at some point intentional actions also create additional, unintended or unrecognized random factors (unintended consequences, good and bad), which may actually shed light on the origin of the prime set of random factors. If the origin of the order we create (program) is randomness, then then order we create creates randomness for someone else.

I’m not clear how Rorty's scientific standard strictly applies since he acknowledges that “raw feels” exist. This makes it look like his atheism comes first, driving his conclusions as a linguist/philosopher second. At least he does seem to acknowledge that, no matter how we are programmed, we can become something else. I wonder what he once was, or if he considers himself an "ironist"?

I’ll have to look at the quotes and your conclusions tomorrow in order to give them a good study before commenting / asking further – thank you for taking the time and effort!

Edited March 26, 2017 by CV75

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, CV75 said:

Yes, I am quite the novice to philosophical disciplines. I’m going from what you have posted in this thread, which fortunately you have had the patience to explain in other threads as well, and o

ver the years, now, I'll add! Time flies.

So Rorty keeps language to the realm of human linguistics. The “raw feels” would be the types of things I was surmising an infant must feel, but not only physically but emotionally / psychically / spiritually as well. I like how you frame “raw feels” in terms of spiritual experience that requires no words, such as the deeper “conversion sensations” of sanctification, purification, forgiveness, wholeness, etc.

It is interesting to me that he views all programming for language and the self as random, since for example certainly we observe mothers intentionally programming their children all the time (and propagandists do this too !) unless he’s saying the programmers are randomly programmed to program others (???). But then an infant’s reaction from “raw feels” will program his mother without any intent on the infant’s part, and the mother may develop nurturing instincts only in response to his cries, and in nurturing him, programs him.

From an evolutionary standpoint I can understand a role for randomness, but then at some point intentional actions also create additional, unintended or unrecognized random factors (unintended consequences, good and bad), which may actually shed light on the origin of the prime set of random factors. If the origin of the order we create (program) is randomness, then then order we create creates randomness for someone else.

I’m not clear how Rorty's scientific standard strictly applies since he acknowledges that “raw feels” exist. This makes it look like his atheism comes first, driving his conclusions as a linguist/philosopher second. At least he does seem to acknowledge that, no matter how we are programmed, we can become something else. I wonder what he once was, or if he considers himself an "ironist"?

I’ll have to look at the quotes and your conclusions tomorrow in order to give them a good study before commenting / asking further – thank you for taking the time and effort!

Yes its late and I do not have much time for tonight= early meetings in the AM

Do not take the "random" idea too far- I probably overstated it- I don't think he ever uses that word.  They point is that language has evolved and programs us.   I think he would see that saying that it was "random" was no better than saying that "God did it" because whether or not it is random is just as unknowable as saying that God made us,   For him there is no evidence for either proposition.

This is a good article that summarizes it pretty well- better than I did anyway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency,_Irony,_and_Solidarity#1.29_The_contingency_of_language

The idea is that there is no intrinsic nature to describe for us- or for language for that matter.  One cannot say "Human nature is:..."  or that "Reality is...." because that would take getting beyond linguistic descriptions, which we are not warranted in doing.  One cannot express how things ARE just how we speak about them.  Again, no facts, just interpretations.  Everything is appearances- but even saying that of course cannot be proven since we don't know the difference between appearance and reality.

So saying that contingency = randomness is incorrect.   It just is what it is, we cannot give it an equivalent to another idea.  Contingency just means we cannot speak about that which is contingent having a purpose or being anything beyond what it is- whatever that is,

Edited March 26, 2017 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

14 hours ago, CV75 said:

Yes, I am quite the novice to philosophical disciplines. I’m going from what you have posted in this thread, which fortunately you have had the patience to explain in other threads as well, and o

ver the years, now, I'll add! Time flies.

So Rorty keeps language to the realm of human linguistics. The “raw feels” would be the types of things I was surmising an infant must feel, but not only physically but emotionally / psychically / spiritually as well. I like how you frame “raw feels” in terms of spiritual experience that requires no words, such as the deeper “conversion sensations” of sanctification, purification, forgiveness, wholeness, etc.

It is interesting to me that he views all programming for language and the self as random, since for example certainly we observe mothers intentionally programming their children all the time (and propagandists do this too !) unless he’s saying the programmers are randomly programmed to program others (???). But then an infant’s reaction from “raw feels” will program his mother without any intent on the infant’s part, and the mother may develop nurturing instincts only in response to his cries, and in nurturing him, programs him.

From an evolutionary standpoint I can understand a role for randomness, but then at some point intentional actions also create additional, unintended or unrecognized random factors (unintended consequences, good and bad), which may actually shed light on the origin of the prime set of random factors. If the origin of the order we create (program) is randomness, then then order we create creates randomness for someone else.

I’m not clear how Rorty's scientific standard strictly applies since he acknowledges that “raw feels” exist. This makes it look like his atheism comes first, driving his conclusions as a linguist/philosopher second. At least he does seem to acknowledge that, no matter how we are programmed, we can become something else. I wonder what he once was, or if he considers himself an "ironist"?

I’ll have to look at the quotes and your conclusions tomorrow in order to give them a good study before commenting / asking further – thank you for taking the time and effort!

This is a bit technical but perhaps it will better explain "contingency".   It comes from the Marxist site already cited above.   I have underlined the section which is most clear but left the rest in case someone wants to read it.

Quote

 

But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes except by using our language. One can use language to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one’s body to develop and strengthen and enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is a means to an end. The arts and the sciences, and philosophy as their self-reflection and integration, constitute such a process. of enlargement and strengthening. But Philosophy, the attempt to say “how language relates to the world” by saying what makes certain sentences true, or certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view, impossible.

It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins – the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism – and compare ourselves with something absolute. This Platonic urge to escape from the finitude of one’s time and place, the “merely conventional” and contingent aspects of one’s life, is responsible for the original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By attacking this latter distinction, the holistic “pragmaticising” strain in analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge – common to fuzzy Whiteheadians and razor-sharp “scientific realists” – works. It has helped us be sceptical about the idea that some particular science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic poetry, or transcendental philosophy) gives us that species of true sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth itself. Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going to be a Philosophical explanation of this utility. That explanation, like the original justification of the assertion of the sentence, will be a parochial matter – a comparison of the sentence with alternative sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet, or perhaps of the philosopher – not of the Philosopher, the outside expert on the utility, or function, or metaphysical status of Language or of Thought.

 

So there is nothing but language, and we cannot "step out of our skins" to get beyond language to any "reality" independent of language.

Because we cannot step out of our skins, there is nothing else but the vocabularies we have been given that we can talk about.  It is so simple I cannot imagine anyone arguing against it.

BUT - here using language to describe the non-linguistic, I would endorse "raw feels" which I think are clearly an important part of life.  It is that spark of non-linguistic reality which makes us suddenly attracted to one who may become our spouse.  It is that pain in our toe, or in our side which later reveals itself perhaps to be a serious disease or just a pain in the side.  It is the "burning in the bosom" or the full fledged vision and theophany Joseph had.  In LDS vocabulary it is "things as they are" unmediated by language.

But even "things as they are" in "raw feels" are still not "things as they are" on the other hand because EVERYTHING is mediated by our being human.  We cannot fly, so we know nothing of that.  We cannot discuss the color of gamma rays because we cannot perceive them.  The color of gamma rays is beyond our ability to even get "raw feels", as is the experience of hearing sounds above or below the range of our hearing.   So in some sense then we NEVER experience "things as they are".  Yes we have instruments which might give us a nice graph or infra-red vision in the dark, but those do not produce the human experience of what is beyond human experience.

So I believe this organizing of matter unorganized that simply having a human body becomes- is a small part of what God does in organizing matter unorganized as well.  As humans we organize reality as we know it.  That is what we do.  And then we share that reality as no other creature does, and so we can build a human reality of houses, cars, food production on farms and a complex society as no other creature can.

But always this "reality" is a humanized reality created by humans.   A baby left in the desert alone will not survive without a humanized reality and will never be able to survive much less produce a house or a car.   Without humanized reality, there ARE no "things in themselves" as if we could know of anything which has not been humanized.

And then we have the scripture that says "truth is things as they are"

What could that possibly mean?  A reality independent of human thought?   How could we know about it??

I take it to mean essentially "raw feels", things as we humans perceive them, as organized by our senses yet before linguistic interpretation.

So that spark across the room when we see an attractive person, the "gut feeling" that something is or is not "right", the whispering of our conscience or the still small voice is as much "real" as anything can be and are as much "things as they are" as they can be to any human.

So by admitting "raw feels" into the pantheon of "reality" - as Rorty does NOT do- to me suddenly opens up a way to unify secular philosophy with  Mormon theology.

Suddenly secularists simply have to "feel the spirit" and see that experience as "valid"- as much so as any gut feeling they follow in their lives- and suddenly the secularist can become a religionist, believing that there is validity for the individual in following the "still small voice" which they already follow anyway without realizing it, anytime they have a "gut feeling" about anything.

So the choice of schools?  Rational, yet a gut feeling.  Picking a mate?  Gut feeling.  Picking a political party?  Gut feeling.  Liking one neighborhood and not another?  Gut feeling.

The secularist is just as "emotional" as the theist in these matters but one affirms these as spiritual matters and the other does not.

If we could make the believer understand the secularist and the secularist understand the believer, that in the final analysis it is just a matter of vocabularies, I think the world would be a far better place.

 

Edited March 26, 2017 by mfbukowski

[CV75]

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

This is a good article that summarizes it pretty well- better than I did anyway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency,_Irony,_and_Solidarity#1.29_The_contingency_of_language

So through language people only “agree” on assumed, shared interpretations of reality and what aspects of reality are meaningful. This agreement is unavoidably learned by the young. Some would argue that the unifying power of vocabulary evolves best when the users discipline themselves to express and share only subjectively non-judgmental interpretations, and deny the tendency to give weight to “raw feels” (and would that make them non-empathetic?).

I’m reading a book, “Leonard” by William Shatner (as a favor; not really my thing), and maybe that is influencing my understanding. But if it is correct, I find “subjectively non-judgmental” a bit oxymoronic and unhealthily disciplined. People who claim to be intentionally objectively judgmental are scary to me.

I vaguely remember the John Williams conversation you mentioned; if it’s easy to do, would you provide the link and I can review it? I’m wondering what I might have posted there and how my understanding may have changed over time.

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

So by admitting "raw feels" into the pantheon of "reality" - as Rorty does NOT do- to me suddenly opens up a way to unify secular philosophy with  Mormon theology.

Suddenly secularists simply have to "feel the spirit" and see that experience as "valid"- as much so as any gut feeling they follow in their lives- and suddenly the secularist can become a religionist, believing that there is validity for the individual in following the "still small voice" which they already follow anyway without realizing it, anytime they have a "gut feeling" about anything.

So the choice of schools?  Rational, yet a gut feeling.  Picking a mate?  Gut feeling.  Picking a political party?  Gut feeling.  Liking one neighborhood and not another?  Gut feeling.

The secularist is just as "emotional" as the theist in these matters but one affirms these as spiritual matters and the other does not.

If we could make the believer understand the secularist and the secularist understand the believer, that in the final analysis it is just a matter of vocabularies, I think the world would be a far better place.

To me, this is “the summum bonum of the whole subject that is lying before us” – that's a nod to the language/vocabulary that programs me LOL Whether we call the "raw feels" “the Spirit” or “neurochemistry” (as I can see them as either or both), experimenting with them and acting on them seems to be the liberal (in a classic sense) and naturally healthy thing to do. Those who do damage get stopped on the whole, and so we evolve as a group and that which is deemed “natural” gets passed on in the language and vocabulary, as has been done for thousands of years. Of course we see conscious efforts to change the long-standing meaning of words to the point of creating division and contention, which looks like intentional re-programming for personal gain and disruptive of that unifying power of vocabulary. There seem to be kinder and more mutually edifying ways to negotiate becoming inclusive and included.

Thank you!

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

So through language people only “agree” on assumed, shared interpretations of reality and what aspects of reality are meaningful. This agreement is unavoidably learned by the young. Some would argue that the unifying power of vocabulary evolves best when the users discipline themselves to express and share only subjectively non-judgmental interpretations, and deny the tendency to give weight to “raw feels” (and would that make them non-empathetic?).

Great questions!

Yes that is right- and that is what was happening more and more and is now starting to change.

"Positivism" is the belief that unless a statement can be shown to have objective evidence, it is literally meaningless.  So speaking about religion in that scheme is literally meaningless.  But that view has been dead for perhaps 40 years or more, but it hasn't yet reached the common man to know that.   So you still see atheists here - I can think of one who post here who uses the word "athiest" in his moniker- who still hold that view.  I recommend this article in wikipedia- it is a good article for general readers and explains the issues well, but here is the bottom line- just so you know, AJ Ayer was one of the pioneer developers of positivism, which he later saw to be defective:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

 

Quote

 

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.^[42] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".^[43][44] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,^[45] Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science^[13]where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era postpositivism.^[40] John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".^[43]

Logical positivism's fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism).^[46][47] Meanwhile, it became popular among philosophers to rehash the faults and failures of logical positivism without investigation of it.^[48] Thereby, logical positivism has been generally misrepresented, sometimes severely.^[49] Arguing for their own views, often framed versus logical positivism, many philosophers have reduced logical positivism to simplisms and stereotypes, especially the notion of logical positivism as a type of foundationalism.^[49] In any event, the movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in the English-speaking world, and returned Britain to empiricism. Without the logical positivists, who have been tremendously influential outside philosophy, especially in psychology and social sciences, intellectual life of the 20th century would be unrecognizable.^[13]

 

Again you see here my point- that we cannot know anything beyond human experience.

But you still see yahoos hereabouts thinking they have disproven religion by saying there is no scientific evidence for it.  In fact that is the STRENGTH of religion and looking for scientific evidence is precisely the WRONG strategy to "disprove" it.  Religion has nothing to do with science, it is an entirely different "vocabulary"

So yes, you can see this culture developing in the 20th century.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING as an "objective" and non-subjective point of view, THAT was the illusion of positivism.

In fact the problem we see now in Europe and in other places- here among millenials- is this belief, which is totally bankrupt.  I have said repeatedly that religion is in for a rough ride for the next one hundred or two hundred years- that is how long it takes to purge ridiculous beliefs that enter the culture.   But eventually, the popular culture will reflect what creators of that culture now fully understand.  We are now in an era known as "post- postmodernism" but most of the culture is still not even in postmodernism yet-  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Unfortunately there are those in the church who condemn postmodernism without understanding that it is the ONLY way that spirituality can be logically justified.  You hear the word "relativism".  This is not relativism- and those who label it as such are simply ignorant of what is at stake.

There are religious paradigms and vocabularies and there are scientific paradigms and vocabularies.  The only way to save religion from being extinguished by positivism is to admit that it is speaking about a different kind of "truth" than scientific truth.   The choices are essentially positivism or postmodernism- and one choice extinguishes religion.

Remember Cardinal Bellarmine arguing a scientific proposition against Galileo- that the earth revolves around the sun- seeing the bible as a work of science.  If he had understood that the bible is not science, there would have been no discussion.  But that logic is postmodern logic and he could not have possibly understood that because he was conditioned by his culture- the contingency of language and vocabulary.

Quote

 

I’m reading a book, “Leonard” by William Shatner (as a favor; not really my thing), and maybe that is influencing my understanding. But if it is correct, I find “subjectively non-judgmental” a bit oxymoronic and unhealthily disciplined. People who claim to be intentionally objectively judgmental are scary to me.

 

Shatner is not a smart man.

Quote

 

I vaguely remember the John Williams conversation you mentioned; if it’s easy to do, would you provide the link and I can review it? I’m wondering what I might have posted there and how my understanding may have changed over time.

 

Nah- I will let you do that.  I have no desire to re-live that ridiculousness.

Quote

To me, this is “the summum bonum of the whole subject that is lying before us” – that's a nod to the language/vocabulary that programs me LOL Whether we call the "raw feels" “the Spirit” or “neurochemistry” (as I can see them as either or both), experimenting with them and acting on them seems to be the liberal (in a classic sense) and naturally healthy thing to do. Those who do damage get stopped on the whole, and so we evolve as a group and that which is deemed “natural” gets passed on in the language and vocabulary, as has been done for thousands of years. Of course we see conscious efforts to change the long-standing meaning of words to the point of creating division and contention, which looks like intentional re-programming for personal gain and disruptive of that unifying power of vocabulary. There seem to be kinder and more mutually edifying ways to negotiate becoming inclusive and included.

Fully agree!

[CV75]

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Great questions!

Yes that is right- and that is what was happening more and more and is now starting to change.

"Positivism" is the belief that unless a statement can be shown to have objective evidence, it is literally meaningless.  So speaking about religion in that scheme is literally meaningless.  But that view has been dead for perhaps 40 years or more, but it hasn't yet reached the common man to know that.   So you still see atheists here - I can think of one who post here who uses the word "athiest" in his moniker- who still hold that view.  I recommend this article in wikipedia- it is a good article for general readers and explains the issues well, but here is the bottom line- just so you know, AJ Ayer was one of the pioneer developers of positivism, which he later saw to be defective:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

 

Again you see here my point- that we cannot know anything beyond human experience.

But you still see yahoos hereabouts thinking they have disproven religion by saying there is no scientific evidence for it.  In fact that is the STRENGTH of religion and looking for scientific evidence is precisely the WRONG strategy to "disprove" it.  Religion has nothing to do with science, it is an entirely different "vocabulary"

So yes, you can see this culture developing in the 20th century.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING as an "objective" and non-subjective point of view, THAT was the illusion of positivism.

In fact the problem we see now in Europe and in other places- here among millenials- is this belief, which is totally bankrupt.  I have said repeatedly that religion is in for a rough ride for the next one hundred or two hundred years- that is how long it takes to purge ridiculous beliefs that enter the culture.   But eventually, the popular culture will reflect what creators of that culture now fully understand.  We are now in an era known as "post- postmodernism" but most of the culture is still not even in postmodernism yet-  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Unfortunately there are those in the church who condemn postmodernism without understanding that it is the ONLY way that spirituality can be logically justified.  You hear the word "relativism".  This is not relativism- and those who label it as such are simply ignorant of what is at stake.

There are religious paradigms and vocabularies and there are scientific paradigms and vocabularies.  The only way to save religion from being extinguished by positivism is to admit that it is speaking about a different kind of "truth" than scientific truth.   The choices are essentially positivism or postmodernism- and one choice extinguishes religion.

Remember Cardinal Bellarmine arguing a scientific proposition against Galileo- that the earth revolves around the sun- seeing the bible as a work of science.  If he had understood that the bible is not science, there would have been no discussion.  But that logic is postmodern logic and he could not have possibly understood that because he was conditioned by his culture- the contingency of language and vocabulary.

Shatner is not a smart man.

Nah- I will let you do that.  I have no desire to re-live that ridiculousness.

Fully agree!

Bravo!  ...and I'm fine without the missing link LOL

[clarkgoble]

On 3/24/2017 at 2:58 PM, mfbukowski said:

Interesting thoughts- I think I would want to restrict my definition of "language" to communication between like kind of beings and not as simple interaction with the environment.

Yes, I think what he's describing isn't language but semiotics. That said even within semiotics you can have propositional like 'statements' not tied to humans. These are useful when doing certain types of systems thinking either in chemistry or biology.

To the claims on positivism, while positivism proper is dead I think it got treated too much like a boogieman in philosophy. I'm not positivist but there were a lot of positive contributions from it. I think that rather than so much dying positivism more became transformed by Kuhn and Quine. These days a better view might be the new forms of epiricism you find in thinkers like  van Fraassen.

From my view, the primary problem of positivism was always its verification principle. It was just far too narrow. Other figures (like Peirce) with verification principles first off used in more narrowly for meaning rather than truth but also considered it broad enough to deal with metaphysics, mathematics and so forth.

Edited March 27, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Yes, I think what he's describing isn't language but semiotics. That said even within semiotics you can have propositional like 'statements' not tied to humans. These are useful when doing certain types of systems thinking either in chemistry or biology.

To the claims on positivism, while positivism proper is dead I think it got treated too much like a boogieman in philosophy. I'm not positivist but there were a lot of positive contributions from it. I think that rather than so much dying positivism more became transformed by Kuhn and Quine. These days a better view might be the new forms of epiricism you find in thinkers like  van Fraassen.

From my view, the primary problem of positivism was always its verification principle. It was just far too narrow. Other figures (like Peirce) with verification principles first off used in more narrowly for meaning rather than truth but also considered it broad enough to deal with metaphysics, mathematics and so forth.

Interesting stuff- thanks, I am not as acquainted with Peirce as I probably should be, which I have admitted before

This is just a summary from the book ad and is probably worthless but I have a question about these statements anyway

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Natural Propositions is about the desirable consequence of Charles Peirce's conception of propositions; namely, that they are no strangers to a naturalist world-view and thus form natural inhabitants of reality. This is because propositions---in Peirce's generalization: Dicisigns---do not depend upon human language nor upon human consciousness or intentionality, contrary to most standard assumptions. In addition to a careful consideration of Peirce's work, the book includes numerous examples of Dicisigns in nature as firefly signaling and vervet monkey alarm calls.

I certainly like the phrase "desirable consequences" in the context of speaking about beliefs, and I can see how that would also apply to religious statements when the word "truth" doesn't really carry meaning in discussions with positivists, though with fellow theists in church I have no problem with the sentence "I know the church is true" since that is within the religious context or language game in communicating with fellow Mormons.   I say that every time I bear my testimony in fact.   I wonder what it would be like if I ever said "I know that believing in the church has desirable consequences" though.

I would wonder though why he did not use the word "language" for that purpose though, even though he lived long before Wittgenstein and of course could not be familiar with W.

On the other hand it also appears that W did not know much about Peirce though there are similarities.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-015-8252-0_17 

W spoke of simple "language games" which can be understood as a kind of communication situation including the circumstances and purposes of the communication

He speaks of a "language" consisting of perhaps only two or three words.   One example he uses is a helper and a bricklayer constructing a brick wall.  All the helper has to do is hand the appropriate tool to the bricklayer.  So perhaps one might overhear the words "Brick..." followed by "mortar...."  then "trowel" or other implements the bricklayer needs within the context for a complete language which will accomplish the purpose of building the wall.  It is a complete vocabulary and all 

I would think that language is not much more complex than the "language" of birds or monkeys in calling to each other, warning others of intruders, seeking a mate, etc.

I like to see the most simple explanation of complex ideas possible and eschew coining words or using jargon as much as possible.   I understand Peirce's motivation in creating jargon as I understand Heidegger's as well but sometimes I wonder if it is really called for.

I am considering using the term "grok" to describe the knowledge of direct personal experience, but of course that term is already marginally in the language.   I am not sure how acceptable that would be in a formal paper, but it is the perfect word to express the concept.

[clarkgoble]

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I would wonder though why he did not use the word "language" for that purpose though, even though he lived long before Wittgenstein and of course could not be familiar with W.

Semiotics is broader than language and isn't necessarily human. To his jargon he was focused on classifications and the classifications didn't typically match linguistic use.

Edited March 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Semiotics is broader than language and isn't necessarily human. To his jargon he was focused on classifications and the classifications didn't typically match linguistic use.

OK well I need to read more Peirce I guess- I was thinking more in terms of Saussure. Perhaps I do not understand his notion of interpretant.  That might be the key.

I can see he is closer to being useful to Mormon belief while I see Saussure as being hostile to any idea of a pre-linguistic experience.  I think an opening to a pre-linguistic experience is essential to explaining dreams and visions and spiritual experience

Without pre-linguistic experience, I would think that the self becomes contingent on language and therefore determined by it, and therefore the death of man problem arises

http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~beatrice/The 'Death of Man' - Foucault and Humanism.pdf

How might you see Peirce helping Mormon theology?

Edited March 28, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

How might you see Peirce helping Mormon theology?

Outside of his conceptions on inquiry and epistemology I don't really see anything particularly relevant. His approach to those are interesting for Mormonism. I started writing on that a while back and got a tad busy. I plan on getting back to it soon.

The basic idea arises out of his seeing belief as non-volitional. That means all we can do is inquire but we don't get to decide what to doubt. (He was very critical of the remnants of Cartesian doubt among philosophers calling it paper doubt) Effectively rather than focusing in on epistemology as a set of static justifications he focused on belief-change. He thus saw the epistemological duty to be in inquiring rather than having justifications. Justifications more or less come out of Aristotle and are based upon a static conception of mathematical proof. Inquiry is dynamic and while there are more and less fruitful types of inquiry (including inquiring about epistemology) ultimately what counts is what beliefs remain through inquiry. Effectively he takes for granted that which we can't doubt we hold as true. So the ethical duty is conceived of through our inquiry. 

For Mormonism this has obvious parallels not only to how members come to know in practice but also as a way of justifying belief for more intellectual oriented members. The only question is whether you inquire - which for intellectual debates is whether you honestly consider the evidence critics (or believers) present, and try to find out for yourself. If doing this process you still can't doubt, then for all practical purposes you believe you know. The level of belief/doubt which is in terms of acting as if it were true can then be analyzed. While not quite the same as Alma 32 it has some similarities albeit tied to a more rigorous conception.

The main criticism of course is whether one is really being open in ones inquiry. Skeptics, I'd suspect, would simply doubt we'd done our duty, would point to confirmation bias or similar types of bias. The Peircean perspective is that if you continue to inquiry then you'll get closer to the truth. The criticism one might make of members not really knowing is that they don't really inquire. His classic paper "The Fixation of Belief" is what gets at this issue, although that's from his early period.

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Perhaps I do not understand his notion of interpretant.  That might be the key.

Yes the bias is to thinking semiotics in terms of human signs and human interpretants. He means it much more broadly coming from a science background. So for instance a weather vane indicates the wind direction because the wind turns it. So the interpretant is the direction of the vane representing the wind's direction. A dog wagging it's tail while looking at its bowl is representing that it wants to be fed. Smoke indicates fire. So forth. If your curious John Collier's paper "Signs Without Minds" is a good overview of the position taken in biosemiotics where Peirce has proven quite useful.

Edited March 28, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

2 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Outside of his conceptions on inquiry and epistemology I don't really see anything particularly relevant. His approach to those are interesting for Mormonism. I started writing on that a while back and got a tad busy. I plan on getting back to it soon.

I know the feeling.

I guess the real question is how he differs from the determinism in Saussure.