Defending Pantheism

[Acrobat]

You can only be telling me that none of what does it for me, does it for you. 

No I’m saying that feeling of gratitude you get from your family, and fortunate life, is the same thing I feel about mine, no more no less.

But this shared feeling your describing a feeling of gratitude, is not what’s meant by the experience of the numinous.

I likely have these experiences more than the average god botherer, since I surround myself with the circumstances that produce them.

What circumstances do you surround yourself by that you think the average god botherer is not?

[The Grand Nudger]

You can only be telling me that none of what does it for me, does it for you. 

No I’m saying that feeling of gratitude you get from your family, and fortunate life, is the same thing I feel about mine, no more no less.

But this shared feeling your describing a feeling of gratitude, is not what’s meant by the experience of the numinous.

Still fucking that chicken, huh?

I likely have these experiences more than the average god botherer, since I surround myself with the circumstances that produce them.

What circumstances do you surround yourself by that you think the average god botherer is not?

That's the amusing part, there are plenty of christians who surround themselves with these same circumstances, and fwiw they get the sense in a lot of the same ways I do...that's part of our redneckish commonality.  The average god botherer, however, like any other average human being, doesn't live out in the hollar with us, isn't so thoroughly infused by the natural rhythm of life and it's attendant sense of awe and interconnected wonder, or raised to see divinity in an expanse of brackish water.  That's the whole enterprise of ritual observance and sacred gathering, to produce those experiences lost or diminished by a persons circumstance. A church stands in for some holy mountain, a rite stands in for the lived experience.

I tell you that these things produce that sense in me, as they do in so many other people, you fuck the chicken with some nonsense about how it doesn't do that for you.  

Entirely, your, problem. You're not actually interested in how or that atheists experience this sense of the numinous at all, are you, lol? It;s a common human experience, the only difference between an atheist and a theist is not in whether they experience it, or even experience it differently, simply in the attribution -of- it.

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-and since you're so far hitting 2/3 of the things mentioned in vulcans OP having covered objective morality and the numinous, would you like to make a run at the trifecta, and ask me how some thing might be holy without some silly god to make it so? Fuck another chicken when you get the answer you don't want?

Imma take you to church, lol.

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Or maybe you'd prefer a kindgom hall?

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No, howsabout a cathedral?

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No..none of that? Maybe this....whatever floats your god bothering boat, I guess.

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[vulcanlogician]

https://archive.org/details/Raccoon1995-...drals.flac

[The Grand Nudger]

...I can do this pretty much forever, lol.

[madog]

...I can do this pretty much forever, lol.

Love your religion mate  ... where do I sign up 

[Belacqua]

The "unity" discussed in the article has to do with Spinoza's merging of mind and body into one substance. Spinoza was a monist, and his metaphysics was a rejection of Cartesian dualism. Instead of Descartes' two substances: body (with extension) and mind (with consciousness/thought)... Spinoza proposed that mind and body are in fact different attributes of a single substance. To Spinoza there was one primary substance which he (annoyingly?) named God.

I think this is key, and that it brings up all kinds of issues which are still current. It's not something we can dismiss based on five minutes of Googling. 

Since you're the only one of us who's actually read Spinoza, let me ask you: what is the best argument against his position? 

What he's dealing with is relevant to a number of problems which remain for us. For example:

~ the Hard Problem of consciousness
~ possible panpsychism
~ issues in physics where mind seems to influence or determine the behavior of matter

If we stop to debate each one of these it will derail the thread -- I know each has been done to death around here. And I'm sure that certain people will be more than willing to pronounce the Truth in regard to each one of these -- unjustified confidence is not in short supply. I'm only bringing them up to wonder if Spinoza-type monism would offer a solution to these, and if there is any reason to rule out such monism at this time? If we were convinced of his position, would it tie up these issues? 

And again, I know that according to the Immutable Laws of Internet Debate we have no burden of proof, and until Spinoza offers absolutely persuasive proof we have no obligations at all. But let's pretend we are people who, in good faith, would just like to know what's true, so we can skip debate dogma. What arguments do you know against monism?

[The Grand Nudger]

Spinoza believed that the mind was of the same substance as the body, that it existed solely for the body, and was not some divisible other from body. In that, spinozas monism, particularly with regards to mind, is remarkably unremarkable today, but for his time it was a stroke of intuitive brilliance. He had no way of establishing the veracity of this assertion, and so could not have made a proper demonstrative argument to that effect.

One of your problems is only a problem if some variant of cartesian dualism were true, which we now know is not the case. The second is as baseless an assertion as any other, and the third a fundamental misunderstanding of physics. Spinozas monism isn't a solution for any issue in nuerological science (or physics, for that matter) but it was never going to have that power to begin with. The contention that mind stuff is body stuff, both of which the same kind of stuff as the rest of stuff is a superficially accurate statement, but offers no particular insight into mind or the mechanics of stuff.

The only conundrums that spinoza could legitimately be said to have directly addressed, were those ethical and factual issues arising from the various superstitions prevalent in his own time, effectively abandoned today. I suppose he could be credited with the organization of particular mereological assertions, but this wasn't original to him, nor was he any more capable of demonstrating the truth of those assertions than we are today. As far as the best argument against his brand of monism, it's the same argument against any composite assertion (whether dualist or monist, material or immaterial). Mereological nihilism. There can be no "all" if composite objects don't truly exist.

[Acrobat]

I tell you that these things produce that sense in me, as they do in so many other people, you fuck the chicken with some nonsense about how it doesn't do that for you.  

I’m not sure how many times I have to repeat that how my family, fortunate life etc does that for me as well, fills me with a sense of gratitude just as it does for you.

Not sure why you keep implying otherwise.

I’m just indicating that this experience of gratitude, is not the same as the experience of the numinous.

Entirely, your, problem. You're not actually interested in how or that atheists experience this sense of the numinous at all, are you, lol?

No I’m just indicating that you confusing one type of feeling with another, confusing a sense of gratitude with that of the numinous, and this has nothing to do with you being an atheist.

Imma take you to church, lol.

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One things that always been a bit curious to me, is that whenever atheists expound on beauty, there examples are always of non-human things, like nature, the cosmos, etc.., they reserve things of great beauty to the non human world, share pictures and illustrations of things you shared here.

While I do find all these things beautiful the things I find of great beauty revolve around human things, the everyday sacrifices a mother makes for her child, a boy taking care of his ailing grandmother, things of great love, and dignity, community, friendship. While many atheists seem more obsessed with the external objective world, free of any human connection.

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with my wife, though at this a point she was just a friend. I had went with her to a homeless shelter, where she volunteered at onoccasion. They sat the volunteers at tables with the filthy poor, and asked us to pray with them before the meal. I wasn’t much of a believer then, so I passed. So she prayed, so earnestly concerned about their lives, that she wept while she did, so tender and so filled with love.

There’s a thing of great beauty, that not all the beauty of the cosmos, or empty forests, or nature, could ever match.

While all your images are devoid of life, this single scene was so filled with it, it spills over the brim.

[vulcanlogician]

I think this is key, and that it brings up all kinds of issues which are still current. It's not something we can dismiss based on five minutes of Googling. 

Since you're the only one of us who's actually read Spinoza, let me ask you: what is the best argument against his position? 

What he's dealing with is relevant to a number of problems which remain for us. For example:

~ the Hard Problem of consciousness
~ possible panpsychism
~ issues in physics where mind seems to influence or determine the behavior of matter

If we stop to debate each one of these it will derail the thread -- I know each has been done to death around here. And I'm sure that certain people will be more than willing to pronounce the Truth in regard to each one of these -- unjustified confidence is not in short supply. I'm only bringing them up to wonder if Spinoza-type monism would offer a solution to these, and if there is any reason to rule out such monism at this time? If we were convinced of his position, would it tie up these issues? 

And again, I know that according to the Immutable Laws of Internet Debate we have no burden of proof, and until Spinoza offers absolutely persuasive proof we have no obligations at all. But let's pretend we are people who, in good faith, would just like to know what's true, so we can skip debate dogma. What arguments do you know against monism?

Interesting. One thing that pops out to me is that I never considered Spinoza as a panpsychist! A cursory google search reveals that there are opposing views to whether he is or not, but panpsychism does gel with the rest of his metaphysics. But Leibnitz, to me, seems more the panpsychist. I never got a hint of panpsychism when I read Spinoza.

In opposition to this dualism, the psychist views of Spinoza (1632–77) and Leibniz (1646–1716) can be seen as attempts to provide a more unified picture of nature. Spinoza regarded both mind and matter as simply aspects (or attributes) of the eternal, infinite and unique substance he identified with God Himself. In the illustrative scholium to proposition seven of book two of the Ethics ([1677] 1985) Spinoza writes:

a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing … therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought … we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes….

We might say that, for Spinoza, physical science is a way of studying the psychology of God. There is nothing in nature that does not have a mental aspect—the proper appreciation of matter itself reveals it to be the other side of a mentalistic coin.

I like the part about Spinoza thinking that the physical sciences are a way of studying the psychology of God. But I think one must consider such a statement carefully. There is a woo woo way of reading that sentence, and a grounded way. Considering the rest of Spinoza's thought, I think the most reasonable interpretation is the latter.

What arguments do you know against monism?

Just the standard stuff. The first two chapters of Descartes' meditations could count as an argument against monism, I suppose. (If not the whole book...).

Then there's hylomorphism. But I (like one of my textbook authors) consider hylomorphism a "polite form of materialism." I don't think it contradicts materialism in any special way.

Property dualism, the most plausible of the dualisms, makes the argument "Hey! There is obviously some immaterial aspect of reality!" Hard to refute that, really. They are the "pure skeptics" of monism, I suppose. Cartesian dualism is something of a strawman these days. Property dualism is at least somewhat plausible.

Searle's biological naturalism is more materialist than non-materialist, but one might say his idea that consciousness is not ontologically reducible to physical states amounts to some sliver of dualistic thinking. Some accuse him of being a property dualist on that account.

[vulcanlogician]

The only conundrums that spinoza could legitimately be said to have directly addressed, were those ethical and factual issues arising from the various superstitions prevalent in his own time, effectively abandoned today. 

He made a pretty good case for hard determinism/lack of free will with his metaphysics, too. And this has far reaching implications in ethics, criminal justice, and a great many other things. Since reality can be described as one substance acting upon itself (according to the laws of nature governing such actions) there is no room for free will in Spinoza's metaphysics. Realizing this, he concludes that free will is illusory. 

So experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men think they are free because they are conscious of their own actions and ignorant of the causes that make them act as they do, and that the decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves, so they vary as the disposition of the body varies.

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/...za1665.pdf

The bolded portion of the quote shows how his mind/body metaphysics relate to free will.