RE: Using the word Spiritual
September 24, 2018 at 9:33 am
(This post was last modified: September 24, 2018 at 9:34 am by Angrboda.)
I'm willing to use the word spiritual providing it's well defined and does not depend upon questionable metaphysical assumptions. To one degree, being spiritual refers to the realm of the spirit, which according to that view, is a non-deterministic entity independent of the brain which maintains our identity as well as our ability to reason and think morally. While in prior times the term spirit was meant literally, it's also important to keep in mind that its primary referent was these mental abilities, not necessarily the metaphysical underpinnings of them. Thus, on another view, spiritual can be seen as referring to the realm of the mind and self, the Logos, which is still somewhat poorly understood, but which includes questions about purpose and meaning. It is an attempt to think sensibly about something which is at this time ineffable, the why's and wherefore's of how we make sense of our experience. It's in that latter sense that I would be willing to use the term spiritual, but that has nothing to do with spirits, souls, or the supernatural, and is more akin to philosophy and similar intuitions. To the extent that spiritual refers to supernatural themes, I would not use it, both because I don't believe in the supernatural, but also because attempts to even conceptualize such things as coherent have mostly failed. If it's not coherent, there's no point in referring to it.
![[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/zf86M5L7/extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg)