(March 3, 2019 at 10:20 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I think that's a philosophical cop-out.
This whole thing has been really interesting to me.
And I can plug it into a Neoplatonic framework as an allegory, that clarifies things for me. Probably no one else will like it.
The Neoplatonics say that our true home is in the One -- the undivided source of reality. While in the One we see the world in an unmediated way. That is, we see directly what's true.
The Fall, for these people, isn't to do with sin, it's about division. We fall when we are divided from the One, lose our direct sight, and begin to perceive things as separate. They often write as if this were an ontological or even a spatial fall, but in fact it is purely perceptual. Truth is that things are One, but after the Fall we don't see that. We become divided and our knowledge is always mediated.
Since at least the time of Proclus, the main metaphor people use to describe becoming something new at the point of the fall is weaving. Blake, especially, makes a lot of how at the moment of our separation from reality we have new bodies woven for us -- not scooped out of clay or chiseled, but woven. Now I see how useful this is.
I've been thinking here about the many many beliefs, assumptions, frameworks, metaphysical guesses, etc. etc. that go into our conclusions about what the world is. If we are atheists, we are so because of this elaborate and fairly inextricable mesh of concepts and assumptions. So I see why all those smart guys talk about weaving -- when we lose this mythical state of direct perception, we fall instead into a web, a net, a tangle of beliefs and assumptions and half-understood concepts. This web is what our mind is, which is largely what we are.
The Neoplatonists say that during the time we are embodied in this way (in the particular web of ideas that we have), our view of the world seems unquestionable. What we see is so completely determined by this web that we can't imagine it being any other way. For us in that condition, that is what is true, and we will fight to defend it. We will even claim that our view is somehow NOT contingent, doesn't have a history, is in fact what Nagel calls a "view from nowhere." Meaning, a view that is not dependent on the many accidents of what we happen to be.
The myth usually implies that we can come unwoven from this net, and return to direct vision. Plotinus said it can happen momentarily in this life, and then permanently after death. Blake said it can happen in this life and when it does it means we have reached heaven, and become one with God. It is purely perceptual.
Anyway, the insistences on this thread have brought home to me the appropriateness of weaving as a metaphor. The web of beliefs that we live in, and which are responsible for all our beliefs and non-beliefs, is what our minds are.
Please note I've used "myth" to describe all this. I do not take it as literally true, and it's hard to say how much Plotinus and Blake did so.
