Douthat, "Bad Religion"

I’m always on the lookout for intelligent discourse over religious topics, and I’ll tell you as surely as I am a man typing out these words, those debates, rhetoric and conversation are hard to come by. There is little hope, it seems, for the grasp of religious dogma on the consciousness of free thinking people to hold on much longer. It’s always the same old story with the same old Platonic arguments about Deism, followed by feeble attempts to bridge the gaping chasm that exists between ‘it’, and the theist position that wants to say that from this deistic god we can derive a morality. They are struggling against an enormously strong tide of rationalist and scientist dialect, and fighting futily to meet them on their own ground. Theists need to give up this enterprise I think; they need to step away from podiums and get back to their pews and rethink again what the purpose of religion is in society, if any purpose at all.

 These things I can go on and on about, and in the future I shall most certainly do that, however for the moment I did come across a rather intellectually pleasing exchange between Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat, author of the newly released book “Bad Religion”. Douthat himself is a bit of an interesting character as his prose dissolves a bit of the usual rationalist rhetoric with a sort of Hegelian historicism that draws you into thinking that he’s really onto something. I don’t want to go too far in my characterization of him (giving him something that he doesn’t deserve) but in one manner or another it reminds me of the intellectual vigor of the late Christopher Hitchens without all the beautiful irony that he was so famous for. That I think, more than anything else, really drew me into this exchange between Sullivan and Douthat. Having said that, I will say that I disagree with them at the very core of their meanings, nevertheless I think this is worth listening to and engaging.

 The main thrust of the conversation centers around the crumbling of religion and the introduction of an ever more secularist society that (according to them) began to happen at an alarming rate in the 1970’s. They begin with two things that will, in a way, serve as the backdrop of the conversation for the remaining time. On the one hand there’s the peak of catholic/religious influence on the American middle class in the 1950’s, and it’s eventual decline following the sexual revolution in the 1960’s. The main issue I have with their thinking on these two very important matters, is that as Hegelian as they’d like to be they’re ignoring the causal reasons for both. That I think is very unfortunate, and left out some higher reason and depth to the conversation. They’re talking about the collapse of Catholicism [specifically] in the face of the sexual revolution. Now granted, they admit that there are several reasons for the eventual collapse, however one of the most important was the just stated.

 The problem to start with then, is again ignoring the causal elements of the sexual revolution so as to stay on task with (to a certain degree) that which has always seemed to be most important to Catholics; namely, the subjugation of one’s sexual desires to Christ. To be more specific they’re eliciting some common felt intuitions about sexual promiscuity in order to draw one towards a more sympathetic position within the conversation. We’re supposed to think that perhaps the sexual revolution was a bit of a perversion which in turn should give us reason to support the idea that what Catholicism holds to most closely may in fact be correct. From there they would like to suggest that it was the pill that plunged us forward to revolution, a mere object of social change. But all the while what they’re ignoring is the feminist movement of the 1960’s and in so cleverly doing so, it pits the church against sex rather than the church against woman. At the same time they’re ignoring the backdrop of the strong and religious middle class that existed in the 1950’s. They’re ignoring the historical backdrop of their lower class beginnings (in addition to the religious involvement there), the impact WWII had on that consciousness, and how that then lead to strong middle class being born out of the fore mentioned.

 The children who led the charge of civil rights and feminism were not born into poverty, but prosperity. It was that prosperity, or so I would suggest, that lead to a generation of people rethinking their moral attitudes about everything from sex, to inclusion of black people into the culture we call “We”. I shall say more on this at another time, but a culture of prosperity is one in which reliance upon ones neighbor for inclusion and identity is no longer the case; i.e. coming up in a world where provisions for your own destiny can be grasped firmly by ones’ own hand releases the grip ones’ religious community has on the degree to which a more idiosyncratic self can reign. To put that in yet another more simpler way, once reliance upon the church for support (in the many ways it gives it) dissolves due to a strong middle class giving one a more certain future with respect to finances and security, there is no more reason for many to follow in it’s ways.

 On those very brief preambles, I’ll leave to engage these ideas further for another time, and let one enjoy the conversation if they’d like.

For Later Pondering

You know, so... I've been a busy man lately (two promotions in four months!) , and I really haven't had any time for this old blog of mine. Sooner or later I imagine I'll come around and say something meaningful... In the meantime it occurred to me, somewhat out of the blue, that I didn't want to forget about all this wonderful work from Sam. I'd like to make it a point to think about it more seriously then I have, but until then, I don't want to have to ask him later for the links (or tags), so I'm saving it here.
It builds

The Wrath of God (1)
The Wrath of God (2)
The Wrath of God (3)
The Wrath of God (4)
The Wrath of God (5)
From wrath to apocalypse (1)
From wrath to apocalypse (2)
From wrath to apocalypse (3)
From wrath to apocalypse (4)
From wrath to apocalypse (5)

A Slice of Cake and a Side of Representation

A quick thought before moving on:

Quoting Rorty again, "Contingency Irony and Solidarity" Pg. 5:
We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human Languages are human creations.

Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world ii our there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own - unaided by the describing activities of human beings - cannot.

The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a langu4ge of his own. If we cease to attempt to make sense of the idea of such a nonhuman language, we shall not be tempted to confuse the platitude that the world may cause us to be justified in believing a sentence true with the claim that the world splits itself up, on its own initiative, into sentence-shaped chunks called "facts." But if one clings to the notion of self-subsistent facts, it is easy to start capitalizing the word "truth" and treating it as something identical either with God or with the world as God's project. Then one will say, for example, that Truth is great, and will prevail.

I’m starting to get the feeling that this is all Pragmatism really needed to do in order to satisfy its urges – just replace truth. Notice that statements like, “That car over there is silver.” whether you have a proclivity for truth being in the world, or truth being just a product of language, our propositions stay the same. For example the pragmatist doesn’t say, “wait, we shouldn’t say it like that, because that suggests that that’s actually true of the world.” But one doesn’t.

So why then does Pragmatism dump the idea of representation and the appearance/reality distinction? A representative statement for a Platonist (one who sees truth as existing in the world) is a truth about the world itself. However, representative statements about the world for a Pragmatist is a truth that exists only in language – following above. The only distinction that needs to be made between the two sorts of representation (if we keep it on both sides) is between the idea that one discovers truth (for the Platonist) and the idea that we create truth (for the Pragmatist). In another way, from a Pragmatist point of view the shift between different representative characters (i.e. the idea that a given metaphor represents a certain fundamental idea) isn’t to say that we’re saying something fundamental about the world in itself, but a suggestion to shift between certain ways of thinking about concepts because a different way has more “cash value” and/or allows us to obtain more predictive power - on the one hand anyway.

In this way it’s fair enough to say (for example) that people have fundamental affective states, and that things we say and do are reflections of those affective states. To make the argument that this sounds like Platonism would beg the question as to why one would not consider the belief that, “That car over there is red.” is also Platonism because both can rightly infer that one believes that truth to be true of the world in itself. All we need though, is the statement above from Rorty to make the proper distinction (or simply the idea that Truth transcends language, but I’ll get back to that later). In this way our talk about these affective states gains it’s cash value not in the truth it speaks about the world but in the cash value we gain from the predictive insights we may or may not gain from having that sort of dialogue.

In summary:
All we’re really saying is that it helps to think of people as having affective states (and whether they do or whether they don’t is not something one can prove), and it helps to speak and behave as though they do, even if it means implying that certain metaphors are representations of those states (refer back to my post “Hierarchies of Thought”). To say that that’s true (again, from a Pragmatic perspective) is not to actually say that that’s True of people.

Of course this all raises other interesting points in my mind that I’ll tare apart in a post to proceed.

Rorty Needs a Hug

From the album, "No One's First, and You're Next"

In the beginning of Richard Rorty’s “Contingency Irony and Solidarity”, Rorty sets about the task of defining his core purpose, which is, building the philosophical framework for his “Liberal Utopia” – although, note that “philosophical framework” isn’t really fare to say, but I leave it as said. Of course, you can’t have a Utopia without some people, so Rorty draws us a picture of the sort of human being that would inhabit this utopia – the sort of person that would naturally bring to light the type of environment Rorty would like to attain. This person he calls the “Liberal Ironist”. It’s important then, to note just what it means to be a Liberal Ironist in the first place. Here, Rorty borrows his definition of a liberal from Judith Shklar who said:

“Liberals are people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do.”

On the other side of that phrase, he uses “ironist” to:

“…name the sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires – someone sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea that those cenrtal beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance. Liberal ironists are people who include among these ungroundable desires their own hope that suffering will be diminished, that the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cease.”

Let me suggest, following this definition, that in order to acknowledge this sort of disposition, one must first acknowledge that other human beings have the ability to feel and suffer in the same manner oneself does. To put it in another way, one acknowledges that other human beings have cognitive and affective states which are to a high degree the same as ones own. i.e. we have feelings of love, pain, grief, sorrow, etc. This doesn’t mean that it has some justifiable basis, or that we can have certain knowledge of it, only that we in some manner acknowledge or grant it upon reflection. Rorty offer’s no examples of possible justifications, he only says:

“For the liberal ironist, there is no answer to the question, “Why not be cruel?” no non-circular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible.”

Taking all of this together, I see Rorty as either being highly calculative for some dubious purpose, extremely shortsighted, or both. I see him as taking advantage of the fact that 99.99% of his readers will rightly grant that and say yes, you’re right, we should not be cruel, and move on from that proposition - now (again) granted he doesn't suggest that we don't use our own justifications, but he certainly doesn't supply us with any beyond the proposition. It sort of reminds me of SyeTen B’s proof of a moral absolute by asking the question, “Would child rape be ok under any circumstance?” Here Sye went to an extreme case where 99.99% of people would agree with him. Next, they would likely not recognize a condition where such a thing would be OK, and conclude right along with Sye that morals are absolute. However, Rorty’s aim is different then Sye’s, and quite frankly Rorty was a highly intelligent and important figure of the 20th century, and Sye is just some d-bag. Nevertheless, I do see Rorty as taking advantage of us here – he seems to intentionally avoid any idea that he might believe other people to have cognitive/affective states. I say he’s short sighted because he’s ignoring the fact that prior to accepting his proposition we’ve already been conditioned to accept it, but not as a mere proposition. The problem comes down to the manner with which we’re conditioned to accept it, and Rorty avoids contact with those conditions.

Let me here offer an anecdote. One of the great things about being a man in my position with my interests is that I have two absolutely wonderful specimens to experiment on (well, that’s probably not the right way to put it, but we’re working for effect here), namely, my 4 year old boy and 7 year old girl; soon to be 5 and 8. You see the boy, who’s thoroughly male, will for whatever reason (perhaps he’s not getting the desired effects he’d like, or perhaps he’s conducting some sort of bizarre experiment) take his “Little Tike’s” hammer and blast his sister upside the head with it. Of course this produces the assumed effect, and from the other room all I here is complete silence, followed by my crying daughter. Oddly enough the one who comes crying into the room is NOT my daughter, but my son; the crying is always completely contrived. Following shortly is my little girl, and I ask, “Alright, what happened?” The boy will say, “I hit Kylie….” “And why did you do that?” I’ll respond. Now, often times he’ll just say, “I don’t know.” But sometimes he’ll actually come up with what he thinks is some valid justification, nevertheless I’ll tell him, “You don’t hit your sister.” being as stern as possible without showing anger. I poop you not he used to say, but doesn’t anymore, “Why?” The first time he said that, and subsequent times for that matter, I actually laughed; I mean come on, WHY?

Now at this moment I could rightly say, “Because we’re not cruel to other people.” But that would go over with, “Why?” yes, indeed, great question. You see with kids this age the same treatment has the same desired effect, and that is, always answer with a question of your own – you know, take the Socratic rout on his ass. So I say, taking the Little Tike’s hammer from his hand, “How would you feel if I hit YOU in the head with this hammer….?” He whimpers, looks down (has the look of defeat all about him) and typically doesn’t respond (it’s worth noting that my daughter always answers this question). To my son I generally fill in and say, how do you think your sister feels? And he’ll respond, with a whimper, “Mm-hhm.” Then I’ll tell him to go give her a hug, and tell her you’re sorry. The point here is simple; it’s fair enough to tell me as a conditioned presumably mature adult that we don’t be cruel, but I’m in some seriously hot water if I’m going to think my 4 year old will blindly accept such a notion. If I rather proceed with the assumption that my son has cognitive/affective states, and behave in a manner that causes him to reflect upon his experience (by asking, “How would you feel if….?”), he always understands what it is I’m getting at and as a result, certain behaviors don’t need to be corrected through punishment or authority. i.e. his short time in reflection is enough to correct his behavior, well, at least in the short term. Give a boy plastic power tools and he’s going to destroy everything in his path – it’s the cancer of being born with testicles I suppose.

So again, the whole idea that cruelty is the worst thing we can do is a fine enough proposition to hold to – and understanding that there is no noncircular justification is good enough as well. Certainly I should grant that Rorty never asks us not to say that (for example) our kids have cognitive/affective states for the purposes of getting them to reflect, but (again) he certainly stays as far away from those suggestions as he can. I say he’s calculating because if he were to make such a functional assumption, we could paste on him the idea that either, A.) Language is then a representation of those cognitive/affective states, or B.) Language is a reflection of those cognitive states. But I see no reason why that belief has to be any less functional then his simple proposition that we not be cruel. Functional, in this case, is exactly what his suggestion looks like – function based on prior condition of course. But in Rorty’s case, his suggestion doesn’t come packed with an understanding of why, from the standpoint of (at least) personal reflection (granting its circularity), but is just thrown out there for a certain function that is to this point undefined. It doesn’t care or take into account how someone may feel, it only cares about the environment that might be created as the result of adhering to such a belief. In this way, I find it a bit blind and short sighted and I’d be quite curious, had Rorty had kids when he was alive (maybe he did) what he would have told them.

Continuing on, Rorty says the following about creating a Liberal Utopia:

” It [a liberal utopia] is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginalize people different from ourselves by thinking, "They do not feel it as we would," or "There must always be suffering, so why not let them suffer?"”

Ahh, the sound of a scratching record in the morning – suppose I unpack. This seems like quite a careful piece of rhetoric that Rorty has crafted here as well. If solidarity is not “discovered by reflection” but created; is it perhaps “created by reflection”, or “created as the result of reflection”? How can it be created by increasing our sensitivity without some sort of reflection (I mean, aren’t we sensitive based on our own reflections)? Just what is Rorty skirting here? Again, he seems to be avoiding all prior conditioning on these matters, and taking advantage of the fact that his audience consists of adults who have prior assumptions. To paraphrase Rorty, He seems to be saying that we create solidarity by imagining that other people are fellow sufferers (i.e. suffer as we do), more specifically through that imagination we become aware of said suffering therefore our increased sensitivity to others needs and interests (as our own) reaches a point where it becomes difficult to marginalize them. But again, what he seems to have removed from the equation is the recognition of others suffering through reflection on ones own plight. In order to imagine that others suffer as you do one must reflect upon ones own suffering and ask, “how would you feel?” Sure enough solidarity is created, and not “discovered though reflection”, however one cannot pave the way for the creation of solidarity without first reflecting or imagining that people suffer as you do. From there I think it easily follows that solidarity is indeed created in the manner that Rorty would like to see it.

On the other hand, must we see that other people have cognitive/affective states, feelings and experiences as our own? To remove the idea that the recognition of suffering comes not from reflection, but from imagination, begs the question as to where this imagined idea comes from in the first place and why we should (or should have) imagine[d] it at all; although Rorty does in fact admit that there is no non-circular justification as to why one should not be cruel. Nevertheless, how could one ever hope to imagine such a thing if it was not first recognized in oneself?

On the one hand I do agree with the position that stays away from ideas like, “other people fall in love just as we do.”, all the while referring to the cognitive or affective condition of love – of course in this way we’re pulled into the appearance/reality distinction, and granting that behind our language is some sort of essence. Rorty simply stops at the statement, “we think that cruelty is the worst thing we can do.” without any further justification. Of course I agree with that, but my instincts (which I’d just assume do away with in this case) push towards the epistemological position which says “I know that that is true because I see it in myself.” Rorty may say, maybe that made sense (at some time and place), but try thinking about it this way. On the other hand (again), I could simply take the same functional position and state, “I believe that other people feel as I do, therefore I recognize that cruelty would the worst thing we can do.” I could then state that I have no non-circular justification for this claim and leave it at that. You could then still see may behavior, through language and action, etc. not as representation, but as certain habits of actions (in a specific case, between me and my boy)

I must say that I am somewhat resigned to the idea that we accept Rorty’s notion that cruelty is the worst thing that we can do, with no non-circular justification as to why that should be the case, but I’m suspicious of taking the statement on site. Between mature adults it’s fair enough to grant that we both pragmatically adhere to this belief, but you’re in a hopeless condition with your child if you think that sort of reasoning is going to fly. Simply teaching your child to grant such ideas is tantamount to ruthless church or state authority – granted though, I’m sure in Rorty’s case he wouldn’t rightly speak that way. Teaching your child to reflect upon their experiences is an important part of life.

To conclude, I don’t think it’s enough to simply say, “cruelty is the worst thing we can do”, as it short sights the conditions under which we may have accepted such a notion. Namely, it short circuits the idea that as people, we come to reflect on our own experiences, and grant (in a question begging way) that other people have cognitive and affective states. In believing this, we can still follow Rorty’s suggestion that beliefs are habits of action, and see our behavior (language and action) as manifest of this. I also think we can rightly hold to that thought without the muddy waters of certainty, Platonic distinctions etc.. We can easily state that as a result of that belief, it gives us tools to communicate in ways that affect others behaviors in a positive way, going beyond the mere suggestion of a proposition and avoiding any authoritative tone.

Let me jump ahead:
At Pragmatism and Atheistic Hope I found myself butting heads against Matt over the regurgitated mysticism of Joseph Campbell, specifically the idea that Truth (capitol “T”) transcends language. I’m almost embarrassed at this point to direct ones attention to the thread, but it can be found HERE. My initial contention was against the idea that the pragmatist should part ways with Campbell because the idea that Truth transcends language has implicit within it (or in the least can be philosophically turned into) the appearance/reality distinction – in other words this statement isn’t to suggest that standing behind language is some great Truth to be accessed. I had simply said, one shouldn’t in this case turn the metaphor into a metaphysic – which is a suggestion given by Campbell (quoted here) and made popular to my mind by Sam Norton. Specifically I stated:

“I don't think it would be right to consider Campbell a realist in this way, or to interprit him as wanting to access a fundamental underlying reality behind language per se. He quite agrees with the statement that one should not mistake the finger for the moon - which I believe is a call to not mistake the finger as representing. i.e. to take the finger for the moon, is to consider that the finger represents the moon. Or to put it another way, Campbell (as an idealist) would see words as tools, just as the pragmatist.”

But, Matt would counter:

“Because in regards to Andrew's defense of Campbell as no metaphysician, I have to grant that Campbell was not a philosopher, and therefore had no metaphysics to offer (not quoted above was a statement from me that indeed Campbell was NO philosopher, which is one reason we shouldn’t read him that way). However--that's not the question. As Andrew emphasizes, Campbell is all about metaphor and the question of his metaphors should be our very legitimate question. And in that case, I have to side with Leela that some of Campbell's metaphors are misleading. Suggesting metaphors that you can easily build a metaphysics off of (e.g., metaphors that lend themselves to the appearance/reality distinction) has to be pointed out as bad, whatever the intention of the producer. Campbell can cry foul all he wants, our only job is to wish he'd been a better poet.”

It should be noted that this really made me more frustrated then it caused me sit back and think – shame on me. Ideally I’d simply like to respond to this by saying; that it is misleading because it implies a Platonic distinction is going against the very idea of not taking the metaphor for a metaphysic. But the conversation didn’t really go that rout, and one can feel free to delight in the horror for oneself as I’m not going to quote any further.

The bottom line was, I wanted to keep my statement about Truth transcending language as a useful metaphor that; if understood correctly not only leads to the conclusion that what one finds is nothing, and that it’s just that “cognitive” realization that’s found (special note of the quotes). i.e. “when you’re done cutting wood, put down the saw and pick up the hammer.” Zen is life, and language is just one part of life, just one tool we use while traveling along its path. In this way, the statement that Truth transcends language couldn’t be more anti-Platonic when seen in the light of this personal realization…. But now I’ve just caught myself in a snare or two. On the one hand (using Rorty) I may be implying that language is expansionist (which is to say Romantic), i.e. that language as metaphor is “strange, mystic, wonderful” etc.. I could be seen as in effect saying that language has the capacity to “express a hidden reality that exists within us.” But that is not what I’m doing, exactly.

It’s important then, to draw out a few points relative to the metaphor/literal distinction made by Rorty:

“we need to see the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical in the way Davidson sees it: not as a distinction between two sorts of meaning, nor as a distinction between two sorts of interpretation, but as a distinction between familiar and unfamiliar uses of noises and marks. The literal uses of noises and marks are the uses we can handle by our old theories about what people will say under various conditions. Their metaphorical use is the sort which makes us get busy developing a new theory.”

“Davidson puts this point by saying that one should not think of metaphorical expressions as having meanings distinct from their literal ones. To have a meaning is to have a place in a language game. Metaphors, by definition, do not. Davidson denies, in his words, "the thesis that associated with a metaphor is a cognitive content that its author wishes to convey and that the interpreter must grasp if he is to get the message. In his view, tossing a metaphor into a conversation is like suddenly breaking off the conversation long enough to make a face, or pulling a photograph out of your pocket and displaying it, or pointing at a feature of the surroundings, or slapping your interlocutor's face, or kissing him. Tossing a metaphor into a text is like using italics, or illustrations, or odd punctuation or formats. All these are ways of producing effects on your interlocutor or your reader, but not ways of conveying a message. To none of these is it appropriate to respond with "What exactly are you trying to say?"

(CIS, Pg. 17 & 18)

First and foremost, I do in fact agree with this position on metaphor. What is key for me is the statement from Davidson that a metaphor does not have associated with it a cognitive content that an interpreter must grasp in order to get the message. After all, if we grant a metaphor such a reality, then we’re granting that behind language is some underlying essence and we’re right back to Platonic distinctions.

Rorty puts it best on page 19:

“The Platonist and the positivist share a reductionist view of metaphor: They think metaphors are either paraphrasable or useless for the one serious purpose which language has, namely, representing reality. By contrast, the Romantic has an expansionist view: He thinks metaphor is strange, mystic, wonderful. Romantics attribute metaphor to a mysterious faculty called the "imagination," a faculty they suppose to be at the very center of the self, the deep heart's core. Whereas the metaphorical looks irrelevant to Platonists and positivists, the literal looks irrelevant to Romantics. For the former think that the point of language is to represent a hidden reality which lies outside us, and the latter thinks its purpose is to express a hidden reality which lies within us.”

Of course, I do find it a bit peculiar that Rorty nails the Romantic for the use of the mysterious faculty called imagination, when above he says, “It [a liberal utopia] is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers.” I digress…

That it is important to note that we should not see metaphor as having a cognitive content, does not mean that we cannot see it as having a cognitive effect (much like the cognitive effect it may have had on ourselves), like a slap on the face, or kiss on the cheek, so on. That we can at once say that, “Truth transcends language”, and to understand that in this instance that we should not turn this metaphor into a metaphysic, i.e. as Davidson states, “To none of these [this] is it appropriate to respond with "What exactly are you trying to say?" is to offer onto someone a moment of reflection, a moment for realization, a point of distance between themselves and what it is they aimed to grasp, a chance to put down the saw and pick up the hammer.

That Rorty accepts what Davidson is saying in the manner that he does, gives further force to the idea that he skirts recognition or use of the cognitive/affective. Which doesn’t mean that behind his insistence that we imagine people are fellow sufferers is his own personal reflection (held in recognized circularity) – but he certainly doesn’t seem to want to say it. To say with Rorty that beliefs are not representations, but rather habits of action; and to say that words are not representations, but tools, fits well with the idea that we believe cruelty is a bad thing (as seen by our actions), and well enough with the idea that we believe other people to be cognitive affectional creatures as we see ourselves – at the moment I’m not entirely certain that you can even separate the two. Seeing that the later is true doesn’t have to imply that we think our words are reflections or representations of our belief. Further, if we accept the later as a pragmatic stance, we can still see the light in the language of the mystics – we can see it’s use not as some reflection of our inner self of representation of something to be found, but as (perhaps) a suggestion to reflect upon ourselves, a moment to be alone – after a slap in the face, you may like a moment to savor the pain.

For the sake of summary and rephrase:
my main contention is simply; whereas I have no issue with Rorty’s suggestion that we take cruelty as the worst thing we can do, and that there is in fact no non-circular justification for that, I find it curious and to a certain degree dubious that he refrains from at least offering some suggestions. His attempt to steer clear of these suggestions (and in particular the idea of reflection) looks like an attempt to stay away from Platonism and Romanticism, but in turn makes him appear myopic and suspicious. I’d like to continue this in another post, and consider just what are the consequences (from a pragmatic stance) of believing the proposition “that other people have cognitive/affective states”. In what way can we consider this notion, all the while staying clear of Platonic and Romantic distinctions? In my post, “The Two Horns of Realism and Non-Realism”, I grappled with the idea that statements like, “I’m feeling spiritual”, or, “God gives me the feeling of…”, or, “I have a sense of the mystical” simply don’t make any sense from the Non-Realist perspective as they have no behavioral content save the stating of the metaphor itself. There as well, the statement implies the idea that what’s happening is a reflection of ones cognitive or affective state, i.e. that those states stand as an essence behind the metaphor – but such privileged access claims are hopelessly meaningless to me and others who are more interested in what that means in terms of ones behavior. At the end of that post I concluded:

“Does the non-realist position ignore the mystical component?” or is it that the mystical component is merely irrelevant? In other words calling ourselves mystics (and having mystical experiences) infers certain behaviors… Short of deeds and habits of action, saying that one has great faith, belief, and mystical connections is completely meaningless to anybody and everybody but oneself – as a result one should only consider it relative to deeds. What else do we have?
To suggest that there is something more to the mystical beyond a habit of action is almost to suggest that the morally upright atheist who donates money and volunteers his time is somehow feeling different then the faith based Christian who does the same…”

Short of personal statements about ones state of affairs, this still doesn’t cover the ground of mystical statements like, “Truth transcends language”. Does this imply a cognitive “getting it”, i.e. a content that must be grasped; a content which stands beyond language in some Platonic realm? Or can we say that it’s merely meant to produce an effect – an effect that is perhaps no different then asking my boy, “How would you feel if...”? Neither of these statements requires an answer either. As an effect, in time through thought and reflection, will bring one into adulthood and into a condition where questions like, “What is the Truth”, “What is the meaning of life” will no longer make sense and thus ceased to be asked. And reflections as in, “God gives me strength”, will be seen as merely conditions of that former recognition, and be coupled with behaviors that reflect those conditions – as in the absence of any ultimate questioning. Of course, that begs further questions that I’d like to explore further.

---------

Can we functionally propose that people have cognitive states, without the implication that language represents or reflects those cognitive states? This is mighty sticky, and I see why Rorty avoids it. Not to mention, I’m wading through the waters of my old dilemma.


I’ll leave this hanging here for the moment, and pick it up in another post.

Irony

In the absence of an effective general mythology or religion, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream. The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Fourty-second Street and fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.

The Knight, the Buddha and the Dragon

Another tale from Campbell:

“…The old English tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a famous one. One day a green giant came riding on a great green horse into King Arthur's dining hall. "I challenge anyone here," he cried, "to take this great battle-ax that I carry and cut off my head, and then, one year from today, meet me at the Green Chapel, where I shall cut off his head." The only knight in the hall who had the courage to accept this incongruous invitation was Gawain. He arose from the table, the Green Knight got off his horse, handed Gawain the ax, stuck out his neck, and Gawain with a single stroke chopped off his head. The Green Knight stood up, picked up his head, took back the ax, climbed onto his horse, and as he rode away called back to the astonished Gawain, "I'll see you in a year."

That year everybody was very kind to Gawain. A fortnight or so before the term of the adventure, he rode off to search for the Green Chapel and keep faith with the giant Green Knight. As the date approached, with about three days to go, Gawain found himself before a hunter's cabin, where he asked the way to the Green Chapel. The hunter, a pleasant, genial fellow, met him at the door and replied, "Well, the Chapel is just down the way, a few hundred yards. Why not spend your next three days here with us? We'd love to have you. And when your time comes, your green friend is just down the way." So Gawain says okay. And the hunter that evening says to him, "Now, early tomorrow I'm going off hunting, but I'll be back in the evening, when we shall exchange our winnings of the day. I'll give you everything I get on the hunt, and you give me whatever will have come to you." They laugh, and that was fine with Gawain. So they all retire to bed. In the morning, early, the hunter rides off while Gawain is still asleep. Presently, in comes the hunter's extraordinarily beautiful wife, who tickles Gawain under the chin, and wakes him, and passionately invites him to a morning of love. Well, he is a knight of King Arthur's court, and to betray his host is the last thing such a knight can stoop to, so Gawain sternly resists. However, she is insistent and makes more and more of an issue of this thing, until finally she says to him, "Well then, let me give you just one kiss!" So she gives him one large smack. And that was that. That evening, the hunter arrives with a great haul of all kinds of small game, throws it on the floor, and Gawain gives him one large kiss. They laugh, and that, too, was that. The second morning, the wife again comes into the room, more passionate than ever, and the fruit of that encounter is two kisses. The hunter in the evening returns with about half as much game as before and receives two kisses, and again they laugh. On the third morning, the wife is glorious, and Gawain, a young man about to meet his death, has all he can do to keep his head and retain his knightly honor, with this last gift before him of the luxury of life. This time, he accepts three kisses. And when she has delivered these, she begs him, as a token of her love, to accept her garter. "It is charmed," she says, "and will protect you against every danger." So Gawain accepts the garter. And when the hunter returns with just one silly, smelly fox, which he tosses onto the floor, he receives in exchange three kisses from Gawain -- but no garter.” “Do we not see what the tests are of this young knight Gawain? They are the same as the first two of Buddha. One is of desire, lust. The other is of the fear of death. Gawain had proved courage enough in just keeping his faith with this adventure. However, the garter was just one temptation too many. So when Gawain is approaching the Green Chapel, he hears the Green Knight there, whetting the great ax-whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff. Gawain arrives, and the giant simply says to him, "Stretch your neck out here on this block." Gawain does so, and the Green Knight lifts the ax, but then pauses. "No, stretch it out -- a little more," he says. Gawain does so, and again the giant elevates the great ax. "A little more," he says once again. Gawain does the best he can and then whiffff -- only giving Gawain's neck one little scratch. Then the Green Knight, who is in fact the hunter himself transfigured, explains, "That's for the garter." This, they say, is the origin legend of the order of the Knights of the Garter.”

“The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.”

“A third position, closer than Gawain's to that of the Buddha, yet loyal still to the values of life on this earth, is that of Nietzsche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra. In a kind of parable, Nietzsche describes what he calls the three transformations of the spirit. The first is that of the camel, of childhood and youth. The camel gets down on his knees and says, "Put a load on me." This is the season for obedience, receiving instruction and the information your society requires of you in order to live a responsible life. But when the camel is well loaded, it struggles to its feet and runs out into the desert, where it is transformed into a lion -- the heavier the load that had been carried, the stronger the lion will be. Now, the task of the lion is to kill a dragon, and the name of the dragon is "Thou shalt." On every scale of this scaly beast, a "thou shalt" is imprinted: some from four thousand years ago; others from this morning's headlines. Whereas the camel, the child, had to submit to the "thou shalts," the lion, the youth, is to throw them off and come to his own realization. And so, when the dragon is thoroughly dead, with all its "thou shalts" overcome, the lion is transformed into a child moving out of its own nature, like a wheel impelled from its own hub. No more rules to obey. No more rules derived from the historical needs and tasks of the local society, but the pure impulse to living of a life in flower.”

Saying "YES" to Life

The following is a clip from Joseph Campbell's, "The Power of Myth":

.. So Jesus says, "Judge not that you may not be judged." That is to say, put yourself back in the position of Paradise before you thought in terms of good and evil. You don't hear this much from the pulpits. But one of the great challenges of life is to say "yea" to that person or that act or that condition which in your mind is most abominable.

… There are two aspects to a thing of this kind. One is your judgment in the field of action, and the other is your judgment as a metaphysical observer. You can't say there shouldn't be poisonous serpents -- that's the way life is. But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That's not saying no to the serpent, that's saying no to that situation.

There's a wonderful verse in the Rig Veda that says, "On the tree" -- that's the tree of life, the tree of your own life -- "there are two birds, fast friends. One eats the fruit of the tree, and the other, not eating, watches." Now, the one eating the fruit of the tree is killing the fruit. Life lives on life, that's what it's all about. A little myth from India tells the story of the great god Shiva, the lord whose dance is the universe. He had as his consort the goddess Parvathi, daughter of the mountain king. A monster came to him and said, "I want your wife as my mistress.'' Shiva was indignant, so he simply opened his third eye, and lightning bolts struck the earth, there was smoke and fire, and when the smoke cleared, there was another monster, lean, with hair like the hair of a lion flying to the four directions. The first monster saw that the lean monster was about to eat him up. Now, what do you do when you're in a situation like that? Traditional advice says to throw yourself on the mercy of the deity. So the monster said, "Shiva, I throw myself on your mercy." Now, there are rules for this god game. When someone throws himself on your mercy, then you yield mercy. So Shiva said, "I yield my mercy. Lean monster, don't eat him." "Well," said the lean monster, "what do I do? I'm hungry. You made me hungry, to eat this guy up." "Well," said Shiva, "eat yourself." So the lean monster started on his feet and came chomping up, chomping up -- this is an image of life living on life. Finally, there was nothing left of the lean monster but a face. Shiva looked at the face and said, "I've never seen a greater demonstration of what life's all about than this. I will call you Kirtimukha -- face of glory." And you will see that mask, that face of glory, at the portals to Shiva shrines and also to Buddha shrines. Shiva said to the face, "He who will not bow to you is unworthy to come to me." You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is, not on the condition that it follow your rules. Otherwise, you'll never get through to the metaphysical dimension.

Once in India I thought I would like to meet a major guru or teacher face to face. So I went to see a celebrated teacher named Sri Krishna Menon, and the first thing he said to me was, "Do you have a question?" The teacher in this tradition always answers questions. He doesn't tell you anything you are not yet ready to hear. So I said, "Yes, I have a question. Since in Hindu thinking everything in the universe is a manifestation of divinity itself, how should we say no to anything in the world? How should we say no to brutality, to stupidity, to vulgarity, to thoughtlessness?" And he answered, "For you and for me -- the way is to say yes." We then had a wonderful talk on this theme of the affirmation of all things. And it confirmed me in the feeling I had had that who are we to judge? It seems to me that this is one of the great teachings, also, of Jesus.

Maya / Sunyata

Somewhere along the line I had stated that I would post something on the Maya concept, which I aim to do here by making a comparison, and talking more directly about the Zen Buddhist concept of Sunyata. Whereas these two concepts are derived from different schools of thought, one Hindu, the other again Buddhism, I believe most certainly that both share the same underlying essence and use and thus I will talk about the one and infer onto the other – not to mention I’m no follower of Hindu.

The school of Buddhism associated with Zen was derived quite simply for the purposes of experiencing the enlightenment of Sakyamuni; which is in turn expressed through the doctrine of Sunyata. Of course the term Sunyata being one of those wonderful oriental terms that’s difficult to translate into English, it can be said to mean something along the lines of “emptiness”, or “void”, and directs ones attention to the essential character of being. By doing this though, it gives sunyata somewhat of a negative character, and thus a sense that it exists within the usual dualistic concepts of mind, where further we have the ability to apply our logic and generalizations over it, and/or the notion that it arises as a result of these tools. It should not be looked at then, as something one asserts, or as something that one has/had once asserted. Certainly it could be argued that no doubt the term was brought into light through human utterance, however it should not be considered that through this utterance a form of inquiry was born into the spirits of mans intellect, or that attention to some empirical insight was born such that through a philosophical dialogue we could come to know something once hidden behind a veil.

Sunyata, we can say, is simply that which makes everything possible, but it is not once a pre-supposition, or a fairy we can discover buzzing around the lilies; quite simply put, it has no individual existence, and/or should hold within the mind no conception of a dualistic existence whereby on the one hand it is this, while on the other it is that. To have a dialogue on the matter, to bring sunyata into the world of philosophical discourse and thus apply the forms of logic and analytic upon it is to then cease to talk about it, or anything at all. The doctrine of sunyata, again, is the means through which we experience enlightenment of Sakyamuni. To make a simple comparison, surely one can speak and talk of love, even apply logic to the experience, but within this dialogue we cannot at once capture the essence of what love is – one must experience it for himself, thus at this point the dialogue becomes meaningless and it is well understood by those who are in love that no such dialogue can ever hope to pass on meaning and understanding to those who have not experience being in love.

We should then consider sunyata as enveloping the world of dualism, of subjects and objects; it is both immanent, and transcendent, non-contradictory and absolutely one. For Zen then, to know sunyata is to experience it, as once it is conceptualized it is lost. Like love, to experience love is to know it and/or be aware of it; however in the case of sunyata, we are not to be seen as becoming aware of the world of sensation and intellection. Again, the world of sense and intellect is a world which pits a dichotomy between subject and object – of a subject at first sensing, an object being sensed, and then the subject creating differentiations between object X and object Y vs. subject A. Transcendence of this dualism then, is to have awareness of sunyata – this is the essence of Zen and Zen practice.

Sunyata then, is experienced only as both subject and object and is not felt within the world of everyday experience. This is because our experience of the everyday is a conceptualized experience, one where we apply the forms of our thought through a reconstruction of reality; in some cases a reality that is said to be that which is in itself, others simply the forms and tools of thought to serve needs and interests. In either case there is a clear sense of dualism which takes either a classic form, or a binary form. In a philosophical sense we aim to reconstruct the world via a starting point from empiricism (for example), thus creating a dualism which destroys the concept of sunyata. Certainly mans power of reason is a wonderful tool at predicting and controlling phenomenon, and improving the quality of life, however the foundation of sunyata is not this sort of cold hard intellection, but an experience in and of itself. One must cast aside his reason, and his desire to differentiate to first begin to enter into such an experience.

It is said that “Knowing and seeing” sunyata is sunyata knowing and seeing itself – in other words there is no outside knower, no man at the machine, it is its own knower and it’s own seer. Although our experience is condition and relative to certain contingencies, it should be seen that WE ARE sunyata; our capacity to reason arises out of it, however is not the path that leads back to it. As sunyata is part of reason itself and leaves its mark in the wake of reason, to all together engulf oneself in the enterprise of reason in an effort to discover truth is akin to rigorously applying geology to discover the secrets of the objective world.

The essence of Zen, of sunyata, of maya, is the unconditioned experienced of life itself – it’s the zone of the athlete, the middle stage of the act of shoveling ones driveway, being in the midst of battle with the enemy, or being within the act of a crime. It knows no morally right or wrong, evils or goodness, it is not held high and felt only by the righteous, but is woven into the lives of everyone; it permeates, it is here, it is not here, it is everywhere, it is everything, it is….

Afterwards:
There is the idea that maya simply means illusion, and directs ones attention to the idea that the world of dualism we live in is unreal, that (for example, as in ZMM) the millions of people who perished as a result of the Hiroshima bomb, was merely illusory. But this represents a certain shallowness to the idea of maya. To see maya as an illusion is not to disregard life per se, be to direct one to a path of enlightenment which circumvents the use of reasoning for such a task.

From Pirsig’s ZMM:
“In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened.

Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom. The illusion of separation of subject from object is best removed by the elimination of physical activity, mental activity and emotional activity. There are many disciplines for this. One of the most important is the Sanskrit dhyna, mispronounced in Chinese as "Chan" and again mispronounced in Japanese as "Zen." (there’s a bit of ignorance in this statement I won’t here point out, but the inference is clear enough) Phædrus never got involved in meditation because it made no sense to him. In his entire time in India "sense" was always logical consistency and he couldn't find any honest way to abandon this belief. That, I think, was creditable on his part.

But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.

Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up.”

It’s obvious from this passage that Pirsig was looking for the sort of enlightenment found through connection with the universe by means of pure reason (he was a Kantian slob was he not), and as a result failed to see the point of what was being conveyed, which resulted in years later going nuts. I suppose it’s difficult to get away from the idea that one can paste they’re conditioned forms and ideas onto the world, call it what it is and move on. That the world is illusion is not a plea to see it as such, and thus ignore it, it is nothing more then a warning of the ills which arise when applying logic to its discovery as a means of ultimate Truth - it is forever an empty cup. Could one live life with only the reasoning of love, and not love itself? If we once called love an illusion, does this negate what one reads in the paper or sees on the street? No – it says that love on sight, sound and intellect is an illusion as there is no experience there to be had, only the illusion of an experience that is not understood; one could at first be pretending, could be acting, so on. Is the love one is seeing between two people on a street corner illusory? Yes, and in the same way the Hiroshima bomb was.

The illusion of these concepts arises as the result of a particular form of inquiry that would limit them to the world of site, or of sense in general – that is the illusion…

A redundant after-thought:
The Illusion, Maya, and love is like a card trick. What makes the card trick illusiory is the fact that within the experience of the trick an essential component is missing, and thus an experience of illusion is had, which of course we call magic. What one sees when he uses reason to contemplate maya, or views love from a coffee shop window, is an illusion in the same way as an essential component of the experience is missing, and that is of course, the experience itself. Only upon plunging oneself into the act of living can he grasp what he sees, and only in this instance do the words he speaks make any sense. Once the illusion of the card trick is revealed, and one can directly experience the slight of hand, does one understand that through the illusion there is really no illusion at all…

P.4 The Two Horns of Realism and Non-realism

Of course “in front of me right now is a computer monitor”; which of course I’m eyeing to a greater degree as I type…

However, outside of a certain behavior which includes making marks and noises, this statement really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In the same way, outside of a system of communication which includes speaking, marking, making symbols, systems of arithmetic, logic, etc. a map makes no sense at all either.

As the example goes, the map is a representation of the terrain; it corresponds to certain objective/material aspects of it – dark lines with perpendicular hashes are railroads, blue squiggly lines are streams and rivers, while blue patches are lakes – green patches are parks and forested areas, with broad circles and numbers representing altitudes – then there’s those little blue boxes with the tent, those are camping areas, or perhaps a wayside rest, with little black lines paving they’re way adjacent to them, through the cities and past my house… This, it’s supposed to be believed, represents the land.

Direct intuition seems to suggest quite clearly that such is the case, to the point that no-one outright would have a problem accepting it – however I find it highly problematic. Certainly before a squiggly line can be conceived of as representing a river, it has to be understood the enormous amount of contingencies that lead to that particular symbol being coherent in the first place. Looking at it just by itself we say, “this line stands for the river.” Is it the representative character of that statement that allows me understand what you’re saying, or is it rather your behavior as a whole that allows me to understand it? In another way, to say that words and marks represent and correspond is to suggest (or so I take it as suggesting) that outside of human contingencies these words and marks still hold a certain truth in and of themselves – it’s the old, “the universe speaks a certain language” bit. Which is for me to suggest that languages are not elements of human behavior, but elements of the way things are in themselves – and this seems to lead somewhat dubiously to the thought that speaking (in the form of representing) is really a third person enterprise with my hands firmly grasping the controls of a mysterious chimera inside the skull of meat puppet.

As elements of the way things are in themselves it suggests to me that, outside of human needs and interests there are still “blue squiggly lines and green patches”, but then I’m confused because, where are those blue squiggly lines and green patches? In other words, maps (if I can loosely use “represent” without being attacked) are at best representations of human behavior, not land masses. They represent certain contingencies which are always relative to ourselves.

I can’t escape the idea that behind any realist worldview is the idea of some sort of absolute – which either exists in a certain sort of commensurate lingo, or an all powerful all knowing God. How can you be certain that you’ve represented reality? In what way is the manner of my speak incorrect? You see, the only way to validate a strict realist, representative circular worldview is [again] to appeal to a ghost in the machine (a third person perspective), which ultimately validates the claim. A view of language (on the other hand) which is more tool-like and behavioral, has no requirement for ultimate justification or circular reasoning as what I’m saying has no ultimate relation to things in themselves, but only relates (once again) to behavior.

One of the reasons why I bring up democracy over and over (to which I haven’t received a response on the matter), is if language represents the terrain, then what is the terrain of Democracy? Where do we see Democracy? Where do we bump into it and how is this bumping into any different from bumping into the so-called terrain? This is why I infer that the answer is naturally, that “Democracy is merely a creation of the human spirit.” But if that’s the case, what’s it representative of (what’s spirit, or whatever word one would insert here)? Is Democracy real? Is it a fairy? The realist perspective fails to account for such phenomenon’s – of which we could include religion, love, goodness, and countless other human institutions. However, looked at from a behavioral point of view, the line between the terrain and human institution is blurred to a point that it makes no sense to conceive of such distinctions; that anything and everything from rocks to God, to love, to physics, are nothing more then human conventions based on certain contingencies that arose in our effort to thrive, survive, be happy and procreate.

I’m thinking to myself that this sounds like a sort of reductionism of God and religion, however I must remind myself that at this point in the string of this talk on Realism vs Non-realism, I’ve merely been talking about God as it pertains to a behavioral perspective… I think after this post I’d like to move on and get back to some thoughts I’ve been having on Rorty and Buddhism – as Buddhism is my secret love, and this whole liberal ironist thing is really eatin’ a hole through me…..

P.S.
Psiomniac, I’m not really sure where to go… And I’m really bothered by the fact that maybe I’m severely misunderstanding your point of view – it could be because I’m too much of a novice, or that I’m being too forceful with my own thoughts, I’m not sure. Perhaps you could draft a post on your blog that elucidates your major points??? Cuz I can be a little slow and stuff.

"Metaphorical" vs. "Final" Language

I’d like to make a quick point here for the validity of religious language by appealing to a distinction Rorty makes about language, then in short pointing out where and why I feel he goes wrong.

In Rorty’s book, “Contingency, Irony and Solidarity”, he distinguishes (not directly) between two types of vocabularies or languages; First, what he calls a “Final Vocabulary” he defines as follows:

“All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest sefl-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person’s “Final Vocabulary”.

It is “final” in the sense that if doubt is cast on the worth of these words, the user has no noncircular argumentative recourse. Those words are as far as he can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force. A small part of a final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as, “true”, “good”, “right”, and “beautiful”. The larger part contains thicker, more rigid, and more parochial terms, for example, “Christ”, “England”, “Professional Standards”, “decency”, “kindness”, “the revolution”, “the Church”, “Progressive”, “rigorous”, “creative”. The more parochial terms do most of the work.”

On the other hand, Rorty defines Metaphorical Language as follows:

Although first, it should be understood the claim Rorty makes in my post just below, “Systemic Truth / Rorty”.

Rorty points out Nietzsche’s definition of “truth” as “a mobile army of metaphors”…
"...but in order to accept this picture, we need to see the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical in the way Davidson see’s it; not as a distinction between two sorts of meaning, nor as a distinction between two sorts of interpretation, but as a distinction between familiar and unfamiliar uses of noises and marks. The literal uses of noises and marks are the uses we can handle by our old theories about what people will say under various conditions. Their metaphorical use is the sort which makes us get busy developing a new theory… One should not think of metaphorical expression as having meaning distinct from their literal ones. To have meaning is to have a language game. Metaphors, by definition, do not…"

The issue I have here is simple, and of course (again) centers around my defense of religious language; Rorty would quickly reduce the whole enterprise of Christianity to a “Final Vocabulary”, and thus as such is bound to be justified only by reference to circular argumentation. Whereas in a general sense, Christians certainly do tend to hold to a static/final vocabulary relative to they’re beliefs, it does not stand (while looking at Christianity from a historical perspective) that it is not at the same time “a mobile army of metaphors”. Only when one takes the view that our current belief is not metaphoric can we reduce it to notions such as final vocabulary; I would suspect that the intellectual theologian, as well as myself, don’t have such static patterns of thought with regard to God, or Christianity. There may be certain principles that underlie Christian thinking, however the way in which we define those things, the way we talk about them, is certainly metaphorical (or so I'd suggest). Furthermore, the way we bring into the fray of our beliefs that which wasn’t there before constantly changes along side the evolution of our metaphors.

To put it another way, Rorty would reject Christianity not just on the grounds of being a so called final vocabulary, but as it implies an ultimate Truth or a means of getting in touch with a reality that exists “out there”. i.e. it is a means of certainty (the two are really the same). Rorty’s view of science (for example) is one that merely suggests, we’re not discovering truths which lead us closer and closer to the nature of the way the world is in itself, but merely developing new languages, through the formation of new metaphors, that are better suited to an ever changing world. However, this would be the same argument that I would employ for what religious language does.

So it seems to me a bit short sighted of Rorty to reduce Christian thinking in such a manner; although at the bottom I understand that his suggestion would be that God is akin to the sort of thinking which says there is a truth outside ourselves to be know, and thus rejects it also on those grounds. However I’ll come back with his same language and simply state that that is mere metaphor as well, that there is no reason that Christianity, in that sense, cannot fit into the framework of a neo-pragmatist world view…

There is no necessary need (as Christians), while in the process of redefining and changing our metaphores, to loose sight of where we began, in this case with Christ. And there is likewise no necessary need to continue to view God as some ultimate outside reality, or some fire burning within us, as neither of these views will change the principle target that Chritianity would aim for, e.g. freedom, love, so on. In this way, I'll let Rorty have his stance of Christian dogma and God as a means of certainty as something we can do better without (I completely agree), but again, there's no reason we need to ditch Christianity in the process of adopting a more pragmatic worldview.

---
(on a side note)
Rorty goes on to describe the “Ironist”, the sort of person that should replace the metaphysician (and once again, I find myself in agreement), he says:

The Ironist is someone who fulfills three conditions: 1.) he has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary he currently uses, because he has been impressed with other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books he has encountered; 2.) he realized that argument phrased in his current vocabulary can neither underwrite not dissolve these doubts; 3.) Insofar as he philosophizes about his situation, he does not think that his vocabulary is closer to reality then others, that it is in touch with a power not himself. Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and universal metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one’s way past appearance to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old…”

The obvious question that comes to mind for me then, is how a Christian cannot at the same time be an ironist after Rorty? Is it not in the Christians best interest to be skeptical? To continually take new views of his beliefs in light of others? To redefine his/her metaphors; in affect assimilate ideas such as, acceptance of the homosexual community and they’re language practices? Isn’t it in the Christians best interest to constantly keep in mind “2”? And finally, isn’t part of Christianity not to judge others, not to consider them right or wrong, but rather to reflect upon one’s self? Is there any reason why the Chrsitian cannot be progressive in his metaphorical content?

I don’t know? I shall have to think about this some more.

On Discourse and no Discourse

For those who noticed, I've deleted this post - there was something vary unsatisfactory about it.... Not sure, perhaps I'll repost it at a later date.....

Bottom Line:
It repeated things I've already stated in my Religious Language posts (although it had some further spins) and I didn't like the way it hung together...

Essences and Word Play

So I have two things on my mind, first this post from Sam HERE.
The basic premise is a stance of non-realism, where nothing exists apart from our knowledge and language about a particular thing; more importantly for the discussion, God doesn't exist outside of our faith and what it is we say about him. Now of course I agree with Sam where he states that this position ignors the mystical tradition.

Secondly there is this snippet from Richard Rorty's "Philosophy and Social Hope":
“To treat beliefs not as representation but has habits of action, and words not as representations but as tools, is to make it pointless to ask, ‘Am I discovering or inventing, making or finding?’ There is no point in dividing up the organisms’ interaction with the environment in this way. Consider an example:
We normally say that a bank account is a social construction rather than an object in the natural world, whereas a giraffe is an object in the natural world rather then a social construction. Bank accounts are made, giraffes are found. Now the truth in this view is simply that if there had been no human beings there would still have been giraffes, whereas there would have been no bank accounts. But this causal independence of giraffes from humans does not mean that giraffes are what they are apart from human needs and interests.

On the contrary, we describe giraffes in the way we do, as giraffes, because of our needs and interests. We speak a language which includes the word ‘giraffe’ because it suits our purposes to do so. The same goes for words like ‘organ’, ‘cell’, ‘atom’ and so on……”

I have then, one simple question in mind; what about the essence of a thing? In other words, to say that God is nothing more then what we say ignores the phenomenal component that lead to the language in the first place – where the phenomenal component may be said to be some pre-existent essence that we’re trying to communicate. I could say the same thing about the giraffe; sure, what we say about the giraffe to a certain extent is based on pragmatic intentions, what other way of speaking about it would make sense. Then I could say, well, certainly there is some essence of giraffe-ness which exists outside of our language and knowledge about it, and to reduce it to mere, let’s say utility, is to miss the point of something seemingly profound.

But, as the pragmatist might say, “Who cares?” To say that God exists, to say that giraffes have essences simply isn’t meaningful, and seemingly in no way useful, so why even consider it?

This gets back to my central question, “Is religious language valid?” And, “What’s it good for?”

I’m going to sleep on this for now……

Inspired Theist vs. Uninspired Atheist

Consider the following from Richard Rorty’s “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” (pg. 88):

….the problem is that one side thinks there are too many meanings around and the other side too few. In this respect the closest analogy one can find is the conflict between inspired theists and uninspired atheists. An inspired theist, let us say, is one who “just knows” that there are supernatural beings which play certain explanatory roles in accounting for natural phenomenon. (They are not to be confused with natural theologians – who offer the supernatural as the best explanation of these phenomenon.) Inspired theists have inherited their picture of the universe as divided into two great ontological realms – the supernatural and the natural - along with their language. The way they talk about things is inextricably tied up with - or at least strikes them as inextricably tied up with – references to the divine. The notion of the supernatural does not strike then as a “theory” any more than the notion of the mental strikes us as a theory. When they encounter atheists they view then as people who don’t know what’s going on, although they admit that the atheists seem able to predict and control natural phenomena very nicely indeed. (“Thank heaven” they say, “that we are not as those natural theologians are, or we too might loose touch with the real.”) The atheists view these theists as having too many words in their language and too many meanings to bother about. Enthusiastic atheists explain to inspired theists that, “all there REALLY is is…,” and the theists reply that one should realize that there are more things in heaven and earth… And so it goes. The philosophers on both sides may analyze meanings until they are blue in the face, but al such analyses are either, “directional” and “reductive” (e.g., “noncognitive” analyses of religious discourse, which are the analogue of “expressive” theories of pain reports) or else simply describe alternative “forms of life”, culminating in nothing more helpful than the announcement: “This language-game is played.” The theists’ game is essential to their self image, just as the image of man’s Glassy Essence is essential to the Western intellectual’s, but neither has a larger context available in which to evaluate this image. Where, after all, would such a context come from?

Rorty brings up some interesting points here that I think need to be dealt with, at least from the perspective of my own thinking. When I read this I thought, “CRAP! He’s talking about theists like me, ones who reduce it to a ‘Language-game’.” The main point here (and I think Rorty supports it as he see’s no use for religious language) is that the inspired theists simply have too many words in their language.

In defense of myself then, I’m going to go after a couple things; first this statement:
“An inspired theist, let us say, is one who “just knows” that there are supernatural beings which play certain explanatory roles in accounting for natural phenomenon.”

This seems like a hasty generalization from Rorty, and somewhat reduces the nature of theistic belief to the belief in fairies; it reminds me of a typical Dawkins move. After all, what does he mean by supernatural beings, and what natural phenomenon would he suggest those beings account for – relative to what he believes the theist thinks of course? Sure it’s a handy explanation that on the outside seems to make perfect sense, but it’s obvious he assumes his own shallow meanings. Perhaps though, by supernatural he simply means “transcendental” and by beings he means something like, some undefined ontology (at least that seems somewhat honest), however the rest seems like talk about miracle work and renders my “perhaps though” as nothing more then wishful thinking. Next he describes the natural theologians as a comparison, but again he says “these phenomenon” which is packed full of all sorts of meanings and he never gets into what he means by it. Most of my suspicion centers around his saying “…certain explanatory roles…” From this I could infer that he’s reducing theistic belief to the “God of the Gaps” argument; in other words the natural phenomenon which he refers to is simply that which has no scientific explanation, yet.

I see this statement as saying something along the lines of the following: “An inspired theist, let us say, is one who “just knows” that there is a Pie in the Sky who created everything.” That would have been more to the point I think….

That being what it is, my attack of that statement from Rorty is fruitless and is really meant to overshadow my inability to currently deal with this statement:
“… but all such analyses are either, “directional” and “reductive” (e.g., “noncognitive” analyses of religious discourse, which are the analogue of “expressive” theories of pain reports) or else simply describe alternative “forms of life”, culminating in nothing more helpful than the announcement: “This language-game is played.”

My current mantra is most certainly that “A certain language-game is being played,” however, it’s not without validity or purpose. I think the key is here, what are those “alternative forms of life”, and do the too many words of religious language lead to an alternative form of life that would promote a better world for our great-great-great-great-grand children? One might suggest, “Why do we need the antiquated words of Christ and the belief in the divine in order to understand what those things are?” I would simply answer, “well, we don’t.” As someone who follows Buddhism, I may well agree that Christianity along with Buddhism has far too many words, however these languages do not stand as descriptions of an underlying reality per se’, but serve as a path to a particular state of mind which leads to the “alternative form of life”. Although, we can do without the word “alternative” in that statement and simply say something like, “Good”.

None of this rhetoric on my part will really do though, so I’d like to call attention to the post I put up earlier from Rorty and point out a few things.

Rorty said in this post:
“The idea that the aim of inquiry is correspondence to reality, or seeing the face of God, or substituting facts for interpretation is one that we just can’t make any use of.”
“The reaction against this Greek/Christian pursuit of blessedness through union with a natural order is to say, there isn’t any natural order, but there is a possibility of a better life for our great-great-great grandchildren. That’s enough to give you all the meaning and inspiration that you could use. "

This statement is true enough, but that assumes that the goal of theism (at least in modern society) is to “see the face of God”, or to “substitute facts for interpretation”. Theism, at least from my perspective, does not have within it the goal of escaping the world and seeing God, it does not substitute facts for interpretation in any way – unless of course we’re talking to a biblical literalist, but I’m defending myself here, not them. Again, the goal of theism is along the lines of a certain disposition to live, to behave, to interact, to come into contact with ones self thereby paving the way to come into contact with others. (Now don’t take me here as reducing theism to behaviorism, as I’m not talking necessarily about physical dispositions). No matter the medium you choose, the religion or governmental system, there is always a set of normative behaviors one should abide by; the question I would pose is, “is one going to follow blindly those normative laws, or is one going to come to an understanding of them?” What philosophy or system of law proliferates understanding? That’s a bit like asking what military spreads peace?

The bottom line is that it’s simply a mistake to assume that the theist is in the pursuit of the divine outside of life, or that he’s trying to get in touch with God, so on and so forth. I think it would be more accurate to suggest that one is trying to bring the divine into himself, whether that divine is the Buddha nature, or the Christ nature (I see no difference between the two). Religious language, where-as it is a form of creating understanding, is a personal journey that one takes; when he understands that journey, those too many words of religious language become no longer necessary. One must understand that (once again) religion is not a description of anything, any more then a road is a description of the ground, it is merely something we follow. Further more, (with regard to myself) these words are not something that I simply believe as they are, as there is nothing to believe in; when one has love, there is no belief in that love, you are merely consumed with it, and love is what we call it. Belief merely exists where an understanding isn’t self evident, so to follow Biblical words is to follow a belief in a dogma and this often takes on the appearance of one having too many words in his vocabulary. The key then, is to do exactly as the inspired atheist would suggest, “get rid of those too many words”, not by discarding them, but by following them to the end.

Let me try an example:
Let’s suppose that language, or rather a particular word in itself, represent a road somewhere. So the sentence, “I’m hungry”, represents two roads (“I’M” and “HUNGRY”), both of which a listener has to travel in order to gain an understanding of what you’re saying, or better put, in order to reach the destination of understanding. Every time one is reading from a page or listening to speech, one is taking a journey which is paved by all the individual roads made up by all the individual words. By itself, “I’m”, is a lone road that doesn’t necessarily lead to anywhere except perhaps the end of the block, which of course has many branching roads that lead to many other possible destinations; so you’re left stranded. Mate that word with hungry and suddenly you’ve arrived somewhere familiar.

To understand the roads of everyday speech, you must see them as traveling through yourself. In other words, when someone says “I’m hungry”, you immediately recognize these roads as existing in you, and it is through this understanding that you realize not just that this person has the same roads, but that he’s directing you towards a destination and realization of his disposition.

The issue at hand is that the uninspired atheist likes to maintain that the theist has too many roads. However this assumes one of two things, either that; A.) The roads lead to similar destinations and thus can be discarded with more direct roads / routes. Or B.) The roads simply don’t lead anywhere.
Now again, in Rorty’s case he’s simply saying (I’m going to put words in his mouth here) “Look, there is a possibility for a better life right here and right now, there is no need to talk about this relative to a belief in some divine power.” And of course this assumes “A”. Rorty’s language, or the path his language takes, is of course a pragmatic one and always refers to humanity and the expansion of the liberal bourgeoisie; in other words it’s always directed outwards, the road is always leaving you without any return.

Religious language, where-as it certainly takes into account the betterment of society, is not directed in such ways, it doesn’t say we’re going to better society by paving roads out to it and building fancy houses on it. It betters society by paving roads which all lead back to the self; which gets me to assumption “B”, “the roads simply don’t lead anywhere”. Let me give an example, in contemporary society we may say that it is not the proper behavior to commit adultery, that you shouldn’t cheat with another man’s wife – and this of course is a statement whose roads point outside the self. In other words the reasons for not behaving in a certain way are not reasons which exist in you, but in society, as of course we ruin people’s lives, break up marriages and families, so on and so forth. Compare this to Matthew 5:27-30:
27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'[e] 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Notice that this sentiment has nothing at all to say about the woman or society, it points directly to the self, it is a language which doesn’t speak to humanity, is not some meaningless babble that points to the divine, but it points directly at YOU. All the roads of religious language (where-as they may lead out) always turn back in. The uninspired atheist, who says that the inspired theist has too many words, is simply making the mistake of not following the road to its’ destination, but rather leaving it out in objective space somewhere and thus mistaking it for talk about the world.

An after thought:
Religious language always points back to the self because the self is the source of the divine light. As a result the object of religious discourse, if it can be said that there is one, is always within the individual. The source of the divine is never in the world itself as what’s in the world can never be revealed through itself, but only through ones self. In this way when the uninspired atheist talks about the world, he talks about it in a way that seems to suggest that things in themselves poses a nature all their own, and that this nature is somehow uninspired by our own nature. However, there can never be an understanding of the world without first having an understanding of self as it is through the self that the world is revealed. As it was said, “I and the Father are one.”

What I Mean by God

Consider the following quote from Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time":

"Every question is a seeking. Every seeking takes it's directions beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness. The knowing search can become an "investigation", as the revealing determination of what the question aims at. As questioning about.....questioning has what it asks about. All asking about....is in some way an inquiring of...Besides what is asked, what is interrogated also belongs to questioning. What is questioned is to be defined and conceptualized in the investigating, that is, the specifically theoretical, question. As what is really intended, what is to be ascertained lies in what is questioned; here questioning arrives at it's goal. As an attitude adopted by a being, the questioner, questioning has it's own character of being. Questioning can come about as "just asking around" or as an explicitly formulated question. What is peculiar to the latter is the fact that questioning first becomes lucid in advance with regard to all the above named constituitive characteristics of the question."

I often spend a considerable amount of time contemplating a working definition for what I mean by God and this clip from Heidegger often comes to mind when I make that attempt. As a result I’m always stopped dead in my tracks; would I try to end the inquiry?

Questioning has a certain eternal character to it, and likewise so does God. Where there are questions, there are answers; it seems the answers to those questions always make the questions absurd, yet questions remain. God, in this sense, is THE eternal question, one which is pondered generation after generation as not simply a seeking after [T]ruth, but a seeking after the [G]ood, after [V]irtue, after [J]ustice. This pursuit and eternal questioning seems to me to be as good a definition of God as any, and I’m happy to keep it that way for now.

I can’t help but see this as applying (Matthew Chapter 7):
7 Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. 8 For every one that asketh, receiveth: and he that seeketh, findeth: and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? 10 Or if he shall ask him a fish, will he reach him a serpent? 11 If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?

Are we asking the right questions? Are we asking questions at all? When we choose to live our lives within the limits of reason, are we not simply putting a limit to our questions? If an answer to a question is not rational, does it make the question absurd? How can a question really be absurd?

What I mean by "Dogma"

This is a response to another discussion I’m in, so it’s going to be me regurgitating many thoughts and ideas I’ve already laid down here, but in another way.

A couple things first:
- It’s always been my aim to expose the dogmatic nature of reason to show that the same level of faith people have towards religious language, people likewise have regarding reason.

The following statement was made to me regarding the above point, as if it's what I'm trying to suggest: (Which of course I’m not):
“In other words, the fact that you're writing about something means you've presupposed the validity of the definitions of the words you're using. And this is just as dogmatic as religious beliefs are.”
‘Of course, it's complete twaddle. Belief in the validity of the words in a dictionary presupposes only that empirical definitions are required in order to communicate. It certainly doesn't require faith in the unseen...”

The first task is; what is Dogma? Or in the very least, what do I mean by it?
Let me first quote two Buddhist sayings, as this will help set the stage:
- “You can use your finger to point at the moon, but don’t mistake the finger for the moon.”
- "The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you have the meaning you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a few words with him?"

What is Dogma:
Let me address directly the comment which was made above (in GREEN) by saying the following: There is no presupposing of the validity of definitions, but a presupposing that those definitions mirror a given phenomenon to an extent that they are somehow intertwined and/or inseparable from it; this is often looked at in an atemporal way, and as such becomes dogmatic…..
Dogma arises (I’ll argue) due to an ontological divide which exists between language and it’s referent, but where one refuses to recognize this divide; in other words, one mistakes the finger for the moon. I constantly use the example of gravity and ask the question, “Did gravity exist prior to Newton?” My answer is always a strict no; however the rational atheist always responds, “Of course it did.” This stance is an obvious dogmatic one, and arises because one is reluctant to separate the word gravity, and its underlying principles, from the phenomenon we attribute to it.

It must be seen that prior to Newton, the word gravity and it’s underlying principles did not exist, they were not in anybodies mind because there was no such thing yet; there simply wasn’t such a language. The rational atheist takes me as saying that apples didn’t fall from trees, which is hardly the case. What I’m suggesting is; no doubt apples did fall from trees, but it wasn’t because of gravity. Taking the dogmatic stance that it was, is not seeing the ontological gap between the word and the referent, it’s looking at the two as if they were somehow inseparable. Surely hundreds of years from now new science will evolve that not only makes Newtonian physics completely obsolete, but also makes it look quite silly at the same time – in much the same way we see the ancients description of the universe as silly. So what does that mean? Does it mean we were wrong? Of course it doesn’t, a pragmatic stance would see that gravity and its’ underlying principles were merely a mode of communicating about a particular phenomenon such that we could not only communicate about and understand the world, but more importantly understand ourselves. If we look at the past 2000 years of humanity we can see that (relative to what science says) the universe hasn’t changed all that much, however the way we talk about it has changed drastically and we’re constantly updating old forms of thought with new ones. So what’s happening here? Is the universe changing? Or is it simply that we’re talking about it in different ways?

Gravity, again, along with the underlying mathematics is nothing more then language, it is not a mirror to nature; the disembodied words of Newton were not just floating around in empty space since the beginning of time. As well, we cannot make the claim that it’s consistent with the way the universe operates in and of itself, because we can never know this; at best we can say that it’s consistent with a mode of thinking that we call rational. It’s consistent with an underlying mathematic, and we attribute that language of mathematic to a given referent and call it gravity, BUT THEY ARE NOT ONE IN THE SAME.

So, the bottom line:
One must learn to separate what he says from what it refers to. One must understand (refer to the second Buddhist quote above) that the words themselves are not the phenomenon itself, but a description of our experience which adds a certain meaning to it; once we have this, Newton can be discarded.

The next question that will be asked of me is, “So what, that doesn’t mean that God exists!” and I’ll respond with, “Well, not any more then gravity.” Then someone will further say that they can prove gravity by taking me to a bridge and dropping a rock and proclaim, “Look, gravity!” As if what I’m witness to at that moment is Newtonian physics, what could be more self evident? (I’m witness to words, hooray!) I don’t deny the validity of physics in talking about fallings rocks, but I also don’t deny the validity of religion in talking about the human spirit. Religion, whether Christianity or Buddhism, is a language and one should not mistake it for talking about stone or flash or old men in white robes; to understand it, one must not look to differentiate its words from an underlying reality, to connect it somehow by means of making it specific. One must dissolve the dogma into an experience of life that is not hindered by definitions. When one learns to separate words from referents, I truly believe (almost dogmatically so ; ) ) that a real experience of the divine is possible.