|
Post by Adam on Feb 8, 2010 11:36:24 GMT -1
What I don’t think this philosophical argument does is contribute in any way to a belief in beings who do not possess, and never have possessed, a physical form. I’m not sure that it does anything for the belief in a spirit form that can exist beyond the physical either e.g. ancestral spirits. I think that these issues still come down to a matter of faith in the end. So have I found the right stick or have I found a different one in the mud at my feet? No, right stick, though it probably is addressed in various different places (Heron wrote on his blog and I commented there... I wrote on my blog... and I'm currently in the process of trying to formulate my thoughts in a more coherent and useful form in this area)... this is an area I have wrestled with in one way or another since adolescence, but it seems wrong to me to so strongly associate matter with consciousness-as-the-facility-to-experience. My reasoning does get a bit esoteric, and I do apologise for that since I would much rather it had greater accessability than just me , so I'll wait till I have formulated it more clearly, but my thinking is that the association should be with *relationship* rather than matter, which I define as the capacity for reciprocal agency (the mutual capacity to effect the other) and/or reflexive agency (where the act of agency itself has effect on the agent)... probably more significantly the former. This then opens up the definition of consciousness-as-the-facility-to-experience to include abstracts such as song, story music and non-corporeal beings such as ancestral spirits as a continuity of expression of the living community of beings, spirit of place and gods. Anything we can be understood to stand in relationship to. Actually, take human peeps out of the equation... anything that can stand in relationship to anything else :-) Then we get into the inter-relationship and aliveness of everything and that's why I chose my blog name :-)
|
|
|
Post by Heron on Feb 8, 2010 20:44:13 GMT -1
I'm really struggling with this. Not so much because of the language used but the ideas themselves. So I am going to try and write down what I think is being discussed here and hopefully find out I've got hold of the right stick. I think Strawson is saying (using philosophical and logical forms of argument) that physical matter must have within it at least the potential to have experiences for the ability of having experiences to develop more fully in some forms of matter such as mammals. I think that Heron is asking what this might mean to different styles of pagan if the argument is accepted. If I am correct in what I think I have understood then it would seem to me that those who incorporate an animist or pantheist viewpoint may have that view strengthened and supported by Strawson’s arguments. If you believe that spirit or deity is manifested within all matter to some extent then I think this would be an explanation of how this is manifested - in the potential to have experiences. What I don’t think this philosophical argument does is contribute in any way to a belief in beings who do not possess, and never have possessed, a physical form. I’m not sure that it does anything for the belief in a spirit form that can exist beyond the physical either e.g. ancestral spirits. I think that these issues still come down to a matter of faith in the end. So have I found the right stick or have I found a different one in the mud at my feet? That's pretty much it Potia, so I wouldn't say you were struggling at all And if this can help us to tease out the different things that might be meant by 'pagan', and see what is compatible with what, it might help us all to think more clearly. As for faith, that might be the case, as you suggest, with spiritual beings. But there are also people about who speak of relationships with individual gods as they do relationships with their friends and relatives.That is, they don't speak of faith so much as knowledge. And others who have theories of cultural forms, archetypes and other ways in which such beings might become part of our lives without the need for a leap of faith as such. And others still (the majority?) seem to prefer to leave the whole matter as vaguely defined as possible!
|
|
|
Post by Heron on Feb 8, 2010 20:58:41 GMT -1
.....) , so I'll wait till I have formulated it more clearly, but my thinking is that the association should be with *relationship* rather than matter, which I define as the capacity for reciprocal agency (the mutual capacity to effect the other) and/or reflexive agency (where the act of agency itself has effect on the agent)... probably more significantly the former. This then opens up the definition of consciousness-as-the-facility-to-experience to include abstracts such as song, story music and non-corporeal beings such as ancestral spirits as a continuity of expression of the living community of beings, spirit of place and gods. Anything we can be understood to stand in relationship to. Actually, take human peeps out of the equation... anything that can stand in relationship to anything else :-) Then we get into the inter-relationship and aliveness of everything and that's why I chose my blog name :-) As I said elsewhere, I think exploring the importance of *relationship* is key to the way this might be developed into something significant beyond the advantage of clarity of definition. Because relationship is also key, as far as I am concerned, to our attitude to the gods. Having common experience is a starting point for relationship. Taking inter-relationships further and developing these between individuals and gods and between members of a worshipping community, must be what it's all about if any of us are to get anywhere either alone or within a group. Your extension of the thing into culture opens up possibilities that I hope we can develop.
|
|
|
Post by potia on Feb 9, 2010 10:26:37 GMT -1
It took me a lot of thought and reading of posts here and on Heron's blog to get me to the stage of thinking I might just be getting it so yes it was a struggle. Now I know I've got the right stick I'm going to see if I can add to the discussions While I do agree that relationship is very important I'm not so sure that you should take matter out of the equation. I'll try and explain what I mean. "Consciousness-as-the-facility-to-experience" associated with matter is something I think is already open to abstracts such as song and story etc. A song when all is said and done is made up of sounds. Sound can not exist without matter. To experience a song or story in any way we must have matter. Similarly with any art form I can think of - to be created matter is involved in both the formation and the transmission and reception of the art. The only time this could perhaps be said to change is in the realms of our imaginations and even then the expereinces we have had of matter and the formation of our brain chemistry are integral to what we can imagine. To me relationship grows out of experiences. Without that first connection or experience I don't think there can be the possibility of relationship forming. Relationship to gods and spirits still includes matter on one side (ours) but ultimately we have no way we can convince anyone else of the reality of our experiences and relationships to spirits if they choose not to believe in the existence of non-corporeal beings at some level. Sometimes my gods are incredibly real to me and at other times I wonder if I am deluding myself. The relationships, the lessons, the experiences are very real but I can not prove in any way that my gods are real - that is where the step of faith comes in for me. Perhaps that is as much about defining reality as it is about faith and belief? I'm not sure. Building descrete experiences into a relationship though - yes I think that is incredibly important to us as human beings. Not sure how much sense I'm making here
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Feb 9, 2010 11:17:06 GMT -1
A song when all is said and done is made up of sounds. Sound can not exist without matter. To experience a song or story in any way we must have matter. Similarly with any art form I can think of - to be created matter is involved in both the formation and the transmission and reception of the art. The only time this could perhaps be said to change is in the realms of our imaginations and even then the expereinces we have had of matter and the formation of our brain chemistry are integral to what we can imagine. I don't disagree with you, but I think to look to relationship is to look for the essence of consciousness-as-facility-to-experience that underlies even matter, for all matter's apparent ubiquity. With story, for example, there is something that transcends the matter through which that story is transmitted and experienced... the forms of a story, that remain continuous enough to provide it with an identity that survives retelling, embellishment etc., lack any continuity of material presence that we normally associate with personal identity. Let me offer a metaphor... a person consists of matter in form... the matter in our bodies are in close and patterned relationship to all the other matter, changing over time but with a continuity of pattern that allows us to maintain a sense of identity. Similarly, if we watch a swirl in the river flow, it appears, maintains itself as a pattern (we could call it Eddie ) and disappears. But a story is so much more like data... data, unlike matter, has the property that you can take it from point a to point b while still leaving it at point a. It requires material transmission to be expressed physically, but its essence is in relationship (as is ours, but the apparent continuity of matter over-rides our experience of that). If I tell you a story, and you take it an tell someone else... you are not telling a copy of the story (or poem), you are telling the same story. If one person reads it, and another hears it, their experience of it might be different (as my wife's experience of me is different to my friend's experience of me) but it is the same story. And matter itself (to get back to a physical level) exists in relation to energy and to space (which while on a quantum level may not be empty, on a macro level it is pretty much by definition).
|
|
|
Post by potia on Feb 9, 2010 13:35:38 GMT -1
Perhaps we are trying to unravel things that need not be unravelled? It seems to me that what you refer to as relationship I would call connection. For me the term relationship has more emotional and longer lasting meanings entwined in it where a connection can be more fleeting, less emotional. Matter and energy are of necessity connected in patterns and I'm not sure you can really talk about one without the others. My head hurts now!
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Feb 9, 2010 14:50:52 GMT -1
Perhaps we are trying to unravel things that need not be unravelled? I can no more not follow these trains of thought than I can not breathe :-) necessity... probably not, but hey It seems to me that what you refer to as relationship I would call connection. For me the term relationship has more emotional and longer lasting meanings entwined in it where a connection can be more fleeting, less emotional. Matter and energy are of necessity connected in patterns and I'm not sure you can really talk about one without the others. Of course you are right on both counts... I do tend to come at this from the point of view of a mathematical understanding... so when I use the term relationship, it is more abstract than a person to person relationship, but it is more than a connection (bundled up in the concept are the nature of the influence that each entity (abstract) has on each other) I've copied my notes so far to a googledoc, not really for any illumination, I'm far from that point, but to try and give a sense of what I mean by the above docs.google.com/View?id=ddgdztbg_19179fhddhband I'm toying with distinguishing between experience in the sense of statement 1, and later uses by referring to experience null and experience 1 which would be the experience of experiencing. Relationship (in this sense) is definitely relationship *between things* and cannot be separated from the things that are related... I prefer the focus on relationship though because in these sorts of discussions, the same emphasis is not granted to matter, which is often talked about if it is somehow stand-alone or as if it could exist in isolation
|
|
|
Post by Heron on Feb 9, 2010 21:04:20 GMT -1
I've copied my notes so far to a googledoc, not really for any illumination, I'm far from that point, but to try and give a sense of what I mean by the above docs.google.com/View?id=ddgdztbg_19179fhddhband I'm toying with distinguishing between experience in the sense of statement 1, and later uses by referring to experience null and experience 1 which would be the experience of experiencing. Relationship (in this sense) is definitely relationship *between things* and cannot be separated from the things that are related... I prefer the focus on relationship though because in these sorts of discussions, the same emphasis is not granted to matter, which is often talked about if it is somehow stand-alone or as if it could exist in isolation Sounds like Wittgenstein! Your proposition in '4' that experience is necessarily a multiple phenomenon adds a useful layer of complexity, as does the combination of experience as subject and of object in that totality. Difficult to get hold of on first reading, then simple enough , but all the same elusive in its simplicity.
|
|
|
Post by Adam on Feb 9, 2010 23:31:32 GMT -1
Sounds like Wittgenstein! Well he always one of the few philosophers that didn't make me want to eat my feet (though it is possible that some of the phenomenologists might get close, though that stuff is new to me)... the style was definitely motivated by Tractatus, because it appealed to my mathematical bent Your proposition in '4' that experience is necessarily a multiple phenomenon adds a useful layer of complexity, as does the combination of experience as subject and of object in that totality. Difficult to get hold of on first reading, then simple enough , but all the same elusive in its simplicity. I'm struggling with it myself, which is why I'm wary of opening it up too soon... I want to make my thinking as accessible/common language as possible, while at the same time clarifying it for myself... but it progresses. ;D
|
|