John Horgan defends not knowing

[Lou Gold]

What God, Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Have in Common

"Theories that try to explain these big metaphysical mysteries fall short, making agnosticism the only sensible stance."

Lots to comment here, so go at it.

My personal faithful resolution came by discovering that, if I let go of trying to intellectually grasp (comprehend and analyze) the mysteriousness, I could accept and be held by it and that this simple understanding (standing under) would bring more awareness, openness, kindness and wellness into my life.

Each one has a way. What's yours?

[Soul_of_Shu]

What can one know with utter certainty, other than there is this awareness without which what could possibly be known? Everything else I consider provisional, and at best true enough under the circumstances. Nevertheless, out of imaginative curiosity, it's fun to speculate—e.g. why are cats apparently not spellbound by sunsets?

[Ben Iscatus]

why are cats apparently not spellbound by sunsets?

Their group soul, I am reliably informed, is suitably spellbound.

[ScottRoberts]

From the article:

But when it comes to theories about ultimate reality, I’m with Voltaire. “Doubt is not a pleasant condition,” Voltaire said, “but certainty is an absurd one.”

There is a third option: commitment. If one evaluates options and finds one much more plausible than the others, one can commit to it in spite of not being completely certain. This applies particularly to religion, where some form of Pascal's Wager holds. Not that if one refrains from commitment one will end up in hell, but that the gains from spiritual practice will be missed, while if there are no such gains, one has lost nothing.

And this:

I’m definitely a skeptic. I doubt we’ll ever know .., how matter makes mind.

does not sound like an agnostic way pf putting the question.

[Lou Gold]

There is a third option: commitment. If one evaluates options and finds one much more plausible than the others, one can commit to it in spite of not being completely certain. This applies particularly to religion, where some form of Pascal's Wager holds. Not that if one refrains from commitment one will end up in hell, but that the gains from spiritual practice will be missed, while if there are no such gains, one has lost nothing.

Scott, I tend to agree. Indeed, one might not even evaluate but rather "fake it to see if you make it" as in just running an experiment to see if it generates, reinforces or demolishes the starting assumption or belief. I believe that "commitment" is another word for "devotion" to a practice. Spirituality and science, like marriage, are practices requiring strong devotion, especially when tempted toward disbelief. Meaning is found in relationship.

The discipline of commitment or devotion is an extremely powerful mental tool, the personal meaning of which can only be discovered (or rejected) through one's personal practice. One of my favorite descriptions of the power of devotion (commitment to practice) is found in Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita, which has been a core scripture informing my own rather eclectic approach.

As an important caveat, I want to emphasize that I am not proselytizing or advocating for the so-called "superiority" of "my" way. I'm only sharing a description of what has been useful to me in my participation in the dance of a Divinely Integrated Diversity or Great Mysteriousness.

[AshvinP]

What God, Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Have in Common

"Theories that try to explain these big metaphysical mysteries fall short, making agnosticism the only sensible stance."

Lots to comment here, so go at it.

My personal faithful resolution came by discovering that, if I let go of trying to intellectually grasp (comprehend and analyze) the mysteriousness, I could accept and be held by it and that this simple understanding (standing under) would bring more awareness, openness, kindness and wellness into my life.

Each one has a way. What's yours?

I find the below very ironic, even hypocritical, considering Horgan is advocating against dogmatic certainty in spiritual matters.

My main objection to this explanation of reality is the problem of evil. A casual glance at human history, and at the world today, reveals enormous suffering and injustice. If God loves us and is omnipotent, why is life so horrific for so many people? A standard response to this question is that God gave us free will; we can choose to be bad as well as good.

The late, great physicist Steven Weinberg, an atheist, who died in July, slaps down the free will argument in his book Dreams of a Final Theory. Noting that Nazis killed many of his relatives in the Holocaust, Weinberg asks: Did millions of Jews have to die so the Nazis could exercise their free will? That doesn’t seem fair. And what about kids who get cancer? Are we supposed to think that cancer cells have free will?

Does anyone believe this uni-factor analysis, i.e. what he admits is "a casual glance at human history", of evil is sufficient or even reasonable, as opposed to completely rationalistic, dogmatic, and unreasonable? For one thing, as Scott mentioned re: Pascal's Wager, it cuts off even the possibility of looking for answers within the spiritual realm. Many spiritual people, myself included, would suggest all that occurs in the sense-world originates from the spiritual world - yet the latter world is being completely ignored in order to put forth a "problem" which purports to prove the spiritual conception wrong. And again:

I’m definitely a skeptic. I doubt we’ll ever know whether God exists, what quantum mechanics means, how matter makes mind.

That sounds to me very dogmatic and displaying an unwarranted level of certainty about what we can or will know. He again tries to defeat an optimistic position on knowledge by cutting off the realm which would make such a position possible - the realm of the mind. Dogmatically presupposing "matter makes mind" is a way of ensuring the realm of mind will never be investigated on its own terms.

[Papanca]

"THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Why do we exist? The answer, according to the major monotheistic religions, including the Catholic faith in which I was raised, is that an all-powerful, supernatural entity created us. This deity loves us, as a human father loves his children, and wants us to behave in a certain way. If we’re good, He’ll reward us. If we’re bad, He’ll punish us. (I use the pronoun “He” because most scriptures describe God as male.)

My main objection to this explanation of reality is the problem of evil. A casual glance at human history, and at the world today, reveals enormous suffering and injustice. If God loves us and is omnipotent, why is life so horrific for so many people? A standard response to this question is that God gave us free will; we can choose to be bad as well as good."

I perfectly agree, the problem of evil really makes a mockery of many lofty, aerial, disconnected speculations that abound in many religious and metaphysical circles. In that respect i find monotheistic religions extremely childish and impotent. The proposed solutions to the problem of evil also seems to me really handwavy.

For instance, let's talk about free-will, first of all not all suffering is man made, some extreme form of suffering like natural disasters or just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with free-will. Besides, libertarian free-will is conceptually absurd, i wouldn't even say that it exists or doesn't exist, it doesn't even make sense conceptually and enough holes have been poked in it - persuasively IMHO - for instance see Galen Strawson basic argument against free-will https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ ... strawsong/

I don't see how idealism changes anything to the fact that we always act based on anterior reasons, after all, we can't act based on information/knowledge/wisdom we don't have, nor be moved by an aspect of our personality or temperament we don't have, and we either act based upon reasons, or we would act randomly, randomness isn't free-will.

Even if we assume that free-will is real somewhat, free-will only allows you to act based on natural constraints, for instance in can't fly using free-will, nor can i make myself feel intense euphoria by just willing it, i can't cause physical pain on someone who has a genetic immunity to pain https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condit ... y-to-pain/ but in the monotheistic religions, god is the creator of the natural constraints, having free-will doesn't say anything on why we should have bodies conductive to such extreme level of pains as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache , why tootache should have the level of intensity they have, or mental pain be as intense as in severe cases of insomnias or clinical depression. The reverse conditions doesn't exist - clinical euphoria - , it doesn't say anything on why our tendency to crave and attach is strong but the ascetic/contemplative path is extremely hard, after all, it would be perfectly plausible to have a situation where it's 50%/50% and half the world is following a contemplative path and the other half is following sensual and other wordly pleasures.

But the notion of free-will, besides being extremely problematic in itself, is used in handwavy fashion to skirt the problem of evil. For the reasons i enumerated, those attempts seems to me superficial and lacking in multiple aspects.

[AshvinP]

"THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Why do we exist? The answer, according to the major monotheistic religions, including the Catholic faith in which I was raised, is that an all-powerful, supernatural entity created us. This deity loves us, as a human father loves his children, and wants us to behave in a certain way. If we’re good, He’ll reward us. If we’re bad, He’ll punish us. (I use the pronoun “He” because most scriptures describe God as male.)

My main objection to this explanation of reality is the problem of evil. A casual glance at human history, and at the world today, reveals enormous suffering and injustice. If God loves us and is omnipotent, why is life so horrific for so many people? A standard response to this question is that God gave us free will; we can choose to be bad as well as good."

I perfectly agree, the problem of evil really makes a mockery of many lofty, aerial, disconnected speculations that abound in many religious and metaphysical circles. In that respect i find monotheistic religions extremely childish and impotent. The proposed solutions to the problem of evil also seems to me really handwavy.

For instance, let's talk about free-will, first of all not all suffering is man made, some extreme form of suffering like natural disasters or just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with free-will. Besides, libertarian free-will is conceptually absurd, i wouldn't even say that it exists or doesn't exist, it doesn't even make sense conceptually and enough holes have been poked in it - persuasively IMHO - for instance see Galen Strawson basic argument against free-will https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ ... strawsong/

I don't see how idealism changes anything to the fact that we always act based on anterior reasons, after all, we can't act based on information/knowledge/wisdom we don't have, nor be moved by an aspect of our personality or temperament we don't have, and we either act based upon reasons, or we would act randomly, randomness isn't free-will.

Even if we assume that free-will is real somewhat, free-will only allows you to act based on natural constraints, for instance in can't fly using free-will, nor can i make myself feel intense euphoria by just willing it, i can't cause physical pain on someone who has a genetic immunity to pain https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condit ... y-to-pain/ but in the monotheistic religions, god is the creator of the natural constraints, having free-will doesn't say anything on why we should have bodies conductive to such extreme level of pains as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache , why tootache should have the level of intensity they have, or mental pain be as intense as in severe cases of insomnias or clinical depression. The reverse conditions doesn't exist - clinical euphoria - , it doesn't say anything on why our tendency to crave and attach is strong but the ascetic/contemplative path is extremely hard, after all, it would be perfectly plausible to have a situation where it's 50%/50% and half the world is following a contemplative path and the other half is following sensual and other wordly pleasures.

But the notion of free-will, besides being extremely problematic in itself, is used in handwavy fashion to skirt the problem of evil. For the reasons i enumerated, those attempts seems to me superficial and lacking in multiple aspects.

Of course modern theistic apologetics are lacking, but they are lacking for the same exact reason this "casual" dismissal of spiritual reality is lacking. They both assume "God" and the human soul-spirit is not an integral aspect of the Reality unfolding. They assume we should imagine "God" as some external mechanistic Being looking over the entire Creation, nature and man, and deciding how to create things so as to maximize good and minimize evil (suffering). The apologist calculates out his equation and concludes there is more good than suffering, and the skeptic calculates out his and concludes there is not. The real question is, why should we take any such absurdly abstract and disconnected view of Reality seriously? Why do we play by the mechanistic rules of the modern age?

It seems a lot of people dawn the garb of "idealism" just to say they believe in something vague about "consciousness" that is trendy and interesting, while ignoring all the implications which come from idealism. Such as, neither God nor man exists separate from Nature. The world we naively perceive is not the entirety of the world which exists. Our deepest experience of the world does not unfold mechanistically and cannot be reduced to simple benefit-harm calculation. That our "free will" does not refer to what we choose to do at any given moment, but rather whether our will is aligned with what results from our will via Self-knowledge - when we experience what we genuinely desire to experience, our will is free. And, most importantly, Reality is not comprised of a static set of beings and relations fixed in place - it is dynamic ever-evolving experience.

Does the above conclusively determine whether suffering-evil is justified in the context of a spiritual reality? No, because it rejects that framing of the question altogether. It is only concerned with orienting us in the proper direction to start asking the right questions and start using our Imagination to find the answers, i.e. to become more aligned with the structure of Reality itself before we arrogantly presume to conclusively "solve the problem of evil" one way or another.

[Papanca]

Of course modern theistic apologetics are lacking, but they are lacking for the same exact reason this "casual" dismissal of spiritual reality is lacking. They both assume "God" and the human soul-spirit is not an integral aspect of the Reality unfolding. They assume we should imagine "God" as some external mechanistic Being looking over the entire Creation, nature and man, and deciding how to create things so as to maximize good and minimize evil (suffering). The apologist calculates out his equation and concludes there is more good than suffering, and the skeptic calculates out his and concludes there is not. The real question is, why should we take any such absurdly abstract and disconnected view of Reality seriously? Why do we play by the mechanistic rules of the modern age?

What do you mean by "spirituality" and "god" ? I'm not nit-picking, i'm seriously and in a honest fashion trying to understand, those words can refer to many distinct meanings.

I'm interrested about the subject of suffering because of personal experience, not because of any abstract or disconnected view of reality, so i'm not following what you are trying to say here, sorry.

It seems a lot of people dawn the garb of "idealism" just to say they believe in something vague about "consciousness" that is trendy and interesting, while ignoring all the implications which come from idealism. Such as, neither God nor man exists separate from Nature. The world we naively perceive is not the entirety of the world which exists. Our deepest experience of the world does not unfold mechanistically and cannot be reduced to simple benefit-harm calculation. That our "free will" does not refer to what we choose to do at any given moment, but rather whether our will is aligned with what results from our will via Self-knowledge - when we experience what we genuinely desire to experience, our will is free. And, most importantly, Reality is not comprised of a static set of beings and relations fixed in place - it is dynamic ever-evolving experience.

Again, i'm sorry, but could you be more clear ? What do you mean by "god" and "rather whether our will is aligned with what results from our will via self-knowledge ? "

Let's focus on something more concrete, i'll take Advaita Vedanta as a starting point because it seems to me as the most idealist-friendly spirituality. In advaita vedanta, there is no separation between god (or the Self, not that both have exactly the same meaning) and the personal, we are all one. Here is my problem with this, it's not even a problem about plausibility, it seems perfectly plausible to me, just horrific. Yes, an exceptional person can find peace by having its will aligned or whatever - or for you, it would be the path of knowledge, but let's focus just on Advaita here as an example, then we can examine another paradigm - it can access the timeless, or itself be the timeless ... for a time, but as long as suffering is endemic everywhere, this is still a personal salvation that won't last, after bodily death we are back to square 1 and since we are all one, there is no difference between this person and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Junko_Furuta , and this happens endlessly and you can endlessly be Junko Furuta ? I just find this extremely horrifying, materialism is a soothing philosophy compared to this.

[AshvinP]

Of course modern theistic apologetics are lacking, but they are lacking for the same exact reason this "casual" dismissal of spiritual reality is lacking. They both assume "God" and the human soul-spirit is not an integral aspect of the Reality unfolding. They assume we should imagine "God" as some external mechanistic Being looking over the entire Creation, nature and man, and deciding how to create things so as to maximize good and minimize evil (suffering). The apologist calculates out his equation and concludes there is more good than suffering, and the skeptic calculates out his and concludes there is not. The real question is, why should we take any such absurdly abstract and disconnected view of Reality seriously? Why do we play by the mechanistic rules of the modern age?

What do you mean by "spirituality" and "god" ? I'm not nit-picking, i'm seriously and in a honest fashion trying to understand, those words can refer to many distinct meanings.

I'm interrested about the subject of suffering because of personal experience, not because of any abstract or disconnected view of reality, so i'm not following what you are trying to say here, sorry.

I was just referring to how the religious fundamentalist and the spiritual skeptic conceive of "God" for purposes of their respective arguments on the "problem of evil" - they use the same flawed conception. My own 'definition', if we can call it that, is much more nuanced and cannot be captured by mere intellect. God is a living reality and cannot be reduced to any abstract concepts. But it really doesn't matter for the initial point I am making re: Horgan and his "casual" critique of spirituality via "problem of evil" in the article.

It seems a lot of people dawn the garb of "idealism" just to say they believe in something vague about "consciousness" that is trendy and interesting, while ignoring all the implications which come from idealism. Such as, neither God nor man exists separate from Nature. The world we naively perceive is not the entirety of the world which exists. Our deepest experience of the world does not unfold mechanistically and cannot be reduced to simple benefit-harm calculation. That our "free will" does not refer to what we choose to do at any given moment, but rather whether our will is aligned with what results from our will via Self-knowledge - when we experience what we genuinely desire to experience, our will is free. And, most importantly, Reality is not comprised of a static set of beings and relations fixed in place - it is dynamic ever-evolving experience.

Again, i'm sorry, but could you be more clear ? What do you mean by "god" and "rather whether our will is aligned with what results from our will via self-knowledge ? "

Let's focus on something more concrete, i'll take Advaita Vedanta as a starting point because it seems to me as the most idealist-friendly spirituality. In advaita vedanta, there is no separation between good (the Self) and the personal, we are all one. Here is my problem with this, it's not even a problem about plausibility, it seems perfectly plausible to me, just horrific. Yes, an exceptional person can find peace by having its will aligned or whatever - or for you, it would be the path of knowledge, but let's focus just on Advaita here as an example, then we can examine another paradigm - it can access the timeless, or itself be the timeless ... for a time, but as long as suffering is endemic everywhere, this is still a personal salvation that won't last, after death we are back to track 1 and since we are all one, there is no difference between this person and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Junko_Furuta , and this happens endlessly and you can endlessly be Junko Furuta ? I just find this extremely horrifying, materialism is a soothing philosophy compared to this.

Yes, and that is why I mention - "Reality is not comprised of a static set of beings and relations fixed in place - it is dynamic ever-evolving experience". The conclusion that we always go "back to track 1", that "suffering remains endemic everywhere", "personal salvation won't last", etc., basically denies the ever-evolving essence of Reality. It is a view born of a rather myopic understanding of human history and the unfolding of our own experience throughout life. That denial, or implicit acceptance of fixed Reality, also makes us misunderstand free will. We think of it as a static property that we either have or don't have, rather than a gradation of inner experience. The more our desires are aligned with the actual structure of Reality and therefore the experiences which result from acting on those desires, the more free we become. Heidegger remarked, "we are still not yet Thinking". Likewise, we can say "we are still not yet Free". But that does not mean higher Thinking and Freedom are forever lost to us. We can embark on a path to Thinking and Freedom and thereby realize some fruits of that path right now in this lifetime. I am not trying to casually dismiss any evil-suffering in the world like apologists tend to do, or casually dismiss spiritual reality as skeptics tend to do, but, at the very minimum, withhold judgment until I have developed my own experience-thinking much further. One thing we should know for certain is how much we don't yet know.