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Have you ever read The Abolition Of Man by C. S. Lewis?
I have not. I should. I think I have a copy.
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Have you ever read The Abolition Of Man by C. S. Lewis?
I'll post a bit from the opening of the book. Unless I'm misunderstanding, I think it might be relevant to your OP.I have not. I should. I think I have a copy.
I'll post a bit from the opening of the book. Unless I'm misunderstanding, I think it might be relevant to your OP.
In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it ‘sublime’ and the other ‘pretty’; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: ‘When the man said 'This is sublime', he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word “Sublime”, or shortly, 'I have sublime feelings’. Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: ‘This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings. Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for ‘the upper forms of schools’) we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says 'This is sublime' cannot mean 'I have sublime feelings'. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If 'This is sublime' is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker’s feelings, the proper translation would be 'I have humble feelings'. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that 'You are contemptible' means 'I have contemptible feelings’, in fact that 'Your feelings are contemptible' means 'My feelings are contemptible'.
I used to think it crazy but somehow they are bodies of higher parts of reality and are related to spiritual proximity for certain kinds of beings that would otherwise be too incompatible to influence in a good way closer to the naturalistic body we have for existing in the earth, which is different from our spirit.What I heard you say is that the big and small of it is comfortably numb in the non reality of bliss. about the rest ..... talking stars eh?
if the universe is alive then it has more meaning. atheist do have a problem with physicalism though many don't think there is a problem with that ( though I think information is a kind of proof of mind as something fundamental to reality)... so I don't mind if even some atheist start to adopt concepts such as some form of panpsychism since they think it solves some problems of consciousness... some of them want that to answer the "hard problem" I think and then go on their marry way with their atheism. I think the idea of john the baptist "drowning" people for a religious conversion experience which could induce an NDE in people is a real possibility. NDE tend to make people "repent" in an extreme way. though that word in the greek is richer a concept than "repent" which itself could also be linked to spiritual experience.Would you say that we imagine the cosmos as "dead," and therefore, we don't see the reality that it is living? ( I almost thought you were going to bring up pansychism) I'm grasping at straws here, but there is the notion that we have "disenchanted" reality, flattened it to a reductive ontology, and so we are incapable of seeing higher realities. Chesterton said something to that effect, I think.
if the universe is alive then it has more meaning. atheist do have a problem with physicalism though many don't think there is a problem with that ( though I think information is a kind of proof of mind as something fundamental to reality)... so I don't mind if even some atheist start to adopt concepts such as some form of panpsychism since they think it solves some problems of consciousness... some of them want that to answer the "hard problem" I think and then go on their marry way with their atheism.
I think the idea of john the baptist "drowning" people for a religious conversion experience which could induce an NDE in people is a real possibility. NDE tend to make people "repent" in an extreme way. though that word in the greek is richer a concept than "repent" which itself could also be linked to spiritual experience.
needless to say I can't be an empiricist according to the wiki description of "In philosophy, empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views of epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions"
rupert sheldrake mentioned the baptism drowning idea. offensive and extreme but plausible. maybe other societies also did something like that, like the greeks going in a cave and getting poisoned by a gas? also a NDE of an autistic 7 year old girl mentioned experiencing a star being so happy that it gives life to so much. though one could understand these things as symbols in the spiritual world and not things of our universe that literally happen.That's an interesting take. I like it. Are you familiar with any of the Christian contemplatives. Is any of that informing your thinking on this, or no?
I don't eschew them either, I love experiencing. I just don't feel like being enslaved with bad views of reality. I have faith that God is good and I want to understand as much as I can. I too have had experiences that were good enough to help me along. recently got interested in NDE, I don't think God is exhaustible. I slowly became more open as I sought God. I could not go back either, there is literally nothing but hell without God.I have a lot of sympathy with this. While I don't eschew empirical approaches to knowing, I find it ridiculous to assume what we can gather with our five sense is the whole of what can be experienced. And, to be candid, some of my youthful approaches to mind expansion definitely widened my epistemic horizon. So, there's no going back after that.
I've posted a bit on this thing in terms of naïve realism and those who believe in it.
Naïve realism (psychology) - Wikipedia