The Devil's Chaplain

<<< “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!”

- Charles Darwin.>>>


As I recall, Darwin was a vicar's son, who fundamentally changed his ideas as they matured and evolved. He was chosen by the group of scienists he represented, as the one best suited to putting their ideas into a form that would be generally accepted. There was a bit of a war going on .... evolution had been understood for over 100 years before Darwin wrote his seminal Work. Another group of scientists threatened to be the first to publish their, similar ideas. If I remember, they were centred on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There was a lot of pressure on Darwin to get his book written before the opposition but he was also under pressure to make sure it was in a form best suited to convincing the sceptical. 

I think Darwin was the vicar, while daddy was a doctor and an atheist his whole life.

My memory is that Darwin was going to study for vicarship but maybe didn't.

Darkunorthodox wrote>><<Berkeley, one of the 3 great british empiricists, was a subjective idealist.>>

I wouldn't consider Berkeley to have been an empiricist at all. There was a tendency to mistakenly categorise all the British philosophers that came in basically what was the Enlightenment period as empiricists, probably because the Enlightenment came at a time when scientific advancement was very much at the forefront. I doubt, however, that there's a single historian of philosphy who would, without misgiving, classify the good Bishop as an empiricist. That's because he wasn't one. Yet again, what he WAS, was a solipsist.

WIKI: <<George Berkeley (/ˈbɑːrkli/;[5][6] 12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the minds and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.[7]>>

He ALSO believed that everything was simply a product of the human mind. The later Berkeley (he changed his stance) then came to believe that it was, instead, the product of the celestial mind. They made him into a bishop for that!

I have a funny feeling that you're feeling your way .... and that you are seeking to justify a form of ideal immaterialism or subjective idealism or whatever .... which in turn justifies certain types of belief. Anyway, that's my guess. And your hostility is because I've expressed my attitude to that already, and my attitude is not positive.

my hostility is pointing out that your knowledge in this area is amateurish despite your superb ability to use google.

I have been openly a defendant of Absolute idealism  (not exactly a popular position since logical positivism reared its ugly head ) my entire philosophical career, from my 4 years in undergrad only studying philosophy, to my time at U of Miami and Johns Hopkins in graduate work, before i left. You are vastly overestimating my capacity to care what you think about any of this lol.

Thanks for replying. I'll get back to you after I read what you wrote more carefully, in the next day or so. But you do seem to care enough about what I think to wish to change my opinion. I think it's just that you enjoy trials of strength and also seem to over-estimate my own interest in your opinion, which I already know is heavily flawed at the very least. Anyhow, perhaps we also have some things in common, such as an absolute hatred of logical positivism.

i’m curious what you make of determinism. subjectively and objectively? oh… hi

Hi. Me or him? I'll bite first.

Determinism, as the idea or belief that everything in the universe, including our thoughts and the exact positions of every speck of dust at each given instant is the necessary, exact and unalterable effect of previous causes, is a horribly clumsy idea. It's just far more neat, parsimonious of unknowns and hypothetically efficient to accept randomness as real. Then we don't have to go through endless contortions to explain how and why we constantly get the appearance of randomness in things ranging from quantum effects to genetic mutation and so on. That's my subjective reaction and I think it's so strong that we needn't bother trying too hard to be more objective.

Hi, I'm not really in the mood to answer you but I'll have a bash. I accept that you see yourself as a proponent of Absolute Idealism and originally I supposed that it's a convenient way for you to support a strong, religious belief. However, we cannot discuss religion or we will be closed down. Anyway, I rationalised your support of the philosopher we were discussing (Bradley I think) in that manner. I don't personally like any philosophy which is not an attempt to unify all philosophy. My own work does this from the very basics ... the absolute fundamentals of human thought. I believe I've found the way to get at the very basics in a way that no-one in the Western Tradition has managed. One might think that my ideas are Hegelian but that would be to over-simplify them. Where Hegel found the thesis, antithesis and synthesis to be sufficient, I used that idea more in the tradition of some strands of Ancient Chinese thought and arrived at a synthesis of the Absolute and the Relative, such that what I came up with can be seen as the basis of all philosophising and all philosophy. From it comes the Ancient Chinese Book of Change, for instance. The I Ching. From it comes all the bipolarities of Western philosophy. Therefore, you can imagine I'm sceptical of "one sided ideas" because, to be complete, a balance is necessary, between the material and the transcendental.

Transcendental roughly means anything beyond your teeth, in either direction.

That is, subjective and "objective", although the objective doesn't really exist, since all that can be said for it is that it consists of the *attempt* to be objective, with no guarantee of success and, indeed, a probable guarantee of failure.

Therefore, in a way, my ideas also could be said to fall roughly within the "subjective idealist" sphere. I am, or consider myself to be, a dualist and subjectively inclined, because it is via the subject that we can arrive at the closest approximation to truth, which in ideal form is a depiction of a simplified truth system.

Also, due to your obvious but weird hostility to me, which may be difficult to explain, and which you pretend is due to "lack of knowledge" in me or "my ability to use Google", I get the sense that at least part of you gets the feeling that I am, indeed, a great deal more intelligent than you are. I wouldn't have brought it up except that you make it so obvious, that you seek to explain it by "some form of cheating". But I just have a very high IQ. I mean, very high.

Oh, I transferred fom a computing degree to philosophy after passing year one. I had no difficulty in getting through the degree in two years and achieving a good upper second but I deferred the dissertation for just over a year because basically, while I was studying I also had two jobs, each about 10 hours per week, was primary caregiver for my child while his mother worked full time, ran the large and successful local chess club single-handedly and played on its first team, exercised a lot and kept up with other interests. Unlike most other undergrad degree dissertations, mine was wholly "research" and "creative". I was considered to be brilliant, quite naturally, because I am, by some of the professors (in the British sense of professor) while others didn't like me because, indeed, I was very good at fast essay writing and I invented a system to do it, which I have since heard is used by professionals. I can also use search engines but really don't need to because I have a wide general knowledge. Obviously I didn't need to Google the good Bishop Berkeley. I did Google Bradley to refresh my memory and it was a quick synopsis of the WIKI article on him that you were disagreeing with so violently and pompously. So that's me. Hope you were sitting comfortably. Incidentally, a few years ago I was challenged in similar manner by some philosophy upstart who pretended to have a PhD in it. I tracked him down. He was a manager of an IT unit in a British university and had no formal training in philosophy. It's very easy to spot. Very often they are much too sure of themselves and yet you can tell they approach it in a way that would not be condoned by a philosophy department at a good university. They simply cannot question their own ideas!

him. that is dark88…

and btw… you seem to ignore compatibilism. once you separate life and matter a whole world of possibilities open up. wont you say?

I ignore compatibilism because I think it's nonsense. It tends to be regarded as nonsense by philosophers who aren't philosophers of religion, specifically. I think it's an artificial way of reconciling the irreconcilable.

Sorry about this but I want to post the conversation betwen darkunorthodox and myself, transposed from another thread. This is most of it. There will follow his criticism. It's basically the reason why I don't see him as a philosopher. He may be a complete fake, like the IT manager was, but in any case he has a "non-philosophical" attitude, based on a complete disrespect for the ideas of others and far too great an insistence on "book learning".

NMdarkunorthodox88 
1 day ago 0 
#101

Heidegger became so famous because he allowed lesser thinks to think what was (with good reason) forbidden territory. The middle existence which is not to be discussed.

You want a great thinker, stick to first principles metaphysics, like Bradley and Whitehead or even further back like Schelling.  Heidegger is a dead end.

He gives himself permission to describe the state of being DASEIN but then whenever he is to face exceptions, he merely labels those exceptions "a deficient state of Dasein " . Its just terrible lol

Optimissed 
1 day ago 0 
#102

Yes and after the dead end of logical positivism and the fake certainty of those like Kant, it was probably just what was needed. Whitehead is fairly good. I don't agree with everything he proposes.

Schelling became entangled in squabbles with Fichte, who was another "lesser philosopher". He should have found a way to rise above that, if he was to be considered "great". Bradley was a good thinker who did not become "great" probably because of his neglect of empiricism at the expense of idealism. I think anyone who is to be regarded as "great" has to find a way to combine them.   But Whitehead approached it with the natural idea of "processes", which places empiricism in a way that's less dominated by a fixed idea of static or maybe even idealised entities. He was too close to Bertrand Russell for me, though. I should probably write something myself, if it isn't already too late.

NMdarkunorthodox88 
1 day ago 0 
#103

Fichte was a "great",as was Bradley who was widely held as the greatest british philosopher since Hume. the only reason they never got higher price is because their systems are fairly exhaustive. If you accept their precepts ,there  really  isnt much left to do with metaphysics, i would even go far as to say that Fichte is the logical end of Descartes' cogito but never got the credit for it. Compare that to a figure like Hegel who gives himself the authority to derive wild speculations and calls it a product of the synthetic a priori. That is a figure that can feed a lifetime of scholarship.

Bradley was a radical empiricist just like James and Whitehead, so to say he neglected empiricism is ridiculous. 

“Our result so far is this. Everything phenomena is somehow real; and the absolute must at least be as rich as the relative. And, further, the Absolute is not many; there are no independent reals. The universe is one in this sense that its differences exist harmoniously within one whole, beyond which there is nothing. Hence the Absolute is, so far, an individual and a system but, if we stop here, it remains but formal and abstract. Can we then, the question is, say anything about the concrete nature of the system?

Certainly, I think, this is possible. When we ask as to the matter which fills up the empty outline, we can reply in one word, that this matter is experience. ...Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence. Feeling, thought, and volition ...are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible. This result in its general form seems evident at once ...” (127) -Appearance and Reality
 
Optimissed 
1 day ago 0 
#104
Maybe there are "greats" and "greats". Clearly though, if everyone who's been heard of was a "great" then that marks most of them as definitely limited in their abilities if not entirely wrong. Kant is definitely an example of a "great". How many more really exist, though? Kant didn't achieve it by being right about everything (he wasn't) but by the sheer volume of work he undertook and the respect he is held in, which certainly doesn't extend to those like Fichte.
Optimissed 
1 day ago 0 
#105
Bradley was a radical empiricist just like James and Whitehead, so to say he neglected empiricism is ridiculous. >>

If you want a serious discussion with anyone, never again refer to someone's opinion as "ridiculous", which appears to bring you to the common or popular level one encounters. Instead, find a convincing argument as to why someone's wrong about whatever it is, instead of making unsupported statements and restorting to invective. OK? 

For instance, come up with an argument as to why he is to be regarded as an empiricist.

Optimissed 
 0 
#107
<<<<<<<<Our result so far is this. Everything phenomena is somehow real; and the absolute must at least be as rich as the relative. And, further, the Absolute is not many; there are no independent reals. The universe is one in this sense that its differences exist harmoniously within one whole, beyond which there is nothing. Hence the Absolute is, so far, an individual and a system but, if we stop here, it remains but formal and abstract. Can we then, the question is, say anything about the concrete nature of the system?

Certainly, I think, this is possible. When we ask as to the matter which fills up the empty outline, we can reply in one word, that this matter is experience. ...Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence. Feeling, thought, and volition ...are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible. This result in its general form seems evident at once ...” (127) -Appearance and Reality >>>>>>>

MY INTERPRETATION AND CRITIQUE:

Phenomena are real.
Therefore so must be the absolute.
(that in itself is idealism)
There's only one absolute.
(another idealism)
The Universe is a unity because its differences are harmonious with the whole.
(An obvious truism, since the universe is composed of different phenomena)
Beyond the Universe there is nothing.
The Absolute is (admittedly) formal and abstract (ie an ideal)
Can it be made concrete? I think it's possible.
Matter is sentient experience, which is real.
(OK, that's a kind of empiricism.)
What is not sentient experience isn't reality.
(That's now understood to be wrong, in view of the developments of mathematics which have proven quantum phenomena to be real, among many other things, such as the constituent parts of molecules etc)
"We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence."
(I showed that to be wrong and in any case, it veers towards solypsism)
"Feeling, thought, and volition ...are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible. This result in its general form seems evident at once"

No, that's a one-sided view. He seems an out and out idealist, as are all proponents of one-sided views.

i used to hold similar view, after all real determinism is just is. the big D. 

but is it really? pay attention please… if life is a “force” by its own right, than its not obligate to matter alone, and therefore… get my drift?

NMdarkunorthodox88 
1 day ago 0 
#109
Optimissed wrote:As a philosophy student, I heard of Bradley but that's the first time I read anything of his. I had only been reiterating the opinion of others. I critiqued it quickly, especially as this thread may not remain. An experienced philosophy lecturer, with PhD in philosophy, may choose to object to one or perhaps more of my criticisms of the passage but I think I could support my views adequately. The supposition that Bradley is not an empricist but an idealist couldn't be refuted, however. For every philosophy professor disagreeing with it (on idealistic grounds  ) I bet I could find ten who would agree. They aren't all perfect.
empiricism and idealism are not opposite views man. Berkeley, one of the 3 great british empiricists, was a a subjective idealist. 

I would like to know where you did graduate work in philosophy. Because with all due respect, you sound like a ranked amateur with only a superficial understanding of these topics.

a line like this gives it away  "(That's now understood to be wrong, in view of the developments of mathematics which have proven quantum phenomena to be real, among many other things, such as the constituent parts of molecules etc)". 

Here let me help you. "Radical empiricism" is a position first defined by James but was fairly vogue during the early 19th century. "It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations."  This is the difference between old school empiricism and the empiricism of figures like James, Bosanquet, and Whitehead. Empiricism in this modern sense is a metaphysical thesis. empiricism and idealism are not even incompatible in the older sense of the term, but here experience refers to the furniture of the world, idealism here is in the Hegelian sense "the ideality of the finite".

your critique is pointless. This is a paragraph 100+ pages into his greatest work, where he establishes why phenomena isnt real and what must be real such that phenomena is neither real nor unreal but subordinate to the real. Critiquing it like it was a syllogism is asinine. I only quoted that to show that Bradley is through and through an empiricist in the radical empiricist sub-camp.

Do the Mario! Swing your arms from side to side Come on, it's time to go! Do the Mario! Take one step, and then again Let's do the Mario, all together now! You got it! It's the Mario! Come on now, just like this! Zap to the right and jump, Zap to the left and jump, Zap to the front and jump, All turn around and jump. Again! Do the Mario! Swing your arms from side to side Come on, it's time to go! Do the Mario! Take one step, and then again Let's do the Mario, all together now! You got it! It's the Mario! Come on now, it's just like that!

Without discussing religion can I be allowed to know whether you are a religious person? You could message me if you don't want to write anything concerning it. It's just that it would help me understand you.

I think I do get your drift though. I agree with you, although I believe that life has evolved out of non-life. people laugh at that idea but they don't understand why it's a realistic and reasonable thing. But I believe, even as an atheist, that there is more to life than matter. Much more.

Wonderful. Can't dance now because promised to make wife cup of tea. She's been working very late. I would spill the tea.

i’m nowhere close to be religious, although i do have lots of respect to people of faith.

as far as “physics” goes… check the following link…

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40509-014-0008-4