Religion and the Unkown.

@djjd62,

djjd62 wrote:

i had an epiphany when i was about 12, i was walking across a field near my home , just kind of staring at the sky as a kid might do, and i was suddenly overcome with an intense feeling of emptiness, ever since i've been convinced that we are utterly alone, no god, no aliens, no anything (i'd love to be proven wrong about the aliens though)

Me too (and i'd also like to be proved wrong about the aliens).

However, i see patterns and coincidences and symbolism in just about everything, that convinces me there is some 'other' mathematical/spiritual? concept to reality that we aren't able to grasp yet (or at least, i'm not)... no idea what of course

0 Replies

@fresco,

Thanks for the thoughtful responses!

0 Replies

@fresco,

Quote:

The key is to get rid of that I and you are there already ! You need to realise that "I" is evoked by "language"...it is an observational/classificatory mode of "being" which is actively segmenting "reality" according to social. psychological and physiological needs.
There are levels of being which can transcend that...which can transcend "the self".

Fresco, you are a scientist. What type of psychological/neurological work has been done to investigate how the brain creates the 'illusion of the self'?'
That may be the wrong way of explaining it but i'm really tired. I'm basically asking if there is a strong scientific basis as well as a philosophical one.

1 Reply

@The Pentacle Queen,

PQ,

I'm tempted to give you the "Irish answer" to one who asks directions..."If I were you, I wouldn't start from here !"

Seriously though, the question you ask is an epistemological one in which the meaning of"science" and "evidence" are themselves subject to deconstruction. One way into this which keeps "one foot on the ground" so to speak is to examine Maturana's biological analysis of language, with the proviso that his views on biology are unorthodox.
http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html

..but to ease you into Maturana you might find this paper helpful.
http://www.oikos.org/vonobserv.htm

Less specialized background introduction is found in F. Capra's book "The Web of Life" which is summarized in his Dublin lecture
http://www.tcd.ie/Physics/news/seminars/Schrodinger/Lecture3.html

1 Reply

@fresco,

Thanks Fresco. I'll come back when I've had chance to read them properly.

1 Reply

@The Pentacle Queen,

or you could just read "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse who is a religious scholar who for many years taught history and literature of religion at New York University. He does not believe in any God, but describes himself as religious "in the sense that I am endlessly fascinated with the unknowability of what it means to be human, to exist at all."

1 Reply

@dyslexia,

sounds like my kinda guy.

0 Replies

@fresco,

Quote:

Why would Wittgenstein later reject his own acclaimed works on logic and empiricism from his tractatus?

Why did he? I mean, I can guess.
The internet doesn't say, well, not that I can find.

1 Reply

@The Pentacle Queen,

PQ
Commentary on W gets pretty technical. For example one quote by Cavett says this

Quote:

My interpretation is that Wittgenstein rejects his early theory of logical atomism, the picture theory of meaning, and general form of proposition because of the color incompatibility problem, which the Tractatus had inadequately tried to explain as a matter of syntactical contradiction.

The "problem" mention above caused Wittgenstein to move his focus from formal language structures (such as logic truth tables) to everyday language usage. IMO this was a move away from "objectivity" to "context dependency" which necessarily involves a subject's co-extension with his/her world.

1 Reply

@fresco,

PQ
This is the best reference I have found on the color incompatibility problem. (p73 onwards)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HU7zazOQaQoC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=color+incompatibility+problem&source=bl&ots=JVX5-dcVMv&sig=bJer1Ito1k09T9llgmAtOZTRe6o&hl=en&ei=y2neSfapM5usjAekua0c&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#PPA68,M1

0 Replies

Thank you.

0 Replies

Religion and the Unkown.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know