The opposite of Spiritual

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Give me an example of something that is supernatural, and then tell me how the idea that humans have intrinsic rights (other than the rights we invented for ourselves) is different.

Is clairvoyance "abstract", or is it "supernatural"?

First, that's a false dichotomy. Something can be both. I would consider clairvoyance to be supernatural, as it violates known physical laws. Using a common definition such as this one:

Quote:

su·per·nat·u·ral
ˌso͞opərˈnaCH(ə)rəl/Submit
adjective
1.
(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
"a supernatural being"
synonyms: paranormal, psychic, magic, magical, occult, mystic, mystical, superhuman, supernormal; ...
1.
manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin, such as ghosts.

I'm not sure how the concept of intrinsic human rights or virtues fit in there. Also, I think only theists and people who haven't thought much about it consider either human rights or virtues to be intrinsic. The people with whom I've spoken about them (ie, in philosophy circles) consider them to be conventions. But not supernatural. Conventions arise quite well within the laws of nature, as far as I can tell.

In any event, as long as I'm aware of what you mean by the word, I can respond accordingly. I'm not asking you to change anything. Just wanted to understand you clearly.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Also, I think only theists and people who haven't thought much about it consider either human rights or virtues to be intrinsic. The people with whom I've spoken about them (ie, in philosophy circles) consider them to be conventions. But not supernatural.

I think we agree on most of this. Human rights that are just conventions are not supernatural. Of course, this means a different culture with a different convention about human rights is equivalent.

Intrinsic human rights that are some function of a universal truth are supernatural. I think there are atheists who believe that humans have intrinsic rights as bestowed by some truth in the Universe.

That is the distinction that I am making.

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@maxdancona,

Cool. Yeah, seems to me that there are atheists who believe all sorts of supernatural crap, as well as atheists who consider it all to be rubbish. The only support I've ever encountered for an absolute morality or virtue has come from religious circles. I include in that people who believe religiously in crystal power, aliens, etc etc.

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maxdancona wrote:

There are a lot of people who say they are not religious, but spiritual. I understand the word spiritual to mean a belief in things that can't be explained by reason or science. In my personal experience, there is little difference between religion and spirituality and any other form of metaphysics.

The word "atheist" doesn't work for me. Atheist simply means that you don't believe in any gods. Many atheists believe in the metaphysical.

So I am looking for a word to describe myself and my skepticism of anything metaphysical. The two words that I have found are; "secular" (which seems weak) and "profane" (which has a negative connotation to me). Of the two I think I prefer "profane".

What do you call yourself?

Why are you searching for an established "brand"? What does it really matter? You don't like a label? Then make a new one. After all, original thinkers don't require a precedence.

maxdancona wrote:

I think we agree on most of this. Human rights that are just conventions are not supernatural. Of course, this means a different culture with a different convention about human rights is equivalent.

i'm not the poster to whom you addressed these words, but i don't agree. The various ways in which cultures "treat" person's rights are not equivalent. They differentiate themselves, precisely, by the way they value persons' lives.

maxdancona wrote:

Intrinsic human rights that are some function of a universal truth are supernatural. I think there are atheists who believe that humans have intrinsic rights as bestowed by some truth in the Universe.

Think what you want, but there are also atheists that don't believe in intrinsic rights and yet support human rights, because they have a stake in them and they do their best to treat their peers as equals. And again, what does that matter, to you?

Is it more important to you that everyone believe the same thing, or rather that as many people as possible support causes you support?

Are you threatened by the concept of human rights? Is a shared stake in existence really a threat to your ego?

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@maxdancona,

...funny enough your "friends" like Krauss spend a good deal of time explaining to common people we are 99.999% made of nothing...force fields and information for most part. He goes further and even suggest we came from nothing.

...well...I am not that pessimistic and as I stated in my previous post I believe in the least, in abstract objects. The meaning of certain complicated words depends very much on the audience you are talking with. Prejudice is hardly a good adviser.

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You could call yourself a logical positivist. They believe that:

Quote:

...only the verifiable was scientific and cognitively meaningful, whereas the unverifiable was unscientific, cognitively meaningless "pseudostatements"—metaphysic, emotive, or such—not candidate to further review by philosophers, newly tasked to organize knowledge, not develop new knowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Thing is, if ya go and do that, you'll kinda be a laughing stock, since the brand of metaphysics which says metaphysics is meaningless has long been recognized by most as incoherent and rejected as a viable philosophical stance:

Quote:

By the late 1960s, the neopositivist movement had clearly run its course.[41] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer [0ne of the "founders" of positivism] supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false"....John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes."

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@FBM,

Quote:

The only support I've ever encountered for an absolute morality or virtue has come from religious circles. I include in that people who believe religiously in crystal power, aliens, etc etc.

Do you include Marxists, Nazis, and such?

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@layman,

Seems to me that those are secular religions. In practice, at least. Pretty fanatical.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Seems to me that those are secular religions. In practice, at least. Pretty fanatical

We agree on that. That's why I asked, to see if you agreed.

Quote:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” (Bertrand Russell, eh?)

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A rationalist?

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A negative term that might apply to your philosophy is egoist, maxdancona. Egoism is expressing a denial or rejection of a transcendent state of mind. A transcendent state of mind is that outside the field of time or dualism. Dualism is believing that two interdependent opposite, eg., good and bad, have independent existences.

A positive term could be pantheism, where the divine is not separate from the universe and is subjective. The term "divine" is subjective, such as beauty (or the divine) is in the eye of the beholder. Denial of the divine implies a dullness of sensibility, but everybody has had a divine moment that is so inspiring that the viewer is awestruck and the reply is simply "ah!" or "wow!".

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Sometimes it is MUCH better to forget about labels...and trying to shoehorn a stance into a one word descriptor...

...and instead, merely state the stance as best as possible.

I've done that with my agnosticism, so that we don't have to battle over what is meant when I speak of my agnosticism...and I find it works out nicely both for me and for the people with whom I debate.

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@coluber2001,

Quote:

A negative term that might apply to your philosophy is egoist

Yeah, like good old Max Stirner (translation, big forehead) said, eh? Marx and Engles spent hundreds of pages trying to refute him, but they couldn't:

Quote:

What is supposed to be my concern? First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes.

All Things Are Nothing To Me. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is -- unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

Max used to go out and howl at the moon because the moon was just taunting him, acting like it was impervious and superior because he couldn't just reach out and bitch-slap it around.

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When people get too deep into splitting hairs, I tune out. I just don't see any value in it. That's probably a trait that kept my ancestors swinging in the trees and eating bananas a bit longer than many others.

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@edgarblythe,

Quote:

When people get too deep into splitting hairs, I tune out. I just don't see any value in it

I tend to agree, Ed, especially in cases where, whatever the outcome of the "hair-splitting" turn out to be, it really isn't that significant anyway.

I try to live by the old "close enough for government work" approach to most things.

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@maxdancona,

non spiritual

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Dead, that which does not breath !
Spiritual comes from the latin spirare to breath...you can also modern version relate it to the animus, mood, the character, the traits of an individual.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Most cultures (including the culture you reference in your etymology) have the concept of spirits of the dead. I am quite sure that ghosts don't have anything to do with the physical process of respiration.

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@maxdancona,

You do realize the the "spiritus", the mood, the personality, is a metaphor to explain the particulars of an individual right ? You have a spirit while you are alive not when your dead... 101 common sense...

...its amazing how modern atheists latch to religious frames of reference...its like feeding frenzy....I just ignore it. Hence why I don't review myself in this new "pro active" atheist thing...

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

There are a lot of people who say they are not religious, but spiritual. I understand the word spiritual to mean a belief in things that can't be explained by reason or science. In my personal experience, there is little difference between religion and spirituality and any other form of metaphysics.

The word "atheist" doesn't work for me. Atheist simply means that you don't believe in any gods. Many atheists believe in the metaphysical.

So I am looking for a word to describe myself and my skepticism of anything metaphysical. The two words that I have found are; "secular" (which seems weak) and "profane" (which has a negative connotation to me). Of the two I think I prefer "profane".

What do you call yourself?

How about mundane and immediate ! Wink

By the way do you believe in mathematics ?

1 Reply

The opposite of Spiritual

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