Surveying the landscape => A paranormal, religious future?

Not sure I'm following this line of reasoning. My approach, FWIW, is to regard love as the nature of consciousness. Beauty is consciousness given form which is appreciated by consciousness. I'm almost certainly lacking the word-power to do justice to what I'm trying to say but essentially consciousness, love and beauty are all the same thing.

It seems to me that it must be very tempting to want to have things separated out from consciousness but idealism, for me at least, means that any and all separation is an illusion. So love is not something that consciousness can either have or not have - it is that condition in which consciousness operates. I'm trying to think of an analogy ... perhaps I might say that it is like sight and light: sight is meaningless without light and vice-versa thus they only have meaning as aspects of a singular entity.

I think it's just where one finds themselves regarding a "boggle threshold".

To me Love and Goodness are real, but it would be hard for me to argue their existence if the only option I saw was Physicalism.

For others Love and Goodness come first, and ontologies that don't give them a fundamental status are rejected.

That said, I don't think one can necessarily just choose which direction they come at this from. I would love start with an unshakeable belief in Goodness/Freedom/Love/etc but to me I need to think my way back from Physicalism toward metaphysics that allow for those Ideals.

I think it's just where one finds themselves regarding a "boggle threshold".

To me Love and Goodness are real, but it would be hard for me to argue their existence if the only option I saw was Physicalism.

For others Love and Goodness come first, and ontologies that don't give them a fundamental status are rejected.

That said, I don't think one can necessarily just choose which direction they come at this from. I would love start with an unshakeable belief in Goodness/Freedom/Love/etc but to me I need to think my way back from Physicalism toward metaphysics that allow for those Ideals.

I have to conclude that Love is fundamental and that goodness and freedom, etc., are all aspects of Love. As the saying goes: "God is Love" although that, for me, is not a religious belief, it is a philosophical position. Evil, hatred, fear, etc., are all conditions which put Love in the shade, as it were. They are artificial (man made, if you like) barriers to the light of Love. I know this sounds like some kind of ecstatic religious sermon but I don't know how to put it without using the words that make it sound that way. So I repeat, it isn't (for me) a religious belief. It is a fundamental reality and all experience is illuminated by that light.

I suppose in the context of trying to find a way to get science and academia on board, idealism is a route forwards, while materialism was not.

However my aims are somewhat different. It is about being alive in the world. I had a complete collapse of all my ideas, many years ago, when I could not take another step without some reason to do so. This echoes the experience of Tolstoy who was prosperous, respected, had a good family life. But he ground to a halt in an almost identical way, until he could find some understanding, some reason to continue. I'm not sure that the materialism/idealism debate played any part in his or my own eventually being able to move forward. It is the case that materialism is insufficient. But idealism provides an answer to a different question. "Why should I live?" was the question which I was trying to solve.

I think it really depends on the person. Materialism would say Love and Beauty are nothing more than illusions, they have no truth on their own.

Idealism - or any other metaphysics that offers a fundamental place for consciousness - at least offers a place for Love and Beauty.

Of course if one starts with Love & Beauty, then yeah I could see Idealism being sterile.

Ever so carefully, I approach this great conversation.

Sci, I have my personal background on these match-up as Love and Wisdom.  I think all of these are valid perspectives.  But ......  If I'm sincere and self-consistent, I would respond to the question, by taking the pathway that says there may be "Truth" to perceive, but can it be sorted by Truth Tables.

Love as a state.  And it is associated with processes that promote, maintain and destroy that state.  Process data from the outcomes of love are evident.  This data shows that there is computable evidence that Love and love do enter processes and reliably create patterned outcomes.

I don't want to steal any thunder or magic from Love & Beauty --- I just want science facts from well-formed data.  If Love is at the bottom of it all, there should be a model of how that works!

Sci, I have my personal background on these match-up as Love and Wisdom. 

“Wisdom is one of only two traits that I would possibly choose to assign to 'God', as I feel all others can be assigned to a subset of these two. The other of course is Love.”

From my book ‘Choices: One man’s Spiritual Journey’.  

If Love is at the bottom of it all, there should be a model of how that works!

Maybe not.  Goes back to the pages of arguments we've had on this site with the old poster (name escapes me) who was insisting on a "model" of free will.  Perhaps everything isn't reducible to models, equations, math?

I suppose in the context of trying to find a way to get science and academia on board, idealism is a route forwards, while materialism was not.

However my aims are somewhat different. It is about being alive in the world. I had a complete collapse of all my ideas, many years ago, when I could not take another step without some reason to do so. This echoes the experience of Tolstoy who was prosperous, respected, had a good family life. But he ground to a halt in an almost identical way, until he could find some understanding, some reason to continue. I'm not sure that the materialism/idealism debate played any part in his or my own eventually being able to move forward. It is the case that materialism is insufficient. But idealism provides an answer to a different question. "Why should I live?" was the question which I was trying to solve.

Didn't he claim to find it (his reason to live) observing the peasants living by simple faith ? Indeed, why should I live (Tolstoy expands extensively on this ultimate of all questions)--the pointlessness of existence without meaning, which of course materialists deny/ignore and recommend we simply face up to -- (lick the honey off the branch until it snaps).  But whatever objections are offered as to why we don't need to do that, philosophical or evidential, it's always thrown back in our faces as being fool's gold.

Maybe not.  Goes back to the pages of arguments we've had on this site with the old poster (name escapes me) who was insisting on a "model" of free will.  Perhaps everything isn't reducible to models, equations, math?

The name is Paul C. Anagnostopoulos, probably.

Ever so carefully, I approach this great conversation.

Sci, I have my personal background on these match-up as Love and Wisdom.  I think all of these are valid perspectives.  But ......  If I'm sincere and self-consistent, I would respond to the question, by taking the pathway that says there may be "Truth" to perceive, but can it be sorted by Truth Tables.

Love as a state.  And it is associated with processes that promote, maintain and destroy that state.  Process data from the outcomes of love are evident.  This data shows that there is computable evidence that Love and love do enter processes and reliably create patterned outcomes.

I don't want to steal any thunder or magic from Love & Beauty --- I just want science facts from well-formed data.  If Love is at the bottom of it all, there should be a model of how that works!

I don't know. Something about this approach does not gel with me. Perhaps I'm just a romantic.

It seems to me that attempting to reduce the essentially subjective to objective data points rather destroys that very subjectivity. I firmly believe that our true nature is subjective - that reality depends on (and arises from) mind and that mind is naturally subjective. So Love, Beauty, feelings, etc., are not computable although you could make a case for some kind of arbitrary measurement criteria - degrees of happiness, maybe? Yet the Hard Problem is hard for that very reason - it is subjective and not reducible. When I say not computable, I mean that you can't program the love you feel for your new-born child or the pleasure of the smell of freshly baked bread. For all the inflated claims for AI I am confident that it will never be able to do that.

Perhaps I'm just a romantic.

As a fellow romantic, I hope you won't mind if I point out that romance derives from a word meaning fantasy.


That said, I too hold that the closest we humans, with our parochial senses, mental processes and concepts, can come to describing our brushes with the infinite is by using the word love - it's the closest match we can find.

And yet the word love doesn't quite do it, and so we resort to techniques literary, straying ever further into poetry and metaphor.

This is why I have come to believe the gap between spirituality and the scientific method (and perhaps analytic philosophy) will ultimately never be completely bridged. One has to rely on poetic approximation and the other, by its very nature, cannot.