I am glad you realize that there is a tendency to tar secular philosophy also with the same brush as mythological beliefs. That's more than what most others understand. Unfortunately, the West has not been exposed to secular philosophy (till recent years) in the same working manner that is common in India. Indian philosophy (Vedanta, Yoga, Samkhya) are not idle intellectual musings. They are living models that can be practiced and followed to see the reality for oneself.
I appreciate that it may be my ignorance on the practices here, but although I'd heard that Samkhya was an atheist outlook, I thought Yoga presupposed a personal deity? And Vedanta has been pitched to me as a sort of 'catch-all' syncretism of the other major Hindu schools - I'm not saying that's right, just what I've heard about it.
The essence of Indian philosophy is practice and more practice. And there is no fanatical zeal to push any idea. Its all left to ones own initiative. Don't accept it?
...no problem!
As with any philosophy, that's your take on it perhaps, but I'm sure there are any number of people in India who might look at Mr Mohdi's take on Hindu nationalism and suggest that his philosophy is being rather more aggressively pushed.
Of course, Philosophy does make claims about reality! Science is nothing but a subset of philosophy that follows a certain specific methodology.
I'd say that Science isn't a subset of philosophy any more than, say, logic is. There are philosophical schools that accept it as a useful tool, but it's a method rather than a particular viewpoint. There is the associated 'scientism' view that ONLY science is a valid means of examining reality, but that's distinct from the practice of science itself.
This type of methodology is fine in specific areas of study but will not work everywhere.
Well that's the scientism argument, really. Science examines phenomena, so if you can perceive it reliably, science can investigate it. If you can't perceive it reliably, scientism argues, how can you be confident that it's actually there. Is anything truly beyond science's possibilities? Currently, of course, there are potentially huge swathes of reality that science cannot adequately explain, but is there anything 'real' that is in principal beyond scientific enquiry?
There are many aspects of reality that are outside the boundary that science has fixed for itself.
I'm not sure there are - I think there is a large proportion of those that look to scientism who don't see that there is, in principle, anything in reality that is beyond the realm of science.
As I keep saying, Science is like a microscope. A microscope works fine in certain areas but cannot be used for everything.
Why? The only things that I've heard people say are beyond science are the things that they, or at least a considerable number of others, say are issues beyond 'knowledge' and into the realms of faith.
There is ample evidence for Consciousness being independent of the body.
There are some experiences that, when examined, turn out not necessarily to be reliable.
We should be mentally prepared to see it, that is all. Attitudes and mental blocks can be major hindrances in our understanding of certain phenomena. Even though we might believe that we are open to ideas if there is sufficient evidence, this is not always true. Evidence itself can be quite tricky.
It can, but it seems to me that acceptance of many of these phenomena is to ignore reliable evidence in favour of personal experience (if you're lucky) or the acceptance of subjective personal testimony if the experience doesn't happen directly to you. We have any number of demonstrations that human perception is fundamentally unreliable in any number of ways, why would we rely so strongly on it in an area where the objective evidence is so overwhelmingly suggesting that there's nothing reliable their to measure?
Why should there not be a 'why'? Merely because science says so?!
Science doesn't say so, science - as you've pointed out - doesn't deal with 'why', science deals with how. Scientists, to some extent, philosophers - both those that adhere to scientism and others - ask 'why presume there is a reason' because there has been a history of circular reasoning to justify theism that presumes a why to presume a consciousness with wants to justify the why. We think in 'why' because we consider ourselves to be free-willed agencies, and we are the architects of our own perceived realities, but objective reality is objected precisely because it is not reliant on our perception of it - so without our need for a 'why', what is there in nature to suggest there is a 'why'?
That is not correct. We don't have to presume a consciousness. It is there for all to experience.
So those who claim to have experienced it will say, but I (for one) have not experienced it, so to presume there is a why doesn't satisfy that emotional need for self-justification. I have, however, perceived of sentient tomatoes chasing me down a hallway - a fever-dream in a particularly nasty bout of gastro-enteritis - but I don't presume my experience necessarily justifies presuming reality. I might be inclined to conduct further examinations, but it is at best a possibility until there's an external validation of it.
Duality is a very common philosophical position because that is what life and death seem to indicate.
I don't see that leap. Life is a process of energy exchanges conforming to a (currently not particularly well-defined) pattern, and consciousness is a subset of those energy exchanges conforming to an even less well-defined pattern. When the pattern of energy exchanges alters (i.e. we die) then the pattern no longer conforms to life or consciousness and we stop. I don't see a need for anything more in the system than that - I'm not definitively ruling it out from that understanding, but I'm equally not presuming that it's a part of the system that I can't understand because it doesn't add anything to my explanation except a need for more evidence and answers.
NDE's add to this argument.
I don't think they do. NDE's add to the experiences that require explanations, but there are perfectly good explanations that rely entirely on physical phenomena such as brain chemistry and neuron activity - they aren't proven, but they are conceptually sound. I guess there's a strong element of Occam's Razor in the argument.
There must be a very good reason not to accept dualism. Science is yet to provide any such reason.
Philosophy already has provided a very good reason. It's an unnecessary addition - we have a viable explanation without an independent 'spirit' component, so why add a complication with no reliable, independent evidence?
Consciousness is an enigma.
Ain't that the truth
Science merely assumes that it is a product of physical processes.
To be consistent, science presumes that EVERYTHING is a product of physical processes, it's part of the foundation of the conceptualisation of the scientific method. That is, potentially, a limitation, but that will only be a practical consideration at the point where someone comes up with as reliable a method for demonstrating non-physical elements of reality, and that hasn't happened yet.
But as you say, science hasn't yet proven any materialistic origin to consciousness and therefore the dualistic position is also a perfectly valid philosophical position.
I agree that it is not the obligation of science to disprove any philosophical position.
Science has, though, posited a conceptually valid understanding of consciousness - it needs considerably more evidence to upgrade it from the current 'hypothesis' to a full-blown theory of consciousness, but it's there to be challenged.
But in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, a dualistic position on consciousness is perfectly valid. Why not?!
The idea is valid, yes, but many, many ideas are valid (despite, in many cases, being mutually incompatible). We can't accept all of them, even given the human capacity for cognitive dissonance, so how do we choose which to accept? For instance, you appear to adopt a variant of a Hindu dualistic understanding of consciousness - this, as you say, is entirely valid. There is no conceivable way, as I understand, not just to validate that understanding in any reliable way, but even to suggest that there is grounds for choosing it over, say, a Catholic conception of dualism, or an Islamic one. My question doesn't come from the point of 'your conception is patently nonsense' because it isn't, there is an internal logic to it. My question comes from 'why do you choose that conception which has no evidentiary support and no prospect of ever being validated rather than one which does?'
There is no reason to get paranoid (as some people do) about it. For some people even suggesting a dualistic idea seems to be equivalent to pushing Jehovah or Allah down their throat....!! This could be a serious problem of phobia. It can create mental blocks that can be very serious impediments in understanding reality beyond science.
For those of us who live in cultures where the struggles between reason and faith (as opposed to arguments between faiths) have resulted in bloodshed, anything that's seen to validate or justify mysticism, spirituality or religion can be seen as a potential threat - if one unverifiable conceptualisation of dualism (your rather inoffensive Hindu concept of consciousness) can be accepted, how can another (the Islamic spiritual devotion to Allah) be contested?
Which raises the question - and this is perhaps a topic for another discussion - if the Islamic fundamentalists who perpetrated attacks such as the London Underground bombings feel like they're attacking 'Christendom' (for want of a better word) but those of us in an increasingly atheist Britain see this as a religious attack on a secular state, is it a battle between faiths or a battle between reason and faith?
I am having a meaningful and open discussion on here after a long time Outrider. Receptivity is important. Thanks.
I'd like to think I'm asking people to listen, so I do the same, otherwise we're all just shouting into the wind like a Daily Mail comment section, aren't we?
O.
