Most will disagree w/ me but I recommend Kojeve's Lectures on Hegel.

The first is that somebody could be scanning your brain right now, and "explaining" your belief that you have made a valid logical point, but that does not disprove what you have just said; nor, similarly, does the possibility of being brain-scanned disprove anything anybody else says, not even if what they say is that invisible green lizards from outer space have been stealing their cookies.

The second reason is closely related, and is that brain scans have to be interpreted in terms of subjective experience, and no dictionary for the "language" of brain activity can be written without considering subjective experience in its own terms - just as, in the first point above, any argument you are I or anyone else gives has to be evaluated in logical terms, not in terms of whether it is caused by brain activity - we can take it as read that everything that goes on in our minds is caused by brain activity, but we still have to go on thinking and arguing!

There is certainly a spectre of epiphenomenalism which haunts us all, but the point is that it haunts all of us equally, even the most thoroughgoing materialists (ain't it amazing how grand philosophies like logical positivism and postmodernism all seem to fall victim to their own grand negative claims?), and you can't pick and choose which human beliefs to invalidate by saying, "Ah, that's just your brain doing that."

I am not suggesting we try and solve abstract questions with psychology. I'm suggesting that the very concrete questions like "what makes people happy", and "why do people act as they do" are in the realm of psychology.

It might help me to understand your position if you would tell me whether, in the following syllogism, you accept both of its premises, or only one of them, or neither:

The study of persons is psychology;
Psychology is a science;
Therefore, the study of persons is a science.

I dissent from the conclusion of the syllogism, but it is a matter of indifference to me whether the word "psychology" is used in such a way that the first premise is true (in which case the second is false), or in such a way that the second premise is true (in which case the first is false). Ordinary usage allows either choice.

Why not try to read Hegel himself? That should drive you to watching B-films with pleasure. Hitting yourself on the head with a hammer is therapeutic, because it feels so good when you stop. There is nothing like the German Idealists and their interpreters to put you off philosophy forever as it has done for so many.

I am not suggesting we try and solve abstract questions with psychology. I'm suggesting that the very concrete questions like "what makes people happy", and "why do people act as they do" are in the realm of psychology.

For one thing, I have read some Hegel. But there's a sh*tload of Hegel. Another thing is that I am no idolator. What matters is the idea. Kojeve quotes Hegel on all the essential points. And Kojeve was himself a genius.

German Idealist philosophy is the peak of philosophy. Or at least of metaphysics. Rorty is the best pragmatist or sophist I have read. The English-writing philosophers are easy to understand because they are usually just sophists. Sophistry is good. But it's not all there is.

Nice to know.......But what about...The Logos?

I really hope we will move beyond both organised religion and medical psychiatry, into some kind of progressive, non-dogmatic understanding of the mind; but such an understanding cannot be scientific, it will in many respects resemble religion, and we do not even seem yet to have an intellectual framework in which to develop such an understanding.

We did 2.5 thousand years ago - it's called Buddhism.

Yes, it's a very interesting article indeed, and bears out what betula was saying earlier (in response for something I wrote about the need for a progressive non-dogmatic understanding of the mind, or something to that effect).

Also, we now have Dawkins quoted or paraphrased thus:

(1) "If subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would be a better place and I would have written a different book."

(2) Dawkins regards Buddhism (like pantheism) as a species of atheism.

So there appears to be much fertile ground for peaceful, creative, intelligent and honest agreement in No Man's Land.

In message #68 of the thread, I had written:
That was before I ran into what I considered to be the non sequitur of Harris assuming that there could be a "scientific account of the contemplative path" (my emphasis) which would "utterly transcend its religious associations".

Hegel is the self-consciousness of Logos, and that's why he's the end of metaphysics....

He certainly is the end, the very end.

When I was at university in the early 1970s, something set me thinking about some kind of spiritual progression, a kind of ascending spiral, involving two opposed things forming a higher unity (in each twist of the spiral), and somebody mentioned Hegel to me, but I never followed it up. I used to have a lot of giddy ideas and images, but I didn't know how to put them into words (or indeed into mathematics); when I wrote notes, I often didn't understand what I had written; and I certainly had no idea how to talk to people about these giddy, feverish notions, nor did I know how to connect them with any established philosophy.

If only you knew why...

Seriously, K, all this b.s. aside. I know you're a fan of logic. Well, Hegel discovered the ground of logic. I sh*t you not.

He did? Have you ever examined Hegel's logic? How would Hegel know anything about logic?

But Kojeve's presentation of Hegel's ideas is the most impressive metaphysics (in the sense of fundamental Science) that I have ever encountered.

What's wrong with Plato and various others is that they cannot bear to admit that man is the source of "God"...the good news is that this is a real "God." The bad news is that he doesn't do any miracles except for those that man does. For instance, we landed on the moon. Bach's music. Rembrandt's paintings. All of this, in Hegel's view, is God's work. How? Because God is 100% incarnate in man. He doesn't exist outside of man but only within man, as the fundamental structure of man's mind.

However, I do believe in the paranormal. I'll have to start a thread on that some time, to see if the distinction can be maintained, as I have long assumed it can, without really thinking hard about it.

i think from a Hegelian or Kantian perspective the paranormal would be interpreted as the not-yet documented natural. But that's an oversimplification.. But thanks!

I got lucky & found Kojeve at the library. Man, what a book....

I am glad it entertains you.