Spirituality without faith

In my search for a postmetaphysical meditative practice I came upon the following article at Naturalsim.org. Many of my concerns of late are expressed therein, almost uncannily so, from a perspective called secular humanism/naturalism. Here are some excerpts from “Spirituality without faith”:

To what extent can secular humanists be spiritual? Can those of us with a more or less naturalistic view of the world, one that doesn’t involve spirits, gods, or ghosts, legitimately seek spiritual experience? There seems a prima facie difficulty here since traditional notions of spirituality often posit a non-physical realm categorically separate from the world described by science. Such dualism is of course the antithesis of naturalism, which understands existence to be of a piece, not split into the natural and supernatural. If for humanists the ultimate constituents of the world don’t include immaterial essences, souls, or spirits, then it might seem that spirituality is off limits.

Many humanists, of course, will not necessarily want to access what I will call the “spiritual response.” Even if I persuade them that there’s nothing conceptually incoherent about a naturalistic spirituality, they might be constitutionally disinclined to indulge in emotions or practices that even temporarily disengage the rational mind set.

Authentic spirituality involves an emotional response, what I will call the spiritual response, which can include feelings of significance, unity, awe, joy, acceptance, and consolation. Such feelings are intrinsically rewarding and so are sought out in their own right, but they also help us in dealing with difficult situations involving death, loss, and disappointment. The spiritual response thus helps meet our affective needs for both celebration and reconciliation.

But what might evoke these states? Spirituality often involves a cognitive context, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world which can both inspire the spiritual response and provide an interpretation of it. Our ideas about what ultimately exists, who we fundamentally are, and our place in the greater scheme of things form the cognitive context for spirituality. By contemplating such beliefs we are temporarily drawn out of the mundane into the realization of life’s deeper significance, and this realization generates emotional effects. But equally, the spiritual response thus generated is itself interpreted in the light of our basic beliefs; namely, it is taken to reflect the ultimate truth of our situation as we conceive it. The cognitive context of spirituality and the spiritual response are therefore linked tightly in reciprocal evocation and validation.

A third essential component of spirituality is what is ordinarily called spiritual practice. Since the intellectual appreciation of fundamental beliefs alone may not suffice to evoke a particularly deep experience, various non-cognitive techniques can help to access the spiritual response. Activities such as dance, singing, chant, meditation, and participation in various rituals and ceremonies all can play a role in moving us from the head to the heart. And it is in the heart, or gut, after all, where we find the most powerful intrinsic rewards of spirituality, as profound as its cognitive context might be.

Spiritual experience, in Christianity and other non-naturalistic traditions, is interpreted as putting the individual in direct contact with the agent/creator, or with at least some aspect of the spiritual realm. The feelings that arise during spiritual practice are construed as evidence of the realm’s existence; they are the quasi-perceptual apprehension of God or Spirit. Thus, in this traditional cognitive context, spiritual experience is taken to be a special way of knowing ultimate truths about the world, a way quite different from ordinary empirical modes of knowing. The individual sees directly the face of God, and needs no further corroboration. Nor could any be forthcoming via normal sensory channels, since after all these are only capable of detecting physical appearances.

As much as the characteristics of traditional spirituality provide answers to the questions of death and meaning, two major drawbacks are evident. The problem of death is solved by splitting ourselves into two substances - one material and perishable, the other spiritual and immortal - but as a result the material becomes inherently inferior in its changeability. The physical becomes the merely physical - it assumes a second class metaphysical status. This in turn leads to alienation from our physical selves and indeed from the material world as a whole. Gross matter is denigrated in comparison to subtle spirit, and the material only has value to the extent that it is animated and directed by spirit. It can’t accomplish anything of significance on its own. But of course we are embodied, and our world is material, so from this alienated perspective most of our lives is an unfortunate entanglement with crass physicality while awaiting the better, immaterial world to come.

Added to the dualism of substance is the dualism of having two types of knowledge, ordinary empirical knowledge derived from the senses and confirmed intersubjectively (e.g., as in science) and the knowledge gained from the personal revelations of spiritual experience. Despite the arguments of some, such as Stephen J. Gould in his book Rocks of Ages, that these constitute “non-overlapping magisteria” which can’t conflict since they have fundamentally different concerns, the fact remains that both sorts of knowledge make claims about what ultimately exists and they reach different conclusions. Science gives us no reason to believe in the supernatural (there is no scientifically admissible evidence for such a realm), while the firm intuition of spiritual experience, as interpreted within its traditional, non-naturalistic cognitive context, is precisely that a separate immaterial reality indeed exists. If I make use of both methods of knowing, then eventually it is likely I will confront some basic cognitive dilemmas: which method, and therefore which conclusion, is correct? In deciding the momentous question of what fundamentally exists, on what grounds do I choose science over spirituality, or visa versa? When do I stick with my spiritual intuitions, and when do I stick with science?

The upshot is that these two dualisms, one metaphysical, one epistemological, put adherents of traditional spirituality in a poor position to achieve, in this world, the apprehension of fundamental unity, even if they are promised salvation in the next. And unity, of course, is the essence of spirituality. Being of two natures and two minds, the traditional spiritualist is torn between the physical and immaterial world and unified with neither. Naturalists, I believe, suffer no such handicaps in their approach to ultimate concerns.

To see how naturalism might improve on traditional religious and secular dualism as a basis for spirituality, I want first to outline briefly its essential characteristics. Standard definitions of naturalism often contrast it with supernaturalism, meaning simply that naturalism denies the existence of a separate, categorically different supernatural realm that exists outside the natural world. As seen above, the supernatural realm often is taken to involve an agent, or agency, that acts as a first cause. Such an agent is causally privileged, in that from its supernatural vantage point it gets to influence events in the natural world (e.g., create it) without being at the effect of that world. God, typically, is unconstrained by the physical laws and constants that we find everywhere in nature. Naturalism denies that there are any such causally privileged agents or entities; rather, anything that exists is entirely embedded among other existents which account for its origins and characteristics. Nothing gets to cause without being caused in turn; nothing gets to be unconstrained by its context. In Buddhist philosophical terminology, this is called “dependent arising”: all phenomena are ineluctably relational, there are no causally independent monads at any level of being.

In all these examples, the project of naturalization inherent in science has demonstrated (or aims to demonstrate) that these phenomena consist entirely of the ultimate constituents of the universe described by physics, organized and elaborated via empirically derived laws at several distinct levels of description into astoundingly complex patterns, some of which are persons. In none of these cases, and nowhere in science, is there a need to posit any essence, agency, spirit, or “spooky stuff” to make things happen. Rather, everything, down to the last detail, is a matter of functions and operations on basic elements, functions and operations that happen on their own, without supervision. This is the remarkable fact at the heart of naturalism (remarkable, at least, when compared to supernaturalism): there is no need for intentional agency or spirit as an explanatory postulate. The physical world is, on its own, sufficient to generate the marvels of life, consciousness, and human culture. From this perspective, to bring in a spirit or deity to do any explanatory work seems like a cheap trick, an easy out, and only vitiates the wonder of the fact that, to repeat, all these phenomena arise on their own.

Since naturalism rules out the existence of entities, like God, that are causally privileged, it also rules out the possibility that the universe could be the intentional creation of a being or agency that stands outside it in some respect. This means that under naturalism the universe can’t be construed as having an ultimate purpose or goal attached to it – it exists, strangely enough, for no reason.

As much as we are driven to discern or impute purposes, to ask the teleological question “why?,” we will always find that question unanswerable when applied to the largest scale of things. Naturalism also leaves us with the irreducible mysteries of why things should be precisely the way they are and not some other way, and why there should be something rather than nothing.

While traditional faiths hold that spiritual experience answers ultimate questions of meaning, naturalism holds that such experience is simply a function of brain states or processes, not contact with a non-material realm. Considerable research is underway to pin down the neural correlates of the spiritual response, for instance by imaging the brains of meditators and describing the neural effects of hallucinogenic (or “entheogenic”) drugs in generating experiences of ecstasy and unity. Researchers in Canada have successfully induced psychological states akin to cosmic consciousness in laboratory subjects using a device which stimulates the brain using magnetic pulses. Preliminary findings suggest that the sense of trans-personal connection arises when neural networks responsible for our sense of orientation in the world are shut down, and the sense of deep significance and conviction seems to have a neural correlate in the temporal lobe. In their book, Why God Won’t Go Away, Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili describe several “association areas” in the cerebral cortex they believe are the neural basis for cosmic consciousness.

All in all, the spiritual response (what Newberg and D’Aquili call the sense of “Absolute Unitary Being”) can be accounted for, naturalistically, as an experience which is at bottom identical to specific sorts of brain activity evoked by various sorts of stimuli. Understanding spiritual experience to be physical in this sense is just a special case of the reigning naturalistic hypothesis that drives current consciousness research: the mind and brain are one thing, not two. Furthermore, under naturalism the subjective sense of deep conviction characteristic of spiritual experience is not evidence for the truth of any belief. However special such experiences may seem, they are not a reliable way of knowing or of establishing facts about what exists; that privilege is accorded only to scientific empiricism and its intersubjective method of corroboration via experiment and evidence. Experiences, including spiritual experiences, are quite real of course, but they don’t necessarily refer to anything real, however much it may seem they do when we have them. They are data to be explained and incorporated into our theories.

From the description of naturalism offered above, it’s perhaps not all that difficult to see how it might serve as a basis for spirituality, both to inspire the spiritual response and to provide a plausible cognitive context for our ultimate concerns. First, it is clear that under naturalism connection with the world is built in to every aspect of our being, not a hoped for eventuality in the life to come. We’re joined to the cosmos and the everyday world as described by science in countless ways: the elements composing our bodies are the products of the Big Bang and stellar evolution; most of our DNA is shared with other beings; our perceptions and sensations are all mediated by processes involving photons, electrons, ions, neurotransmitters and other entirely physical entities; and our character and behavior is fully a function of genetics and environment. We are, therefore, fully linked with our surroundings in time, space, matter/energy, and causality. In fact, no more intimate connection with the totality of what is could be imagined. So, from a naturalistic perspective, there is an empirically valid referent for the sense of cosmic consciousness encountered in spiritual experience. The feeling of unity generated by (actually, identical to) the quieting of the orientation mechanisms in the brain mirrors the objective state of our complete interconnection with the world.

Second, in its denial of ultimate meaning and purpose, naturalism, strangely enough, may equal traditional faiths in its capacity to inspire the spiritual response. When we confront the startling fact that existence isn’t subsumable under any overarching interpretation, but simply is, we are left with an irreducible mystery about why we are here, or exist at all; and mystery serves at least as well as purpose to inspire spiritual experience. Unable not to ask questions about ultimate purpose and meaning, but rebuffed by the logic which shows such questions unanswerable, we are caught in a cosmic perplexity, a state of profound existential astonishment. The realization that existence inevitably outruns our attempts to assign meaning and purpose can have the impact of a true revelation, stunning the discursive mind in the manner of a Zen koan. Like a koan or other practices in which thinking confronts its own limitations, such a cognitive impasse can serve as the gateway to the direct, non-discursive experience that the present is sufficient unto itself. After all, there is no place to get to, no goal toward which Being is moving.

Besides connection and mystery, naturalism leads to wonder. It’s truly a marvel what matter and energy can do when left to their own devices. It’s a marvel that the lifeless, insentient elements of creation give rise - via mechanisms, operations, and functions - to life in all its astounding variety and to consciousness in all its sensory and emotional richness. Somehow, the concatenation of neural activity in our brains ends up constituting awareness, intelligence, and wonder itself. To see, transparently, how highly organized matter and mind are precisely one thing, not two, is the spiritual significance of the mind-body problem. To penetrate it would be to leave behind the last vestiges of dualism. No longer could we be alienated from matter as “mere” matter, rather its properties and susceptibilities to organization are, wonderfully, the basis for all that we are as bodies and minds. And of course, far beyond our parochial selves lies the incalculable vastness of the cosmic arena from which we spring. Wonder, although not the only possible response when contemplating the immense scale of matter, space, and time, is surely appropriate once we realize we belong to something so very far beyond us. Such naturalistic wonder and awe counts as deeply spiritual, even though no spirits are involved.

Because naturalism conceives of experience as identical to some sort of material organization (consensus on just what sort of organization may be decades away), spiritual experience doesn’t count as a special way of knowing, but rather a special way of being.  Knowledge about what ultimately exists is a matter of reaching intersubjective consensus via theory and experiment grounded in our fallible capacities for perception, whether aided or unaided.

The intrinsically rewarding sense of ultimate unity, awe, and significance isn’t a perception, it’s a feeling, one of a near infinity of possible brain states of which we are capable. Nevertheless, this feeling reflects the scientific facts of our embededness in nature. Naturalism doesn’t have to posit a special route to the spiritual truth which could conflict with scientific empiricism, rather it understands spiritual experience as a materially instantiated non-cognitive affirmation of what is actually the case. Thus naturalism is entirely monistic in its interpretation of spiritual experience: there is one world and one way of knowing it. By avoiding metaphysical and epistemic dualism, naturalism naturalizes spirituality, and in so doing provides a cognitive context for spiritual experience that reinforces its essential non-dual quality.

But how, practically speaking, are we to feel all this? Abstractions are all well and good, but we might want the direct experience of connection simply because it’s intrinsically rewarding, a refreshment from our ordinary ego-centered, goal-driven state of mind. Naturalism can help inspire us, but to substantially change how we feel we may need to participate in some sort of spiritual practice.

An explicitly naturalistic spiritual practice must evoke the spiritual response in the cognitive context of naturalism. Traditional religion has linked this response to sacred liturgies, with all their supernatural connotations, using music, theater, incense, architecture and other ritual elements that generate feelings of connection and wonder. There is no reason why such a link cannot be forged between naturalism and such feelings; it’s simply a matter of finding (or designing) rituals and practices which pair these feelings with expressions of naturalistic beliefs.

There’s much to choose from in terms of existing spiritual practice that might be adapted for a naturalistic spirituality. Some Unitarian services come close to an entirely naturalistic celebration of community, despite the fact that they often use theistic hymns and take place in buildings that look suspiciously like churches. Naturalists must infiltrate these congregations, form committees over coffee, and lobby for less God and more naturalism in the liturgy. The musicians and lyricists among them must collaborate on new, more explicitly naturalistic anthems (having tried this myself, I know it’s damned difficult, but someone’s got to do it).

For those not inclined to communal practice, there are more private means of altering one’s consciousness, meditation chief among them. Meditation, although not often advertised as such, can work dramatic changes on the brain via concentration or the non-judgmental awareness of mental contents. When thinking quiets down and sensory input is at a minimum, very different sorts of feelings can arise, some of which are extraordinarily unlike normal waking consciousness. Although meditation is not an easy art, the potential rewards are great for those who have the knack and put in the time. The states of consciousness accessed, naturalistically understood, are just more brain states, but they can have directly felt qualities of unity and acceptance that mark them off as subjectively quite special, and that correspond to empirically-grounded cognitions. Because many varieties of Buddhism are inherently naturalistic and emphatically this-worldly, humanists interested in exploring meditation could do worse than joining a local Zen center or vipassana (insight meditation) group.

As with meditation, which only comes through practice, arts such as dance, music, singing, chant, and yoga should be taught so that each of us has some basic techniques with which to engage the moment. Whatever their origins, we can adopt such skills and techniques without necessarily adopting the tradition within which they arose, unless, of course, we find that tradition to our liking.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I love when someone has already put into words what I've been trying to myself but failed! Thanks for bringing this subject to attention!

Re: Spirituality without faith

What a wonderful post,

This defines a belief system that both includes and excludes, it defines those things that conform to this structure and excludes those things that do not.  As far as I can see we can arrive here through many different paths, we can share the enthusiasm for embracing the world and all that manifests as : “everything, down to the last detail, is a matter of functions and operations on basic elements, functions and operations that happen on their own, without supervision.”

Sooner or later we will run into something that defies this logic, science will always have new things to explore and we will always be forced to confront Mystery and the supernatural.   Whatever it is that pushes on onward cannot be explained but can only be served.  

I arrived somewhere around your explanation, but I cannot judge it as complete, this is just a respite until further insight is acquired.  I can release my dependence on the God concept; someone in charge and directing all of the Kosmos, I cannot release individual responsibility; Receptivity and Response while listening from the depth of one’s own being with a consciousness that continues to seek communion.  I agree we need to re-define God, I think this can only happen if we include and open our hearts and minds to new ways of expressing and embodying that which continues to re-define our very self.

It does not matter to me if Science says that Spirituality is only a brain function, how does this disprove the knowledge that this brings forth, like any other knowledge acquired it is all a brain function.

The other point that was made regarding the traditional teachings of Religion do serve an important role in orienting us towards a world that is worth exploring, creating a safe and sacred space, encouraging us to pursue all of its dimensions, but if you follow the contemplative path within each of the traditions we all end up here.  The meaning and purpose of life is OUR question and always has been, how we make meaning of our life is our own creative purpose.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Dear Annie, This all is a lot to take in, but I think I lean toward your view above. While there is a lot of truth and value in the monistic view, does it invite the “flatland” mentality by (analogous to) a dominant, scientist, in mankind's little ongoing group therapy session? Each and every participant needs a voice in the group. Some member's gifts lean them to, as you say, mysticism which may need protection (a time and forum to speak) from the other dominant voices in the group. This does not mean that each gift has to form a sub-group which can no longer relate to the whole group, just that some gifts and perspectives need a barrier from the dominant voices/personalities/gifts. In an actual group therapy, the facilitator intentionally spreads the conversation around, so as not to leave out the quieter, or dominated, participants. 
   While dualism of spirit and flesh may cause some problems, not making the distinction may let the flesh camp grab the reins too much. Who gets to grab the reins in our culture and dictate how we all must think or be? I have to be a money-watching/handling, business-like person just to be considered “responsible”. I have to manage a list of 12 or more separate bills, be constantly aware of manufacturers and retailers trying to rip me off or sell junk to me, and if I don't tend to my business, it's not that I am ungifted that way - it's that I am financially “irresponsible”. That is just one example of how one set of gifts takes over and makes the world in their image. The advantage of a space between spiritual and worldly is that it may be a buffer from the retailers and objective sciences. And if the process works well, the spiritual participant can say something which might actually help the financially responsible go-getters and bean counters of the group. 
   Yet, I do appreciate the problems of the mind/body split, and the spirit/flesh(world) split. IMO, the question needs to be asked, “How do we define duality or non-duality”? Can't we be non-dual in a way of interacting with life, and yet use duality in a functionally advantagous way such as I discussed in the group therapy analogy? Can't we make duality distinctions without taking them so seriously (as hard reality)? For the purposes of differentiation, not for separation/isolation? Can't we think, but think softer? More flexible and fluid? Like (you've said it, and so have I) like energy? 
   Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

I thought this was a nice outline of a naturalistic spirituality.  This sentence, however –

Thus naturalism is entirely monistic in its interpretation of spiritual experience: there is one world and one way of knowing it.

– gives me pause.  I understand the author's concern regarding what we have elsewhere discussed in terms of privileged access: the spiritual appeal to alternative modes of access to knowledge about ultimate reality, whether that be via divine revelation or mystical experience.  But to argue that there is only one world and one means of access to it strikes me as problematic, at least within the context of a post-metaphysical, evolutionary, enactive understanding.  What do you think, Ed? 

Re: Spirituality without faith

I too got a bit of the reductionistic, scientific materialism feeling by such language. Yet preceding and following that quote he indicates that it nondually “solves” the other approach of metaphysical and epistemological dualism. This reminds me quite a bit of the two truths debate between Tsongkhapa and Gorampa, where Thakchoe explores the two truths both ontologically and epistemologically. Recall Thakchoe had G being dualistic in both yet T, while acknowledging two modes of epistemology—one for absolute, one for relative knowing—nonetheless finds them mutually entailing. I get a sense this author is shooting in the same direction with his nondual explanation, yet it is not as precise within the more scientific language.
 
On the other hand, he turns around and says that science and rationality, naturalism or otherwise, is not enough to experience the simple feeling of being of the spiritual response, that it requires other methods/practices which “temporarily disengage the rational mind set” and “understands spiritual experience as a materially instantiated non-cognitive affirmation of what is actually the case.” Here he might go a bit too far into the myth of the given.
 

Re: Spirituality without faith

With this author I am quite a bit reminded of Lakoff & Johnson and others in the George Herbert Mead thread. For example: 

From this link:  

Johnson, M. and Rohrer, T. “We Are Live Creatures: Embodiment, American Pragmatism, and the Cognitive Organism.” In Body, Language and Mind, vol. 1, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 17-54 (limited preview from Google Books). 
 
Abstract
 
The philosophical tradition mistakenly asks how the inside (i.e., thoughts, ideas, concepts) can represent the outside (i.e., the world). This trap is a consequence of the view that mind and body must be two ontologically different entities. On this view the problem of meaning is to explain how disembodied “internal” ideas can represent “external” physical objects and events. Several centuries have shown that given a radical mind-body dichotomy, there is no way to bridge the gap between the inner and the outer. When “mind” and “body” are regarded as two fundamentally different kinds, no third mediating thing can exist that possesses both the metaphysical character of inner, mental things and simultaneously possesses the character of the outer, physical things.
 
Embodied Realism, in contrast to Representationalist theories, rejects the notion that mind and body are two ontologically distinct kinds, and it therefore rejects the attendant view that cognition and language are based on symbolic representations inside the mind of an organism that refer to some physical thing in an outside world. Instead, the terms “body” and “mind” are simply convenient shorthand ways of identifying aspects of ongoing organism-environment interactions - and so cognition and language must be understood as arising from organic processes. We trace the rejection of this mind-body dualism from the philosopher psychologists known as the early American Pragmatists (James and Dewey) forward through recent cognitive science (such as Varela, Maturana, Edelman, Hutchins, Lakoff, Johnson, Brooks). We argue that embodied realism requires a radical reevaluation of the classical dualistic metaphysics and epistemology - especially the classical Representationalist theory of mind - and we conclude by investigating the implications for future investigations for a new, pragmatically centered cognitive science.
 
In the following sections we show how the Pragmatist view of cognition as action provides an appropriate philosophical framework for the cognitive science of the embodied mind. We begin by describing the non-dualistic, non-Representationalist view of mind developed by James and Dewey. Their understanding of situated cognition is reinforced by recent empirical research and developments within the cognitive sciences. We cite evidence from comparative neurobiology of organism-environment coupling ranging from the amoeba all the way up to humans, and we argue that in humans this coupling process becomes the basis of meaning and thought.
 
And also this link:

This from The Philosophy of the Flesh might also shed some light:

Perhaps the oldest of philosophical problems is the problem of what is real and how we can know it, if we can know it…. Aristotle concluded that we could know because our minds could directly grasp the essences of things in the world. This was ultimate metaphysical realism. There was no split between ontology (what there is) and epistemology (what you could know), because the mind was in direct touch with the world.

With Descartes, philosophy opened a gap between the mind and the world…. Ideas…became internal “representations” of external reality…but somehow “corresponding” to it. This split metaphysics from epistemology.

…embodied realism…is closer to…direct realism…than…representational realism. [It] is, rather, a realism grounded in our capacity to function successfully in our physical environments. It is therefore an evolutionary realism. Evolution has provided us with adapted bodies and brains that allow us to accommodate to, and even transform, our surroundings.

It gives up on being able to know things-in-themselves, but, through embodiment, explains how we can have knowledge that, although it is not absolute, is nonetheless sufficient to allow us to function and flourish.

The direct realism of the Greeks can thus be characterized as having three aspects:

1. The Realist Aspect: The assumption that the material world exists and an account of how we can function successfully within it;
2. The Directness Aspect: The lack of any mind-body gap;
3. The Absoluteness Aspect: The view of the world as a unique, absolutely objective structure of which we can have absolutely correct, objective knowledge.

Symbol-system realism of the sort found in analytic philosophy accepts 3, denies 2 and claims that 1 follows from 3, given a scientifically unexplicated notion of “correspondence.”

Embodied realism accepts 1 and 2 but denies that we have any access to 3.

All three of these views are “realist” by virtue of their acceptance of 1. Embodied realism is close to direct realism…in its denial of a mind-body gap. It differs from direct and symbol-system realism in its epistemology, since it denies that we can have objective and absolute knowledge of the world-in-itself.

…it may appear to some to be a form of relativism. However, while it does treat knowledge as relative—relative to the nature of our bodies, brains and interactions with the environment—it is not a form of extreme relativism, because it has an account of how real, stable knowledge, both is science and in the everyday world, is possible (94-6).

Re: Spirituality without faith

Dear theurj, Below is an exerpt from a book about a fictional model transfaith community trying to weave spirituality into its culture. The section is an offering by a group called the Philosophers who have a valued niche in the new community. One of the Philosophers has an idea called “Functional Philosophy”. Does this (below) match the concepts of the book you reference in your post? It appears to, or to at least be on a similar wavelength. Here is the excerpt: 

  The purpose of philosophy, according to Functional Philosophy, is to healthfully orient an individual or group of people. There seem to be two major forms of orientation: “orientation by identification”, and “orientation by utilization” . 

    Orientation by identification means “Do the objects of my philosophical thought offer me characteristics that I can add to my personality?” It is like the idea of taking a characteristic from a deceased loved-one and incorporating it into my life.    Chances are that much of the intellectual processing of philosophy involves the mind's projection of its own qualities, or longed-for qualities, in the first place. So, why not ask “Why did my mind go there”? It probably went there for a reason. In the case of “orientation by identification”, the mind went there to tell me something about myself.     But the wisdom of the behind-the-mind mind could, I suppose, be clouded by lack of authenticity or independence. A given pilosophical idea could be more reaction to someone else's philosophical idea than it is a pro-active assertion of a mind seeking its own growth, and seeking what it “truely” needs in order to adapt well and to grow.     The idea of “field independence” (from psychology) came to me. The key is not to draw the chimney sideways because of the angle of the roof. Drawing the chimney sideways would be the result of reacting to immediate visual “field” of the slanting roof. The key is to let the mind find its authentic “ground” upon which to orient its various “chimneys” (projections).     An example of orientation by identification would be my integral quadrant-mixing idea that humans are “energy-based beings” (rather than “matter-based”). Instead of agonizing whether this belief mixes up the two different perspectives of the upper right quadrant and the upper left quadrant (see figure 5), why not assess its merits on “Do the characteristics of enegry match qualities that would make me a more adaptable, sustainably adaptable, person?”     As I understand it, Ken Wilber maintains that simply adopting a model, or “paradigm”, as it is popularly called (but incorrectly, according to Kuhn's meaning of the term), from the scientific realm of the upper right quadrant is still taking an “its”, outside, view of mind and of mind's construction of culture and social structures. He argues that “energy” is still a product of this outside view of things, such that it will not be able to speak for inner, subjective, experiences of the mind.     Wilber warns against merely using a paradigm from one quadrant to be applied to all the knowledge and values spheres. In the case of “energy”, it is still part of the “flatland” of over-applying science's outside view to life.  Such over-application takes away the “depth” of experiences, of meaning, and reduces everything to objects.      Although energy, and an energy field, has a trans-object quality which would fit with the outside view of collectives in the lower right quadrant (see figure 5), it would cause problems to reduce, say, creative thinking, to energy. Creative thought, it is argued, is much more (deeper and richer) than a kind of electrical current. Seeing the brain activity of chemical or electrical events as being equal to “creative thoughts” would, according to Wilber, reduce the significance and the qualities of human creativity. Such a reductionistic error would more-or-less turn yet another human characteristic into a machine - a dynamic, energetic, machine, but a machine, nonetheless.      Wilber's argument carries a lot of weight when using a denotative meaning of “energy”. But while energy has a definite (defined by certain sets of operations) scientific meaning, “energy” also has a connotative meaning for the “everyday man”. Energy's trans-object quality seems to consistently suggest something else - something potentially useful, helpful - to the everyday person. It has a certain “feel” to it.    The jumping-between-and-through-objects quality is one of the ways which the phenomena of “energy” presents itself. One of the concrete images of energy is fire. A fire can burn from one thing to another. Isn't that similar to how a person can share thier lives with others, even after they are dead (in the form of a legacy)?     Functional Philosophy believes that it is quite appropriate to ask the philosophical question: “What advantages does this fire-spread offer me as a human being? It seems it teaches me something about my capacity for love and for good karma. I am not merely a matter-like object. I am like energy, or could be if I only believe it so.    Therefore, if I say I am “energy-based”, it means that that view functions well for me, in terms of how I see and conduct my being. It doesn't automatically reduce me to only a denotative meaning of the word “energy”. It is not that I am only energy, and nothing else.  But since I choose to say how I might fit in with an otherwise external-like “reality” (even the word “exists” means to stand out), then the concept, or model, of being “energy-based”, as opposed to matter-based, seems to help me salvage some of my dynamic human qualities.     Well, not quite yet. Let me live according to the model and then see if my hunch was correct. Did the philosophy of seeing myself as being like energy work over the long haul of day in and day out living? If so, it was, for all intents and purposes, “true”.     Orientation by utilization, on the other hand, would involve whether or not the objects I am thinking a lot about are things or processes that I need to go toward in my environment. Energy (that is, learning to master it, find more economical and sustainable forms of it) is something to which we need to devote thought currently.     We are “practically” (functionally) forced to think about energy, in order to become energy-independent from middle east petro-dictatorships. So my thinking about my own energy nature could actually help increase my appetite for studying energy “out there” in my physical world. It is a good time to think about energy. Perhaps it is even a good time to think ”like” energy, so I can find better sources of it, etc.     A simple example of orientation by utilization would be: Suppose we lived in the desert where there are no shade trees. Would a philosophy about life being like a shade tree make much sense? I would have no way to apply such a philosophy to my desert “frame of reference”, to my set of experiences. Such a philosophical idea would fail the functional philosophy “test” of validity. A philosophy using a cactus as a metaphor of life, or of some important aspect of life, would be a truer (more functional) philosophy.   Ken's Wilber's critique of how German Idealism (Idealism sees mind as being ultimate reality) failed to integrate the different values spheres and main perspectives about reality, because it failed to come up with a way to replicate the transpersonal Mind via meditation, etc., seems to represent a similar line of “functionality” thought as regards philosophy. Did German Idealism “get the job done?” According to Wilber, almost, but not quite - “no”. German Idealism, as it was then concieved, lacked the functionality required to sustainably integrate the main value spheres of the Good (cultural norms, and mores, etc.), the True (objective truths about both the individual things of the upper right quadrant, and the collective things of the lower right quadrant), and the Beautiful (subjective mind).     Functional Philosophy believes that the ultimate function of philosophy itself is to help find that which “works” the best in the long run for us human beings. This view salvages much of the value of philosophy, which has been de-valued in the past because it was seen as being pre-occupied with esoteric thought that, to the rest of the world, looked like “counting the number of angels on the head of a pin”.  
Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

 ”The purpose of philosophy, according to Functional Philosophy, is to healthfully orient an individual or group of people.”
 
I like the idea of “orientation” as descriptive of “philosophy as as way of life.”  Each of the systems of antiquity have what I would call a kind of “attitudinal stance.” For example, Stoicism has one stance towards the world, Skepticism another, Kynicism yet another, etc.

“Renunciatory” and “in the world but not of it” might be another way to classify “attitudinal stances.”

Re: Spirituality without faith

Kelamuni, and “attitudinal stances” become self-fulfilling prophesies which create different worlds - the post metaphysics idea of enactments? Which reality we co-create is largely determined by which attitudinal stance we adopt, and the acknowledgement that there is no “innocent”, non-shaping, philosophy both adds responsibility and freedom-to-be-relevant to philosophy. IMO “attitudinal stances” is a more honest view of a “philosophy”, as it acknowledges a “system of thought” (Bohm) which cuts accross from cognitive to emotive to the very bones and hormones and muscles of a being or collection of beings. 

Re: Spirituality without faith

From “Pragmatism’s History”: 

The development of John Dewey’s “instrumentalist” or “experimentalist” version of pragmatism occurred largely during his ten years at the University of Chicago (1894-1904). Dewey was stimulated by James’s novel approach to psychological inquiry and later dedicated his first major work in pragmatism in 1903 to James. This development was also nourished by the psychological research and theorizing of Dewey and four of his philosophy colleagues, George H. Mead, James H. Tufts, James R. Angell, and A. W. Moore. Challenging the dominant “structuralist” psychologies, they formulated the doctrines of “functionalism,” in which mental entities are interpreted in terms of phases of purposive organic action in an environment. Dewey and Mead explored the philosophical consequences of this viewpoint: Chicago functionalism evolved into Dewey’s naturalistic instrumentalism and Mead’s social behaviorism.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Thanks theurj, for tracing similar historical roots to my idea. It is very possile, if not likely, that my odd mix of right brain and left brain thought allowed the functionalism notion to enter the back of my mind (right brain) years ago while exposed at least briefly to Dewey and James, and that the “seed” re-emerged recently as I was making up stuff in my book and during other philosophical sessions of thought and writing (to me, writing is just thinking out loud). 
  From what you cited above, my insight about philosophy itself was probably the exact same conclusion that Dewey, Mead, Tufts, Moore, and James all would have come to - that philosophy is produced for a purpose, to help us grow and/or adapt, whether we are aware of the purpose consciously or intuitively. The mind senses where it needs to go. 
  Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

I suspect the author of the piece is probably on the Naturalism fringe–going out on a limb by using the word “spiritual” in a community that holds that there are no such things. Naturalism appears to be an outgrowth of Secular Humanism that is an outgrowth of  1940s and '50s style Anglo/American Analytic Philosophy with its heavy reliance on the redemptive supremacy of the natural sciences. It is a thoroughly Modern operation, as is Naturalism. If one cruises the site and follows the links to its “Allies” one finds that Naturalism is a kinder, gentler, more compassionate, Secular Humanism.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why people use the words spirituality and spiritualistic etc, when they deny the existence of spirit. The author equates the “spiritual response” with an “emotional” response which I think is weak and incomplete since the emotions vis a vis the author's explanatory intentions fall into one of those “necessary but insufficient” categories. Personally I would have used the word “mysticism” (there is more mystery than spirit in consideration here) after scrubbing it clean of all it's current woo-woo affiliations. (Though I doubt that would survive the criticism of another with my perspective. For example this review that was linked from the same Naturalism.org page as the essay Edward posted to begin this thread.)

Re: Spirituality without faith

Nickleson, “Spirituality” seems to involve a belief in some form of interconnectedness, whether an experience of interconnectedness (not necessarily having any referential reality, but a sense) or an actual, existing (standing out), interconnectedness. No experience or belief in actual interconnectedness, then it would not make sense to speak of spirituality. “The spirit” would seem to be whatever way/means/vehicle the individual is able to interface the interconnectedness. No interface capacity, no “spirit” (as an individual thing). 
  If “spirit” is the way of interfacing the whole (whether the whole of a single self or the whole of all that is or was or will be), then, for the author of the book being reviewed, the spirit would dwell in the belief of naturalistic monism. It is that cognition which interfaces the interconnectedness. 
   Does this cognition allow for depth? That is another question. The interconnectedness practice, belief, and means of interfacing, could be relatively “flat” and still involve interconnectedness - an interconnectedness which leaves out much of the depth dimension in which mystery seems to dwell a lot. 
   As something is percieved as entering awareness from unknown places within, or is sensed way “out there”, way up in the expansive sky beyond our practical circle of influence here in the world, then the word “mystery” would also apply to spirituality. 
  But, to me, if there is some form of interconnecting (even this cognitive form of monism, whether flatlandish or not) then an argument could be made that it is “spiritual”, at least in the sense of “interconnectivity”. 
   You really got me to thinking about the dance between “spirituality” and “mystery”, and about what “spirituality” denotes (of course, it has many subjective connotations beyond a denotative definition). Mystery and spirituality do seem to be intimate partners, but not one and the same thing. I guess it is all according to which angle, lens, or frame, we approach “spirituality” and “mystery”. 
   I tend to approach “spirituality” kinesthetically as a felt (not necessarily emotional, but felt, as in feeling the body move) something or other. This kinesthetic frame would not require as much emphasis on a sense of mystery, as the mysterious is woven into a kind of proprioceptive sense (I got that idea from David Bohm) of being, without having to be identified as “mysterious”. 
  It is only when we are looking that we are mystified. When we are moving, or enacting, we are busy being mysterious to whomever watches the enacting/creating. That could include ourselves watching what we are doing, but if the emphasis is on the kinesthetic process, it is not on the visual seeing of it. There is no mystery in the middle of creating. There is only a natural (as in “naturalistic”?) unfolding of self. 
   The authors appear to be setting the “reality” frame on this kinesthetic sort of sensing. Thoughts about self and the world, and even about the “spiritual” (interconnected sense of the word) can be based on this kinesthetic frame without believing in a separate “spirit” aspect of self, and without having all that much sense of “mysticism”. In fact, the authors might be said to believe more in “must-icism” than mysticism.    This line of thought (of a kinesthetically framed, non mystical, “spirituality”) seems to be going in the opposite direction of your contention that they should refer to mystery rather than spirit. But it is a line of thought which you enacted when you communicated here and I came along and processed your very provocative distinction between “mystery” and spirituality. You have helped me see some ways that mystery and spirituality differ, yet also often dance together.  

  Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

In a volume collection called Western Spirituality we find arcticles on a number of things that normally we might not call “spirituality,” notably things like Stoicism, Skepticism, Cynicism, and Epicureanism. As Hadot notes, these were not mere “philosophies” in the modern sense, but ways of life, or what I would call an ethos. The problem is that we don't have an appropriate English term for “ways of life” in these modern times, and so these animals get lumped in with “spirituality.” But they are more akin to Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism so what the hey, might as well call them “spirituality.” Who cares if there's not such thing as “spirit.” Hadot calls the practical dimension, such as the Stoic prosoche (mindfulness, which here has an ethical sense) “spiritual exercizes” (melete) for lack of a better term.

The world view our author is describing in above exerpt has a name: it's called Epicureanism.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I can see what you are getting at Kela, but what I think we have above is a closet samadhi freak who is afraid of the approbation that will come his way down at the Post-Doc's lounge. He's kind of like the anarchist who is afraid of that title so she calls herself a libertarian and runs for a governmental office.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Are you saying that Tom Clark is a samadhi free freak who is afraid, etc.? I can't tell from your previous post if you are aware that the author of the review of Horgan's book Rational Mysticism that you linked to is the author of the article that Edward posted at the start of this thread, the author being Tom Clark.

I wondered when reading your post about your saying that for the life of you you can't figure out why people use words such as spirituality and spiritualistic when they deny the existence of spirit. That's an unfamiliar thought to me. I don't know what spirit is other than an English word derived from the Latin word for breath that anyone would deny or affirm its existence. I've known a number of people who would say they are “spiritual” or are into spirituality who don't necessarily believe in anything that could be characterized as supernatural and who therefore could be called naturalists in some sense or other.

I discovered Clark's stuff online years ago and never got the impression he was a closet samadhi freak, but one man's impression…

I think the first thing I read by Clark was this review of What Is Enlightenment? magazine:
http://www.naturalism.org/consciousness_evolving.htm

And a few years ago I heard a radio discussion online between Clark and Andrew Cohen that left Cohen looking like he'd be made to stand in the corner wearing a dunce hat if he were in a freshman level philosophy course. (This didn't surprise me but I enjoyed hearing it.) I don't know if the links still work but if anyone's interested, links to the radio discussion can be found on this page:
http://www.naturalism.org/av_files.htm

Belated Happy Father's Day, BTW (not that I'm into Hallmark! - the women in my life have bullied me into paying attention to all these ridiculous holidays); I wished it to a few guys who post here (three of whom I've known online for years from an old forum), and had no idea you too were a dad (which I learned after visiting your Gaia page when I clicked on your new photo).

~ Jim

Re: Spirituality without faith

Thanks for the link to the debate between Clark and Cohen, Jim.  I'm listening to it now…

(And thank you for the happy Father's Day wish, as well!  I hope you had an enjoyable one.  I spent mine with family at Point Reyes National Seashore – a gorgeous day.)

Re: Spirituality without faith

Jim,
Clearly a touché….that which I have coming for shooting from the hip. But its worked pretty well for the last 15 months.

Thanks for the dad-day wish. And the same to you, all of you.

S.

p.s. I just re-read a couple of my wild shots and I think one or two came close. More later.

Re: Spirituality without faith

“the women in my life have bullied me into paying attention to all these ridiculous holidays”.

I love it!

Gaddy  ;-)

Re: Spirituality without faith

I like much of what he has to say. For example, “Spirituality often involves a cognitive context, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world which can both inspire the spiritual response and provide an interpretation of it.” I like that formulation. But then he says, ”By contemplating such beliefs we are temporarily drawn out of the mundane into the realization of life’s deeper significance…” I'm not sure that's the point of such beliefs.

He does place a lot of emphasis on ”feeling,” “experience,” altered states, and so on. And to that extent he reminds me a bit of Sam Harris, though Sam buys completely into the “mystical empiricism” schtick. It may be that it is this emphasis on “experience” that Steven means by being a “samadhi freak.”

The idea that religion or here “spirituality” is basically feeling goes back to Schleiermacher. There is a kind of strategy at work here, an attempt to “find room” for religion, and idea that goes back even further to Kant.

He says, “Authentic spirituality involves an emotional response, what I will call the spiritual response, which can include feelings of significance, unity, awe, joy, acceptance, and consolation.” I cringe whenever a sentence begins in this manner and then gives a normative definition of an “authentic X.” I think it is a different thing to say that there is an affective component to cognitive states, and to this extent spirituality has an affective component.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I'm finding that Clark points to several issues that I have indicated in my blog posts. For example, in the article on WIE he says: For example, discussing the purported effect of the O.J. Simpson verdict on random number generators via a “field of collective consciousness,” Kenny says that “millions of minds, when united with a specific focus, can have a powerful effect on the material world, mysteriously influencing normally random physical systems toward higher degrees of order.” The key word here is “mysteriously.”  In order to maintain the irreducibly non-physical element of consciousness, the dubious science behind evolutionary enlightenment can never specify too closely what the mechanisms are that propel consciousness higher.

And in this blog I write:
At the end of chapter three, Wilber calls the issue of their relationship [between structures and stages] the “$64,000 question.” It is a question, however, that tends to remain a question. In chapter four, “States and Stages,” Wilber says: “As for transformation itself: how individuals grow, develop and transform is one of the great mysteries of human psychology. The truth is, nobody knows…” (p. 87)
 
Maybe I'm not flailing about like a madman afterall. Or maybe Clark and I are both crazy. ;-)

I like how he moves to the point where he is almost describing the writings of Wilber and Cohen in terms of literary tropes.

The Bad Guy/Disease: post-modern relativism, nihilism and cyncism
The Hero/Panacea: Evolutionary Conscsiousness
etc.

A good find, Ed and Jim. Thanks.

Re: Spirituality without faith

In a practical, functional, phenomenological, way, couldn't we consider this mysterious transformation an “unfolding”?

And when you look at the whole feel and implications of an unfolding, it does not seem very related (if at all, perhaps even very independent of) to the cause and effect sequences we “see” in “matter-based” thought. Unfolding seems more of an energy, feild-like, way of viewing realtiy, which is to us who have been thinking like matter all our lives, very “mysterious”.

The “Grace” theology I was exposed to in my church upbringing was, IMO, an introduction to thinking like energy, but virtually no one seemed to “get it”, and constantly came up with strange and complicated ways to translate “grace” into an object-logic that generates uneccessary dualities and resistences (like mixing oil and water). 

Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

Hi Kela,

You say, “The idea that religion or here 'spirituality' is basically feeling goes back to Schleiermacher.”

I'm reading Ray Monks bio of Witt; I'm only on p. 123 of this 654 page book, but just read (while lounging on the couch with Gergiev conducting Prokofiev in the background), “The idea that the essence of religion lay in feelings (or, as Nietzsche would have it, instincts) and practices rather than in beliefs remained a constant theme in Wittgenstein's thought on the subject for the rest of his life.”

That's certainly matches up with my ideas about religion/spirituality; I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad (e.g., naive or unsophisticated) thing…

If Tom Clark's a samadhi freak for placing a lot of emphasis on feeling as the essence of spirituality, what about Wittgenstein (and Nietzsche)?

Re: Spirituality without faith

I too don't care for others telling me what is or is not “authentic.” That's part of the problem I'm having with the Great Integral Awakening series so far. On the one hand Clark tells us Reality cannot be fully known, that it must forever remain a mystery. Yet as you say he turns around and tells us what is required to experience it authentically, as opposed to falsely I presume. Talk about your duality.

I don't have a problem though with his defining spirituality as feeling, in light of the connection to the temporal lobe and limbic system, strongly connected to emotion. And even more base (primordial) systems like the brainstem are involved in “deeper” spiritual experiences like mind-body union, similiar to the kinesthetic reponse Moneynot notes.

So it's not so much “experience” that is Clark's focus, as mental operations are also experiences. It's earlier brain-consciousness state experiences that put us in touch with the so-called spiritual. And these require other methodologies, like dance, music, chant, ritual, meditation–all those things that re-connect us with our primoridal heritage, all residing in our bodies and nervous systems.

And of course if we look at it this way then why even maintain a duality by calling it spiritual as opposed to material, since they are one or nondual? I personally don't, instead usuing the more generic term integration. Hence I prefer to keep it secular and humanistic, even naturalistic. Embodied realism seems to work as well. Or more contemporaneously neologistical, cogsci-prago. And naturally all very post-meta.

Re: Spirituality without faith

But according to some, “consolation,” as well as dance, chanting and ritual are forms of  “mere translation,” and so they would not qualify as “authentic spirituality,” which are those practises that are “truly transformative,” such as watching the guru seduce your wife while he yells at you and belittles you. ;-)

Re: Spirituality without faith

Indeed, what is considered authentic transformation turns out to be how one interprets primoridal experiences, i.e. translates them, within the cognitive context of the guru/leader(s), aka Rigth View. If not then you of course are merely translative, and usually mean and green to boot. Speaking of which, some guru asshole tries to seduce my lover and he gets a very mean boot in his ass, green or otherwise.

Re: Spirituality without faith

theurj, I really liked this that you said: ”It's earlier brain-consciousness state experiences that put us in touch with the so-called spiritual. And these require other methodologies …” Anologue was before digital in modern tech. Yet there are those who long for the rich sounds of an anologue phonograph. Are they merely “old fogies”? or do they sense a certain spiritual-like integrity of the old product which has been largely replaced by the new and improved digital audio technology? To me, the biblical myth of the “tree of the knowledge of…” references the new and improved brain model in which the added-on cortex could “think”. The Garden was more earlier versions. The cortex and thought, however, created a whole hell of a lot of artificial “thought boxes” that now rub against true wholeness and being authentic. The new and improved product brought new problems with it, as we became overly dependent on it and ignored, more and more over time, the advantages of the “garden”. Now, will we use integral maps and a valuing of open-minded exploration (which I see at the heart of “'post-metaphisical..” ) to find wholeness and dynamic understanding again?  The “Tree of Life”?  

Re: Spirituality without faith

If occurs to me that such regression into our primordial past in the service of integration seems “spiritual” because we move closer toward Origin or Creation. Or at least so it appears. And we all know how origin is key to the mythology of religion, those dastardly First Causes, God chief among them.

Re: Spirituality without faith

From the Discourse on Right View:  

As its title suggests, the subject of the Sammaditthi Sutta is right view. The analysis of right view undertaken in the sutta brings us to the very core of the Dhamma, since right view constitutes the correct understanding of the central teachings of the Buddha, the teachings which confer upon the Buddha's doctrine its own unique and distinctive stamp. Though the practice of right mindfulness has rightly been extolled as the crest jewel of the Buddha's teaching, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the practice of mindfulness, or any other approach to meditation, only becomes an effective instrument of liberation to the extent that it is founded upon and guided by right view. Hence, to confirm the importance of right view, the Buddha places it at the very beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Elsewhere in the Suttas the Buddha calls right view the forerunner of the path (pubbangama), which gives direction and efficacy to the other seven path factors. 
 
To arrive at direct penetration, one must begin with a correct conceptual grasp of the teaching and transform that grasp from intellectual comprehension to direct perception.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Jim posted the following on an old Open Integral discussion called “The two truths of Nagarjuna”:
 
From the Bodhgaya Interviews (Snow Lion, 1988) with the Dalai Lama:
 
Dalai Lama: “Liberation in which ‘a mind that understands the sphere of reality annihilates all defilements in the sphere of reality’ is a state that only Buddhists can accomplish. This kind of moksa or Nirvana is only explained in the Buddhist scriptures, and is achieved only through Buddhist practice.”
 
Questioner: “So, if one is a follower of Vedanta, and one reaches the state of satcitananda, would this not be considered ultimate liberation?”
 
Dalai Lama: “Again, it depends upon how you interpret the words, ‘ultimate liberation.’ The moksa which is described in the Buddhist religion is achieved only through the practice of emptiness. And this kind of nirvana or liberation, as I have defined it above, cannot be achieved even by Svatantrika Madhyamikas, by Cittamatras, Sautrantikas, or Vaibhasikas. The follower of these schools, though Buddhists, do not understand the actual doctrine of emptiness. Because they cannot realize emptiness, or reality, they cannot accomplish the kind of liberation I defined previously.”

[Presumably not even Gelug who practice Dorje Shugden?]
 

Re: Spirituality without faith

From the perspective of something like Jorge Ferrer's participatory model of spirituality, the Dalai Lama would be right.  Whatever realization someone from another tradition enacts, it won't exactly line up with the liberation described by the DL.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Of course, which is to be expected since there is no exactly the same “given” experience awaiting our discovery, primordial or otherwise. Hence there is no such animal as an “authentic” or “absolute” transformation that applies to all regardless of their context. It's when we uppity about it, applying our own Right View to all others, that their experiences aren't valid or authentic because they don't subscribe to our view.

And yet that's what we are trying to do with the postmetaphysical perspective, to say that some views are certainly better than others, more accurate, more comprehensive, more evolutionary etc. Or at least more practical given our current context. So while there is no absolutely better view there does appear to be some categorically better views depending on the circumstances.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Hey,
A few more thoughts  re the Samadhi Freak. Right now they are more or less disjointed, but they might come to some unity below.

1. Re: The motto, the the second line of the masthead of The Center for Naturalism; “–Connection Compassion Control–”  There is a rhythmic progression through these three words that when they are spoken aloud puts a bass accent on the “Control.” The kind of accent that creates a auditory finial, as in “a destination reached.”  Spooky.

2. Up until reflecting on the motto, I found nothing to fault and a lot to admire in the Center's agenda.

3. Listening to Clark, Cohen and the others I couldn't help but think how Rorty's take on “The Redemptive Truth” framed the conversation; the universe is structured in an ultimately knowable system,  that, ultimately, will tell us what to do with our lives and redeem us from darkness. (And perhaps give legitimacy to our bass accent on “Control.”) This was especially true in the free will/determined debate in the second half.  Clark's site is alive with links to essays etc. that work this issue to death. From what might have been an interesting topic 2,000 years ago it has long since deteriorated into a marginalized pissing match. Clark uses his determinism stance as a way to implement a more humane criminal justice system. I am for a humane criminal justice system. But I am not wild about the idea of putting determinism as the guiding principle into the “conceptual policy” end of the pipeline because when it reaches the far end as practice and implementation on the individual level it will almost inevitably result in compulsory behavior modification programs….connection, compassion, conditioning, control.

4. The naturalist take on determinism is so broad as to be almost meaningless. It seems analogous to the pantheistic slogan “God is Everything” that says absolutely nothing distinguishing or significant about either God or everything. I find it amusing that someone believes that we are so determined that even the thought that I will be freely selecting my next adjective is a thoroughly determined thought.  And the next logical question, “How is that?” opens up an infinitely regressing and ever widening web of causality going back to the big bang…

DISSOLVE TO THE DEAD END OF A BAD ROAD, FIN DU MONDE, WY,  PAN TO THE RANCH HOUSE, THE HILLS BEHIND, THE MESAS ABOVE, THE WIND RIVER RANGE–

VOICE OVER: This guy Clark is such a chump. Fine, I'll buy into his sweet little plan. Christ! Look, all along I was operating under the insane illusion that I was making free choices, what a fool I was…taking responsibility for my actions…what a fool. Responsibility for acts? Putting myself at risk?  What an arrogant assumption! Here I thought my father thought himself free to teach me the family secrets of how to steal horses, how to stay safe when selling contraband… Little did he know, how could he even suspect he was nothing but a robot, an essentially mindless puppet of his genes and socio-economic status?  There but for the luck of the draw go those who went to jail. And I spent 18 years as a hired gun in the pay of outlaws, insurance chiselers, and sociopaths, and so you have to know I learned a thing or three, and ya know, Officer Krupke, what I know now is that I was and always will be the mindless puppet of my genes so you can damned well cut me free. So I am Puppet, I am free, I am humbled, I am a transformed. I'll check into a Presbyterian seminary next week at the latest.

Or not.

FADE TO GAIA AND THE DREARY HALLUCINATION OF A CIVILIZED WORLD.

Being a totally determined puppet of my genes and socio-economic status etc. (You have license to whisper behind your hand, “There but for the grace of Spirit go I, go we.”) I thought I could throw that in with impunity.

5. I have always loved the English language. It can work so well in all kinds of workings. Castellano is elegant and poetic, but always a little stiff. A picaro in Castellano will always be caught out somewhere in his speech. But English keeps the picaro free. And so I worry a little when people appropriate a word like “spiritual” when they don't mean “of the Spirit.” That practice debases the coinage the same as using “postmetaphysical” before metaphysics are dead and reduced to ashes. They become phony words first and then with debased usage, meaningless and pretentious words; words to satirize. If a word has a phony meaning then it can be thrown out of the vocabulary of the context in which it was debased. In its usage by naturalism, “spiritual” is debased. And the fact it is debased, whether through laziness, or dishonesty, or the obsiquious need to catch the favorable eye of the supersticious, says a lot about the the users.

6. Kela wrote: It may be that it is this emphasis on “experience” that Steven means by being a “samadhi freak.”

Sounds right to me. Thanks for the cover.

S

Re: Spirituality without faith

Hi Steven,

Is being a samadhi freak like being an orgasm addict (a la The Buzzcocks' song Orgasm Addict)?

Is being a samadhi freak a bad thing (a la the book You Say I'm a Bitch Like It's a Bad Thing)?

I haven't read anything by Clark for a couple of years, including the article Ed posted, which I barely skimmed. Clark may or may not be a samadhi freak or someone who places an “emphasis on 'experience,'” and he may or may not be a chump, but what I appreciated about him when I discovered his review of Cohen's magazine was that he made some intelligent criticisms about the kinds of ideas that Wilber and Cohen preach and to which many of their followers seem to uncritically subscribe.

As for his radio debate with Cohen, I haven't listened to that for a couple of years at least, but as I recall it was kind of like watching someone sit down to a game of chess and after a few minutes they start saying things like, “I want to buy a hotel on Ventnor Avenue, and I'll give you a knight and two pawns for it.” I enjoyed it because it confirmed what I suspected about Cohen since reading his 1998 discussion in WIE with Stephen Batchelor, which is that he believes in some kind of ontological Absolute or substratum. (That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I appreciate it when self-styled gurus and “pandits” are up front about their ontological commitments and I don't appreciate it when they try to hide their commitments behind smoke screens of jargon.)

~ Jim

Re: Spirituality without faith

A few more thoughts related to your post, Steven.

Does Owen Flanagan debase “spiritual” when he asks if spirituality can be naturalized? As he writes and as Kela says, there are varieties of naturalism. Flanagan speaks about naturalism and spirituality throughout his Templeton lectures. Amazingly they are still online even though MIT Press has published a hardcover book comprised of them.

http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/news/flanagan.html

I don't expect everyone to be familiar with Flanagan as he's not that well known. I've liked him quite a bit ever since I read his 2002 book, The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them. He sometimes calls himself a pagan Buddhist (or something like that).

If determinism is true and it becomes more widely accepted, I don't know how it will affect the humaneness of the criminal justice system.

I think retributive justice should be phased out over time, and I think a deterministic understanding of human nature may be able to help that phasing out process move along. If there's no self as both Buddhists and a number of contemporary analytic philosophers say, there's no one to blame, no internal agent (which is not the same as saying that individuals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions).

The free will question is simply the question of whether our choices are caused or uncaused and thus free. Patricia Churchland asks, “what exactly, in neural terms, is the agent who chooses?” She asks “are there systematic brain-based differences between voluntary and involuntary actions that will support the notion of agent responsibility?” And she asks, “Is direct intervention in the [neuronal] circuitry morally acceptable?”

Regarding the last question she notes that “not taking action is still doing something, and acts of omission can be every bit as consequential as acts of commission.”

“…the movie Clockwork Orange, typically conjured up by the very idea of direct intervention by the criminal justice system, probably had a greater impact on our collective amygdaloid structures than it deserves to have. Certainly, some kinds of direct intervention are morally objectionable. So much is easy. But all kinds? Even pharmacological? Is it possible that some forms of nervous-system intervention might be more humane than lifelong incarceration or death?”

(All quotes from Churchland are from her book Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy, italics in orig.)

Re: Spirituality without faith

Jim,
In regard to your questions:

Is being a samadhi freak like being an orgasm addict (a la The Buzzcocks' song Orgasm Addict)?

I have no idea, I have never heard that song.

Is being a samadhi freak a bad thing (?)

Of course not! It is a highly respectable thing.

I too found Clark to have an intelligent and insightful take on Cohen. And your description of their debate was dead on, though I heard it more as two men talking past each other. What puzzled me was how obvious that was to us, but it seemed to escape all of those involved in the discussion. Maybe it was our distance from the action as opposed to the participants' more intense focus on the small and immediate needs of live radio. It is also what comes out of any meeting between two true believers whose overall beliefs differ to some degree, but are not entirely opposed. I wondered why they did not seek to widen their common ground by taking the discussion into something like the advanced Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty or the scientific method of Goethe. But I think that would compromise too much dogma on the part of both of them.

Does Owen Flanagan debase “spiritual” when he asks if spirituality can be naturalized?

I do not have the time to read the last of Flanagan's Templeton lectures, I scanned it and only got a general idea of his intent. But to me what he talks about is incidental compared to what he does with it first and second how he handles his proper nouns. If he were to convince a spiritual person of the superiority of Naturalism over their point of view by extracting the metaphysical proposition of a supernatural “spirit” from the psychological complex that fosters and supports the “spiritual response” without damaging that particular complex and inserting in its place other naturalist tenants would this result in a naturalized spiritualist or just a naturalist? The result would certainly not be an unmodified Spiritualist. If after that he referred to the transformed person as a spiritualist rather than a naturalist or called their philosophy spiritualism instead of naturalism then he would be debasing the words. I doubt if he would do that.

Regarding the criminal justice system:

I also think the retributive system needs to go, but I am surprised at how few people know the extent to which deterministic principles are at work in the current system.

If there's no self as both Buddhists and a number of contemporary analytic philosophers say, there's no one to blame, no internal agent (which is not the same as saying that individuals shouldn't be held responsible for their actions).

That is not relevant to the system. The system only recognizes the conscious ego and whatever amount of the unconscious that can be revealed as having a determining influence on the commission of a crime. And it is those parts of the person that are blamed and held responsible. The supernatural or lack thereof does not come into consideration.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Steven,

Wish we had your temps today here (re your post down below). Here it is at least 105 and we've had “heat advisories” for over a week now.

Thanks for your replies.

Regarding the last part where I say there's no one to blame and you say that is not relevant to the system, I know it's not relevant to the criminal justice system, but I also know that I didn't make myself clear, perhaps because I haven't thought enough about the matter yet.

I think that it will be difficult if not impossible to phase retributive justice out of the system as long as people have certain notions about selves, notions that are not supported by neuroscience and neurophilosophy. You say the supernatural or lack thereof does not come into consideration and I agree and didn't have anything like that in mind when I wrote what I wrote.

With Clark and Cohen I agree with you that they were talking past one another, but I think that because Cohen was invited to participate in a philosophical debate, it was more a matter of him not understanding how to play the game he agreed to play.

I think the song Orgasm Addict is about a chronic masturbator. (I think the song Turning Japanese is about masturbation as well, though not necessarily chronic masturbation. I'll leave it to the morbidly curious to look up why such a song would be titled “Turning Japanese.”)

Re: Spirituality without faith

Each things vibration is its spirit. All of nature is “spiritual” by the very nature of its vibration- its aliveness. The vibration of the atomic structure is the the beginning of the spirit of a thing.
Each thing's collective spirit is its collective vibration.

One does not need there to be an outside or an inside. Where do I end and the world around me begin? There is no separation.
If you want to argue with yourself go ahead. Keeping separating yourself into pieces and let them go at it. The truth is that you are one with everything.
And when you want to be whole then be whole. Be one with everything around you without needing everything to fill you. You are already full. Enjoy it. Experience it. Live it. By looking for anything to justify yourself you just debase your natural existence.

Re: Spirituality without faith

This is one of those topics that can be spun out in seemingly countless ways.

“Naturalism” can mean different things to different people, interpreted in different ways.

In the Indian tradition, naturalism is known as svabhava-vada. It is usually referred polemically to as “materialism” by the other schools. But there is a curious convergence of the svabhava-vada with trends like the sahajayana and its anarchistic component, the yadrccha-vada. Indeed, one of meanings of “sahaja” is “natural” and “easy.” The original sense of this, as among the sahajiyas was that we can use those aspects of ourselves that come naturally, like sexuality.

There is also the term “tzu jan” in Taoism that is often translated as “the natural.” More later.

Re: Spirituality without faith

So, what I'm getting at is that there might be said to be a coincidence, of sorts, between “naturalism” and what I have called elsewhere “immanentism”: “mountains are mountains”; “form is form”. (I detest the term “descender”.) In immanentism, eg., the sahajayana, there is basically no where we need to “go.” Everything we “need” is already here so to speak.

There is another sense of “naturalism” that can be related to how we basically view the human condition, ie. to the question, Is it basically “good” or “bad?” The Pauline/Augustinian view is clearly that the human condition is essentially “bad”: we are essentially all “sinners,” and burdened by the weight of concupiscence. Similarly, AA believes that we are all incurable alchoholics by birth and by nature. The Indian tradition, with its ascription of samsara, and its “cause” desire (kama) or “thirst” (trshna), also basically views us, and the “world,” as “bad.”

Interestingly, it might be said that the sahajayana views the human condition, and things like sexuality, as essentially OK. This can be said to be a part of the meaning of “naturalism” in the sense that I am using it here. In contrast to Paul and the New Testament, where the world is the rule of Mammon, and the body is basically corrupt, the Old Testament also, more or less, holds that the world is good, as when it says, “and God created the world and said it was good,” though its view of humanity is more ambiguous. The pagan Greek tradition, eg. Plato, held that the world is basically good, and this is a major point of contention between Plotinus and the Gnostics, who held that the world is an oppressive place ruled by some kind of Satanic character, or at least an idiotic Demiurge, though there is also tension in Plato and his idea of the “divided line” as well as his intimations in the Phaedo about the body as some kind of prison-house of the soul. The Chinese tradition also held generally that humanity is by nature good, and it is for this reason that teachings like the “immanent matrix of Buddhahood that is present in all of us” (tathagatagarbha) caught in China but not so much in Indian.

As far as this sense of “naturalism” is concerned, a difficulty arises in that most paths, by their very nature, imply that there is something “wrong” with us — that we are all “sleepwalkers,” or “sinners,” or burdened by “desire” and “bad karma,” or “out of synch with the Logos,” etc. So even immanentism, it would seem — if we are to view it as a kind, or kinds, of spiritual “path” — will have to imply that there is at least something that needs to be “transcended.” Otherwise, there is no need for a “path” to redemption, and, more importantly, gurus and therapists will be out of business — unless we want to dump the idea of redemption as well, and turn the path into some kind of anarchic celebratory Carnival, such as where we play our fiddles and watch nubile young women dance jigs in their bare feet (while Rome, or Wall Street, burns).

Re: Spirituality without faith

I don't see why naturalism, devoid of God or even transcendence, should of necessity degenerate into Bacchanalian revelry. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, on occasion.) As I've suggested above integrating our primordial inheritance within a postmetaphysical, rational (formal and post) frame leads to very real, progressive advances in society. Hence the association with secular humanism committed to political action geared toward pragmatic alleviation of human suffering and promotion of human liberation.

Re: Spirituality without faith

No, of course it needn't degenerating in that manner, though it can. What I'm getting at is the teaching that the “problem” can be in its own way, a problem (this was part of Da's teaching, if I remember; it is also part of the teaching of Ashtvavakra, which may be where he got it) has a curious “logic” of its own. The thing is that if we push this teaching, and immanentism, to its logical limit, the idea of a “path” disappears. I'm merely cataloguing different meanings and their implications in terms of “paths.”

Re: Spirituality without faith

There's an old maxim in financial philosophy that says, “spending is easy, saving is hard”.

Now these may be “logical” opposites but not necessarily so in real life.

Spending is fun, saving no fun.

In modern America this gets all messed up because the Chinese are doing the saving for us. When they buy gobs on US Treasury Bonds, what does one do with all that money? Well, we know what happened there.  And now the Chinese are stuck in an inter-related relationship with the US that they would like out of but are stuck like tar-baby. At least for now.

Dis-order is easy, order is difficult, like all idealists find out when they take over of the reigns of power.

Which is why Cicero had the lean to Stoicism although he might have believed something different.  The questions was, “how to we bring order to ancient Rome”? Do your own thing didn't cut it.

How do you control the masses when they would rather play than work? Or our teenagers for that matter. Nothing to do with good or bad really but with how things are.

Desire is a powerful force. And as they used to say in this case, the determined rationalist (philosopher) can become a dangerous pest.  

Stepping on the gas is different than putting on the brakes.

If we don't see the difference we can end up with chaos. No fun either. ;-).

Gaddy ;-)















   


  

Re: Spirituality without faith

Dear kelamuni, I really liked your discussion of “immanentism”. Whether it is the direction the overall discussion here is taking our minds, or synchronicity, or mere coincidence, last night I woke up with a great appreciation of the difference of thinking with an “unfolding” model/frame (close to immanentism?) as opposed to our cause/effect model of reality which seems to fit a more object-based and material-based and physical view of “reality”. 

I saw how time is linked to causing(the effect objects have on other objects and on reality in general) and how space is linked to physical being, which I called “status”(not the heirarchial sense, but to be aware of the self-contained condition - the state of the thing, its status as an object), and I saw “unfolding” as not being particularly subject to space and time, nor to cause and effect). When I went to write today in the book I am working on, the “unfolding” view worked its way into the mind of one of my characters who had just heard (and was still intellectually processing) a lecture about a concept called “gift shift” and its implications. Here is the excerpt (from The Marketing of Virtue). This section is “hot off the presses, and seems to be guided by, and in synch with, some of what you differentiate above. Correct me if I am wrong, or indicate why I might have sensed such resonance or congruence. 
Excerpt:

Gift Lecture
    Jesse attended the Wednesday night midweek thought lecture series presentation last night. Since hearing Jan and Jeffery's new ideas about the use of the gift matrix and about new observations which the instrument had led them to, he could not stop thinking about it. Jan and Jeffery's thought about gifthood had evolved from a fairly static concept of each person having a natural gift, which was more or less a consistent trait, to the idea that gifts are more dynamic than that, and need to be looked at in relation to any given environmental context. The main point they made was that they had noticed how a person may step up to the plate and offer whatever gift they have in their repitoir (even if it is not their primary gift over the long run).     For example, if a person who is a gifted artist happens to be on a committee for preparing a budget, and the committee notices that the individual also happens to organize data and keep records well, the tertiary gift of data keeping may be valued much more than the same individual's strong suite of art. Outside of the committee, somewhere in the larger population, there may be an individual who is much better at data keeping, but, for whatever reason, they were not accessible. The committee must choose from the gifts available to it.     Of the 7 committee members, the natural artist, happens to be the best at data keeping. Out of a spirit of cooperation, the artist may step out of his or her comfort zone and offer what is needed most by the group, even though it is not a primary gift. Jan and Jeffery called this phenomena “gift shift”. Unlike “mission shift” (or is it “mission drift”?) which suggests a failing, gift shift is generally a plus for groups of people. It becomes a natural part of good cooperation. If the group waited for the perfectly gifted individual for each needed function/role, it may never get the job done.     The group mind senses both the fact that it needs to work with the human resources it has, and senses and implements (sometimes so automatically that no one is aware of the process) a way to do so. The group uses a kind of gift relativity. The  wisdom of gift shift can be seen in the saying “A one-eyed man in the land of the blind is king”. Seeing would not be the man's main gift, as he only has one eye with which to see. But in the land of the blind, that partial gift becomes much more significant.    The only problem with gift shift is when the relative gifts are used so much that the primary, or absolute, gift(s) are neglected over time, and the individual begins to sense an existential void from the lack of fit. In the one-eyed man example above, the man may neglect his gift of music, because he is so busy seeing for the blind. A group may, in effect, become too dependent on person's lesser gifts, inadvertently depriving the individual of a better gift/niche fit, and also depriving the group of the very best “man for the job” at hand. Over the long haul, the group may be better off to let a person go from the assignment and find persons who are even better at the particular function/role, analogous to finding a two-eyed man for king.     While Allsberg's sight is, in fact, on the long haul (on sustainable optimal matches), if it is to move forward it must use temporary arrangements between gifts and niches. At times a gifted mathematician may be needed to clean the toilets! But its goal is to shift back to the primary, sustainable, or even “perfect”, matches of person to job. Gift shift allows for a workable compromise between the needs of the group and the need of the individual to find his or her optimal “place in this world” (lyric from Songwitter/Singer Michael W. Smith).      Based on this recognition of gift relativity, and the need for gift shift, Jan and Jeffery identified two gift-to-niche assignment errors: Type 1 error = letting a person be used in a secondary gift area too long, when a better match for both the individual and the group could have been made, and Type 2 error = waiting too long for the perfect match, not being flexible enough with gift-to-niche matches to be sufficiently productive.    Jan and Jeffery went on to theorize an even deeper implication of gift shift. They suggested that the temporary imperfections in gift-to-niche matches actually may help the individual more clearly understand his or her optimal “fit”. After wearing roles which fit somewhat, but imperfectly, the contrast of a really good fit will stand out. The person will more deeply appreciate the better fit, than if it had been provided all along. A spoiled musical maestro who never had to, say, fail at playing golf, may take for granted his or her own giftedness in the area of music. A horrible game or two of golf could make them value their musical ability all that much more, than if no failures were available to contrast with the successes of music.     Gift shift also allows the maestro to better appreciate the gifted golfer, thus increasing empathy, by seeing how much better someone is in another area than  they, and/or seeing how much harder the alternate task is than they first though, in a manner similar to the role reversal techniques sometimes used in relationship therapies.    Trying different roles/functions on for size creates what Jan and Jeffery called “alignment reference pictures”, or “ARP”s. In fact, ARPs had become a planned part of the educational curriculum, allowing both children and adults to see their strengths in relation to relative weaknesses, thus allowing them to better appreciate their own strengths, as well as to better appreciate the gifts of others. Gift appreciation was a major mission of the educational program at Allsberg. Jan was fond of saying “If gift appreciation happens in the classroom, it is more likely to happen on the job and on the street.”    Jeffery went even one step further with the implications of gift shift. He suggested that perhaps all human roles effect an unavoidable gift shift. There are few perfect relationship matches. The gifts and the needs and the views of the partner are bound to pull the individual out of the comfort zone of what he or she does best. In this sense, relationships cause a kind of brokeness in authentic self-hood.    But, Jeffery went on to explain, it is not necessarily a bad sort of brokeness. The soil needs to be broken up if it is to grow good things. Likewise the gifts of the individual need to be jolted by imperfections in fit, in order to help bring in the necessary new elements which a gift might not otherwise emphasize enough. This sort of inevitable “brokeness” may force the individual to get outside of themselves and then re-enter with things which end up helping rather than harming their authenticity as an individual.  Like Jan, Jeffery had a fond saying. His was this: “Theme needs variation in order be to be a true theme, and self needs the inconvenient truth of an other”.     Jesse was able to apply these insights to his own marriage and family relationships. Now he better understood how the roles and responsibilities of family life contributed, rather than took away, from his primary gift areas. He had opted for a job as counselor, rather than as an artist, because this provided better for his family. He felt that the counseling had been his art, although he sometimes felt the imperfection of the fit. He had even been tempted at times to resent his family for taking him away from a potentially successful art career.    But now he had a way of understanding how the variations of being a loving family man and a caring counselor, could actually help him toward becoming a gifted artist, if he allowed such variations to enter the theme of art. He had, in his own way, already been an artist - an artist of family life, and of life in general. Had he merely perfected his painting, he might have had great success in the art world (although, no matter how gifted he was, he could have been just as likely to be a starving artist), but would have been retarded at applying his art skills to relationships. He would have learned to paint beautiful landscapes, but never the family portrait.     As it turned out, in this life as it was, gift shift may have actually improved Jesse's art skill, by allowing him to apply it in a broader and more meaningful way. And now, should he decide to devote more time to actual painting, he will have much more depth and feeling and sense of realness to his artwork. Having gotten a feel for art beyond paint and canvas may turn out to make his paintings come “alive”. The spectator of his works are more likely to sense that this artist has “paid his dues”,  and that his paintings are “relevant” to the human condition.    Jesse woke up that same night thinking about a metaphysical model. He had a sketchy mind-picture of a ripple in the water, which he was simultaneously associating with the concepts of a field (the water) and a disturbance of the field (the ripple). Two major insights hit him in that fleeting moment.     First, the energy-like, chemical-like, realm did not work in the same way as the physical realm's time (where chains of causality flow) and space (where a definite object can be “located”, or have its “status” determined). The water and ripple image seemed to be part of a different sort of reasoning than that which empirical observations of material objects would condition a person to think. Jesse called this way of thinking “unfolding”. The ripple seemed to unfold from the field or into the field. One would be hard-pressed to say the ripple caused the field, or that the field caused the ripple, but when both co-existed and interacted, more like a fold opening up in the field, an unfolding. The idea that such unfolding was somehow qualitatively different than cause and effect, and that it seemed somewhat independent of, or even transcendent to, physical/material realities, was Jesse's first insight (although it was not necessarily first in order of appearance, as both insights unfolded together at more-or-less the same time).    His second insight was that the ripple - the disturbance of the field - did not merely cause an obstruction, inconvenience, or problem, but offered an opportunity to actually transform the field. Jesse recalled some Integral Life conversations online, about “up creation”. He remembered that the idea came from Ken Wilber's interview of another author, but could not remember the author's name, nor the details of the interview. However, he did remember the gist of the idea, and recalled discussing it in more than one IL blogs.     The main idea was that a thing created could add quality, could positively contribute to, the creator. In Jesse's mind, the created was more-or-less analogous to a disturbance in the creator's field. He recalled the many inconveniences of his own physical creations, his children. And yet those inconveniences had added so much to his life. Likewise, God has a chance to be loved by God's creations, and a chance to experience in a specific way, as a beautiful tree in the Creator's “forest”/field, or as the wonderful taste of peanut butter to the spirit (energy field?) Joe Black in the movie by that name.    To Jesse, up creation was a version of the disturbance in the field which transformed the field in a way that makes a higher integration, or quality, in the field itself. This notion that the disturbance, or ripple, in the field helps it unfold more potential quality, like a portal from another dimension, was the second insight with which he awoke. Jesse wrote down as much of the insights as he could, and then went back to sleep. He had learned the hard way not to assume you will remember the insights. But he had also learned that you could make brief notes to act as cues, and that you didn't have to lose a half night's sleep over such brilliant flashes.  

Re: Spirituality without faith

Owen Flanagan has a paper titled The Varieties of Naturalism in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. There are a few random of pages of it here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=eyrikGwJfCsC&pg=PA430&lpg=PA430&dq=owen+flanagan+naturalism&source=bl&ots=qk4S1_5h7C&sig=w-g5i8FeU6Qozxx01cW-f_ept5c&hl=en&ei=BNRCSofEA5Sntgfu3PCaCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6

Re: Spirituality without faith

Hi Jim,

I read most of the Flanagan piece and found it interesting. I think he raises some good points concerning the pragmatists/neo-positivists. I think he's correct that Putnam, Sellars, and the early Wittgenstein are re-articulating points made by Kant against Hume. I tend to side with this latter camp vis a vis the question of norms, though I get more than a little antsy when the idea of a “norm” is transposed into the ethical domain.

For example, Neo-cons, or to be more exact, Strausians, think that there are such things as “natural laws” with respect to ethics and politics, and they model these on the idea of the “laws of nature” ala Newton. That idea, that there are “natural laws” of ethics and politics, is a thoroughly metaphysical conception, IMO. In any case, that's the conservative extreme, and certainly, it would seem, it is something we would want to avoid.

I'm of two minds on the issues he raises. They're tough ones he's dealing with, much more difficult that the issues of theism or “supernaturalism.”

That's a good link. Thanks.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I'm not sure if Flanagan refers explicitly to the idea, but it seems to me that some form of Occam's razor is implied by some forms of “naturalism.” Perhaps #2. could be modified to say, given the choice between two theories, the simpler one is preferable if its explanatory power is adequate. This idea appears to function as a premise in Dawkins writings, and it makes sense to me: the “God idea” does not improve upon any theory or explanation concerning the “ultimate causes” of why things are the way they are, or that they are in the first place; it clearly only makes them worse.

I am of two minds about the point concerning the “glibness” of “naturalism” that Flanagan refers to. As some have pointed out, the term “reductionism” is a loaded term; to use it implies that there is something wrong with it, as if to say, “you are taking something complex and explaining it away” (as the bitch illustration illustrates). On the other hand, in a certain sense, I agree with those that say that the title of Dennet's book Consciousness Explained is rather presumptuous, unless he's being ironic or provocative, which may very well be the case. But on the other hand, yet again, as far as the charge of “glibness” is concerned, I can't help but feel that there is an implied, unstated charge being made by some who make use to the glib charge, to wit: “You are taking something profound — my experience of Infinite Consciouness, which is immensely meaningful to me  — and attempting to explain it away. How dare you!” Well, boo hoo. I get the same sense from those who attempt to defend theism (or psychic phenomena, or whatever) from what begins as an “agnostic,” and seemingly “humble,” stance: “Well, we really don't know if God created the world or not, so we shouldn't dismiss such things outright, should we; we need to be open to the possibility of such things; otherwise, we're just being glib!” In such a case, I can't help but feel that, 1. it is but a very short step from here to, “Therefore God did create the world,” or, “therefore, telepathy really does exist”; and 2. that (1.) is the real position that is being defended here, even though it is not explicitly stated. 

It is one thing to take the stance of what I would call “philosophical mysticism” (which I am favorable toward) and say that the world, or existence in general, is probably, ultimately indescribable in rigorous philosophical and scientific terms —- that our rational and discursive capacity is ultimately not up to the task — and quite another to, on the basis of this, open the floodgates to all manner of irrationality and say, “and because of this, UFO's, yeti, precognition, alien abductions, spontaneous human combustion, the loch ness monster, the hundredth monkey, action at a distance, telekenesis, vampires, etc. etc., all exist, or are at least possible, because you need to keep you mind open, man; don't be so glib!“  If that's the choice, then I guess I'd rather be glib than flakey. But that's not the choice, because that's just a false dichotomy.

Re: Spirituality without faith

From “Dewey, dualism and naturalism” by Thomas Alexander (Chapter 17 in A Companion to Pragmatism, 2005):

Pragmatism, especially John Dewey's version, has often been well characterized by its opposition to “dualism.” It has been more problematically linked to the position of “naturalism,” a term of varying meaning. By examining how the critique of dualisms constitutes a pervasive theme in Dewey's thought, one can gain better insight into his general position, which he termed “cultural naturalism” (LW 12:28), and its relation to other forms of naturalism. Two common mistakes should be avoided: one dismisses Dewey's position as some version of “Hegelian idealism,” the other dismisses it as a reductive naturalism that has no genuine place for “higher values.” Specifically, Dewey maintains that nature is a creative or emergent process, and he regards various metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological distinctions as functional relationships rather than as oppositional dichotomies of the sort that have led to the “dualisms” prevailing in philosophy. Thus one of the basic reasons for Dewey's importance lies in the way he addresses the heritage of dualism.

Re: Spirituality without faith

From “Naturalism and pragmatism”:   

“This point of view [pragmatism] is also firmly opposed to foundationalism in epistemology…. The background assumption for its interpretation of human beings is evolutionary biology, which is why pragmatism is so often seen hand in hand with one or another form of naturalism.” 

Here’s how Victor Anderson brings transcendence into the pragmatic naturalism of Pierce, James, Dewey and Mead. From his book Pragmatic Theology (SUNY Press, 1998): 

“The metaphysics of pragmatic naturalist was defined between the push and pull of nature’s determination (finitude) and the transforming potentiality of the world to bring creative change and fulfillment to human ends and goods (transcendence). The pragmatists also tended to be optimistic about the advancement of secular humanism in progressive liberal politics. Therefore their philosophy not only was responsive to the scientific impulses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is also was participatory in the moral justification of American democracy” (3).

Hence we see that it starts to go “post”metaphysical in that it doesn't accept foundationalism, i.e., an indisputable given at root of all knowledge or being. Yet it is not “flat” in that it sees progress and “quasi”transcendence through evolutionary biology by way of forming its own perspective on the nature of reality, aka metaphysics. Yet it's an open metaphysics, an (inter)enactive model-interpretation, another characteristic of “post”metaphysics. It doesn't eliminate metaphysics but includes and transcends it leaving the God/Absolute behind. In many ways this perspective is not only a forerunner of, but a competitor with, the current integral model of Wilber & company.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I am again reminded of the Mead thread (there's a LOT of good stuff in there), from which I pulled the following:

The essence of Mead's so-called “social behaviorism” is his view that mind is an emergent out of the interaction of organic individuals in a social matrix. Mind is not a substance located in some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of events that takes place within the human physiological structure. Mead therefore rejects the traditional view of the mind as a substance separate from the body as well as the behavioristic attempt to account for mind solely in terms of physiology or neurology. Mead agrees with the behaviorists that we can explain mind behaviorally if we deny its existence as a substantial entity and view it instead as a natural function of human organisms. But it is neither possible nor desirable to deny the existence of mind altogether. The physiological organism is a necessary but not sufficient condition of mental behavior (Mind, Self and Society 139). Without the peculiar character of the human central nervous system, internalization by the individual of the process of significant communication would not be possible; but without the social process of conversational behavior, there would be no significant symbols for the individual to internalize. 

Mead's concept of sociality, as we have seen, implies a vision of reality as situational, or perspectival. A perspective is “the world in its relationship to the individual and the individual in his relationship to the world” (The Philosophy of the Act 115). A perspective, then, is a situation in which a percipient event (or individual) exists with reference to a consentient set (or environment) and in which a consentient set exists with reference to a percipient event. There are, obviously, many such situations (or perspectives). These are not, in Mead's view, imperfect representations of “an absolute reality” that transcends all particular situations. On the contrary, “these situations are the reality” which is the world (The Philosophy of the Act 215). 

The relation between organism and environment is, in a word, interactive. The perceptual object arises within this interactive matrix and is “determined by its reference to some percipient event, or individual, in a consentient set” (The Philosophy of the Act 166). 

Mead thus abandons, on the basis of his interpretation of relativity theory, the object of Newtonian physics. But in addition to denying the concrete existence of independent objects, he also denies the existence of the independent psyche. There is nothing subjective about perceptual experience. If objects exist with reference to the perceiving individual, it is also true that the perceiving individual exists with reference to objects. 

Re: Spirituality without faith

“But in addition to denying the concrete existence of independent objects, he also denies the existence of the independent psyche. There is nothing subjective about perceptual experience. If objects exist with reference to the perceiving individual, it is also true that the perceiving individual exists with reference to objects. ”

Yes, and an interactive social matrix at that. Yesterday, Bruce posted this:
[ My 7-year-old son's reflections yesterday:

“Dad, it would be great if everyone was family, right? (A moment later) I mean, everyone on earth should be relatives. (A moment later) No, EVERY LIVING CREATURE should be family, right?… ]

Children know this intuitively and somehow we adults got corrupted in 'growing up'.

Well, here's a stab that we are a family…

Re: Spirituality without faith

Both subject and object are part of the unfolding? To me, the “interaction” you mention between the two would also automatically be a sort of mating from which new creations or differentiations are formed. Thus, the interacting is part of a whole process of unfolding of potential into actuality and beyond. 
  Last night I woke up with this strange model. Directly below is a static view of “unfolding”, or of “self-as-flare”: 

(go to bottom of the list and work up)

(etc.)
new object
new project
new subject (or transformed subject)
straject (mix of stratosphere and object, realm of transcendence/creation)
object
project (as in “projection”)
subject

Start here and go up: 

The above would best be diagrammed in a spiral. I have not read “spiral dynamics”, but wonder if I stumbled on a similar model here, as a spiral would seem to best fit what I “saw” in my mind. 

To me, “unfolding” is more of an energy-like, or field effect-like way of thinking that is not very Newtonian or object-based.

The dynamic view of my insights (upon awakening in middle of night) is a ripple effect in a field of energy. The disturbance of the field has the real potential to transform the field, rather than merely exist as a “pain in the ass” to the field (to the homeostasis or state of equilibrium). I recently actually “saw” an opening in space to another dimension. This could have been my imagination, as it was related to thinking about a friend who had recently died, and whom I thought of as being on the “other side”. But this vision, whether “real” or imagined (or a bit of both?) helped inspire the insights I woke up with re “unfolding”, and how that might “work”. Also, our discussions here greatly contributed, in a peripheral way. The mind soaks up all sorts of stuff to enact new “realities” or models. 

Darrell

Re: Spirituality without faith

And to trust the mind to unfold, isn't that a form of “faith”? True faith, not “faith” as in adhering to certain religious dogma, but gut-level faith in which the God-made (or God-making, co-creating) mind is allowed to do its thing, without “pushing the river”, or blocking it with fearful thoughts? To have faith in the individual and collective mind to grow and adapt in the way it senses to grow and adapt - isn't that a lot of faith? Can there be spirituality without that sort of faith? 
    Is this a matter of semantics, as regards “faith”?  Probably so. 

Darrell 

Re: Spirituality without faith

No disagreement on any of your posts Darrell. BTW, I've noticed your posts refer to others' older posts. Most of the posts you are referring to strike me as common knowledge in present time.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Yet it's an open metaphysics, an (inter)enactive model-interpretation, another characteristic of “post”metaphysics. It doesn't eliminate metaphysics but includes and transcends it leaving the God/Absolute behind. In many ways this perspective is not only a forerunner of, but a competitor with, the current integral model of Wilber & company.

Yes Edward, and competition is healthy too.

Competition may give incentives for self-improvement. For example, if two watchmakers are competing for business, they will hopefully improve their products and service to increase sales. If one watchmaker is more responsive to the needs of consumers, this watchmaker will flourish. If birds compete for a limited water supply during a drought, the more suited birds will survive to reproduce and improve the population. ~ Wikipedia

Re: Spirituality without faith

In ways large and small, from the efforts of Iranian protesters and our 2020 Climate Leadership Initiative to the community forming around Integral Spiritual Experience, to the tools, perspectives and coaching that can help you live a more Integral Life yourself, please join us as we evolve.  I believe that despite the challenges we face as a species we have the tools, the knowledge and the determination to rise to the unique calling that is being placed on this generation, and I believe that an Integral Life is an important calling of evolution as it continues to break out all over the world.  It is more important than ever for all of us, right now, to not give in to easy cynicism but to lead in whatever way we are uniquely called to do so. 

And when we do, it is recognizable… 

The above is an excerpt from Robb Smith that was just posted.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Nothing like a fresh perspective that the morning brings after a good nights rest.

I re-read Robb's post and noted that he is quite proud of his 'integral' coaches. As for myself, my best friends are located here and they function as coaches for me. And like Robb, I am proud of them too.

So, I'm going to create a flash presentation later today to express my pride in them. But before I do that, I need to get more resumes submitted to Dice.com because as Dora just told me, the end-of-the-month is here and we're broke.

Cheers,
Mark

P.S. I've updated the FCKeditor tutorial, but it needs one more slide for adding movies from remote websites. I'll do this prior to the new presentation.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Just completed the add'l slide for adding movies from remote websites to the FCKeditor tutorial.

Re: Spirituality without faith

I found this passage interesting and relevant (although I disliked the hackneyed allusion to koans):

Unable not to ask questions about ultimate purpose and meaning, but rebuffed by the logic which shows such questions unanswerable, we are caught in a cosmic perplexity, a state of profound existential astonishment. The realization that existence inevitably outruns our attempts to assign meaning and purpose can have the impact of a true revelation…

This seems to be an example of the curious “coincidence” that various forms of “naturalism” can take. It's related to the idea that wonder” and “awe” can still have a place in a naturalistic system, something that Hadot traces back to Epicureanism. The idea that is no “ultimate meaning” and that we ought to just give up thinking that there is is related to the anarchism of the yadrchha-vada, which holds that there is no “ultimate cause” of the universe, and hence no ultimate purpose, an idea that is related to “choicelessness,” spontaneity, and “will-lessness” and lack on intent: the “crooked path” of Ashtavakra and Chuang Tzu. Curiously yet again, absolute determinism amounts to the same thing, since there is no room for free will and choice in an absolutely deterministic system, such as that of the Ajivikas.

Re: Spirituality without faith

Naturalism.org has an article called “A brief history of scientific naturalism” by Ignacio Prado. In it he traces the ancient Greek lineage as follows: Thales, Protagorus, Socrates, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius. Jumping ahead to the modern era we have Dewey and later Quine and Sellars. We come full circle on integralism and a cornerstone of its postmetaphysical critique, as Sellars is the one that coined the phrase, and elaborated upon the notion of, the “myth of the given.”

Re: Spirituality without faith

Here are some excepts from an article at Naturalism.org called “No hindrance” about meditation. It examines the myth of the given within the meditative experience. It also shows a relation to Wilber’s broad empiricism that can be applied to any domain, and how 1st person meditation and 3rd person naturalism arrive at the same lack of inherent self existence:

The naturalist’s commitment to the intersubjective empiricism exemplified by science means that one’s personal experience, in particular experience arising during meditative practice, doesn’t count as a direct, accurate perception of reality. Conscious experience is a brain-based phenomenon that helps organisms like us negotiate the world, so it’s a highly selective representation of things, not an unbiased reflection of what’s outside the head. Should the meditator experience, for instance, the dissolution of the sense of a separate, observing ego, this isn’t direct perception of a fundamental feature of reality – its emptiness or suchness – rather it’s an experience with the content, among other things, that no fundamentally separate being is having this experience.

The feeling of unity and connection the experience of egolessness might bring mirrors what science shows to be the case about the human person: that we are in all respects causally enmeshed in the world, historically and in the present moment. But the subjective feeling of unity isn’t direct confirmation of the objective scientific proposition about human embeddedness in nature. To suppose that meditation is an unmediated window on reality is, from a naturalistic perspective, a delusion, since reliable knowledge is always gained using intersubjective evidence and observation. One’s personal psychological states, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily count as evidence of things beyond themselves, even if they convey intense conviction and certainty, as is sometimes the case in meditation. We should therefore be skeptical about the veridicality of experience uncorroborated by evidence assessed within a community of inquiry.

That said, the meditator might learn a lot about her experience, about its structure and how it changes over the course of the meditation session. She can truthfully testify to the difficulty of staying in the present, the wandering of attention, the uncontrollable volubility of thought, the tenacity of the observer-observed duality, and the quality of experience when thinking slows down and, sometimes, stops. So when meditating we become empiricists in a restricted but real sense, that is, with respect to our own psychological processes in a controlled setting. In this capacity, we might discover that some commonsense assumptions about subjectivity need revision: who’s the me “in here” that’s trying to non-judgmentally observe things, anyway? And of course we might have experiences that are intrinsically interesting and rewarding in their own right, even if they don’t count as accurate representations of the world outside our heads.

The naturalistic hypothesis that it’s the brain that constructs the sense of self, now being explored by neuroscientists and neuro-philosophers worldwide, is entirely consistent with what meditation might reveal. Since experience seems a function (somehow – explaining consciousness is just getting underway) of what the brain and body do, the very sense of being a subject which purportedly “has” experience and “to whom” things happen is itself simply another neurally-instantiated aspect of subjectivity, albeit psychologically fundamental. What the brain constructs can perhaps be temporarily deconstructed, given the right conditions and sufficient practice. Thus the first-person meditative experience of the dropping away of ego, should it occur, is to experience what third-person science shows to be the dependent arising, and non-arising, of the phenomenal self. In this way, the scientific-physicalist and meditative-experiential perspectives, both empirical in different senses, end up with the same conclusion: the very core of self – the experienced locus of all our concern and striving – is a mutable, perishable, dependent phenomenon, just as the Buddha taught.

Re: Spirituality without faith

“Thus the first-person meditative experience of the dropping away of ego, should it occur, is to experience what third-person science shows to be the dependent arising, and non-arising, of the phenomenal self. In this way, the scientific-physicalist and meditative-experiential perspectives, both empirical in different senses, end up with the same conclusion: the very core of self – the experienced locus of all our concern and striving – is a mutable, perishable, dependent phenomenon, just as the Buddha taught.”

The final passage that I quote above seems rather naive to me. And he article itself sounds somewhat problematic is some ways. What if my “meditation” “reveals” some sort of true Self beyond the “dropping away of ego?”

——–

On another note, I'm beginning to wonder what exactly it is that an enactive approach brings to the practice of a tradition. As someone who is only interested in describing such traditions, the implications of such an approach are clear. But what about the pracitioner, the one who is committed to a particular tradition?  It seems to me that it will primarily affect the practitioner's self-understanding as he or she practices. In other words, it gives the practitioner an angle to interpret what it is that he or she is doing, and what it is that is “going on” in such things as meditation.  So, for example, the practitioner will be less likely to think that they have “directly apprehended” the nature of reality, but rather that they have apprehended something that has been mediated by their particular tradition. Now, what if the teaching of that tradition is at odds with a “post-metaphysical” framework? It would seem that either some degree of disingenuousness would be required — “well, I know that this metaphysics is BS, but I'll continue to practice anyway” — or some sort of reformulation of the teaching will be required. This latter scenario seems to be what is going on with these “new” forms of Buddhism, such as “pragmatic Buddhism.”