Charles Taylor on "objectification"

[milestonedd]

No, its the phenomenolgical epoche hitherto antithesis metaphysical breech consciousness into the subjectivity to the self for itself laid into objective reality into the transcendental ego--id Da Sein being empirical causality ontological form absolute.

[leezus83]

brilliant, this ownes anything written by Dorkins. math is the new myth.

[9macrina9]

It is in the mind to be able to do both....just do both in a sacred way....these abilities aren't mutually exclusive; together they comprise a complementary figure upon sacred ground.This way science must admit ethics and religious systems cease hostility towards science. Nothing is disengaged. It is distortion to "believe" one is caught in a dichotomy. This is a falsified perception, in my humble opinion:-)

[0ThouArtThat0]

I humbly agree! Science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive.

[2bsirius]

As usual your videos are both intense and interesting. I studied this as a graduate student. Yes, I think the shift from idealism to scientific objectification cost Western culture a great deal. BUT idealism had taken culture to some very unenlightened places. We need to revise our world views but not make the same mistakes which called the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment into existence. I'm going to look for the Taylor essay. Excellent video!!!

[2bsirius]

Just a quick follow up. You may have said this already, Matt, but Taylor is a Catholic thinker who won the Templeton price for 2007. Just thought that that was worth knowing. A Guardian review says, "Taylor's...book is his charge [that] cracks in Christianity provided places where secularism's weeks flourished...Taylor is too shrill in insisting on secularism's proported impoverishment of sensibility."

[2bsirius]

Oop, meant to type, "Taylors book is his charge that cracks in Christianity provided places here secularism's WEEDS flourished....I really should take a typing course!

[0ThouArtThat0]

It is worth knowing, yes. But he is quite a moderate Catholic. He makes many mentions of Buddhism in his book as another example of a spiritual outlook which calls many of secularity's assumptions into question (most notably what Taylor calls the "immanent frame"). He also deals with other forms of contemporary spirituality (Deep Ecology for one), and I got the impression from his book not so much that Catholicism is the answer but that secularism is a failed project.

[Ignare]

In the other hand, mecanical models are predicting more efficiently the future, even the behavior of human or collectivity. The simple exemple of sleeping is sufficient to support the claim of the incompleteness of folk-psychology or "thick" description. So it's probable that naturalism is driven by ethical or emotive consideration, but these considerations are cause by the mecanism of my neural system.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I think we ought to continue pursuing both empirical and hermeneutic descriptions of reality for the simple reason that it remains impossible to distinguish which plays the causal role, consciousness or matter. Causality, after all, is a hypothesis made because of the subjective way in which the human being experiences time (physics posits no reason why time must always travel in one direction).

[Ignare]

And that's sad (yes, science is also driven by emotion) since natural explanations can co-exist with "thick" descriptions in the framework of evolutionnary psychology. In fact, my meaningfull experience is cause by uncouscious causal mecanism that have evolve over time, and none of these two are more fundamental then the other.

[Ignare]

I agree that naturalism can be motivate by ethical motive. But this ethical sense of dignity and control that drive my naturalist tendancy, can probably also be induce by an electric stimulation on my neurons, so why not try to understand how this meaningfull ethical drive I experience is cause by my neuro-physiology ? Limiting ourselve to a "thick" or hermeneutic description of human experience means missing what are the causes underlying this meaningful experience.

[0ThouArtThat0]

I have no problem CORRELATING brain states with states of consciousness, but the assumption that the brain state is the only causal level is unwarranted, in my opinion. Contemporary neuroscience has no evidence to support the claim that neural activity causes phenomenal experience; all that we do know is that the two are inextricably related.

[patternsinchaos]

am I studying an objectified ideological consciousness? :-)