solipsism, epistemology, materialism, and spirituality

I would like to explore these specific domains, epistemology, materialism, and spirituality, seeing what insight each frame gives us on what we would like to believe we know, or what we cannot avoid admitting we know while still being honest.

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Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• philosophy
• relativistic
• skepticism
• solipsism
• materialism
• spirituality
• epistemology

[pyrrho314]

In this is it much more important to me to explain how to find an answer, than the answer I found. I am intentionally slow to mention what I found, and focus primarilly on how I looked for it. However, I do think you will find the same thing, that significant spiritual experiences have this in common, and even the nebulous word "enlightenment" can be defined this way (feeling of identity with greater spheres), though as a result enlightenment is not always automatically "good".

[pyrrho314]

(cont 3)

I have done this for myself and found that spirituality relates to the feeling of identity as it relates to larger and larger systems of which I am a part. The ex periences I have allowed to qualify for "Spirituality A" are those that have has some aspect that led to a feeling of connection with some great set, animal life, life in general, my planet, all things I can say "I" am a part of, and thus, they are a "greater sense of I".

[pyrrho314]

(cont) ... e.g. "perhaps 'seeing Twilight'" shouldn't count as a spiritual experience in the first place, perhaps the incoherence is trying to take it into account, and it can't be, it doesn't really fit. If you are sure it was "spiritual-for-me"... maybe you just split the sets into "spiritual A" and "spiritual B", then, try to create analytic descriptions and identify patterns in A and B separately. You can see if you derived common concepts later and perhaps reuinite the sets.

[pyrrho314]

@PostITnoteGUY : but this is simple analytics, that is, finding out if there is an intelligible definition.

(1) create a set of things, this is the extension, in this case, "spiritual experiences"

(2) try to make definitions that can describe that set. Try to get characteristic patterns... if all patterns are incoherent, that is, end up self contradictory or impossible, you have a problem.

(3) address the problem by using proposed principles to alter the original set of experiences...

[pyrrho314]

@PostITnoteGUY : so what is the need that spirituality indicates? The way to find that out is to compile the experiences we called "spiritual".

The reason will be something mundane like the need for food, I'll guess.

[VSCOMO]

@HumanTruth0000 i dig that comment!

[pyrrho314]

@PostITnoteGUY : I believe it's like "what does hunger mean"... we start with a feeling, study the behavior it drives, and get an idea that we are not the source of all this information and name the source "externality".

[HumanTruth0000]

Interesting points. I like the green "Predator" environment also.

[pyrrho314]

I agree... that is the big problem in objective models of the material, there is no hint, not the faintest, as to what consciousness is. In the epistemological frame, there is, we experience it, it is a primary component, it is axiomatic... yet all the more direly missing an explanation (it's just that it's a component of perception in the most fundamental epistemology), which has us knowing it exists but not really what it is. Whereas in materialism we don't eve know it exists.

[pyrrho314]

me too, in fact, I try to have all these frames subject to the strictures of the others... my materialism has an epistemological basis, my spirituality has a materilialistic explanation, the spirituality has a place in the epistemology and materialism, and so on.