Are those who don't honor logic deceitful egomaniacs?

[Asolsutsesvyl]

Ever since my teens, I've been torn between spiritual and skeptical thought, the main (or at least early main) reason for liking skeptical thought being the inconsistency and often dishonesty in the popular "alternative" stuff. The skeptics have the basic honesty and decency to at least try to make things add up, while "alternative" people very often lack that, indeed the majority of alternative "experts" seem to.

Well, "honesty and decency" is a rather moralizing way of putting it, and that's why I'm torn about the way I'm torn, the moralizing flavor of which has grown over the years, especially after waking up from having been sucked into a cult for a period of years.

I'm going to draw a simple and firm line between personal mysticism and the advancing of claims about stuff in which others and their lives are concerned. "Alternative" people tend to sell ideas above other things, but in doing it, they are often very dishonest in the sales-pitches. Here, there's however a distinction to be made between basic human errors which people deal with in various ways, including cognitive biases which all have, on the one hand, and choices people make related to that, in how to relate to the world and everything beyond the self, on the other hand.

Cognitive biases have been extensively described, and you can search and find plenty about them. For example, many "alternative" explanations rely on the Texas sharpshooter fallacy; more generally, studies have found that people go wrong in judging and deciding in formulaic ways wired into the human brain, automatically filtering information to end up with subjective conclusions sometimes at odds with what's actually there, sometimes merely unsupported by the data. Some think sloppier than others, though, and in large part (no idea exactly how large), effort and caring about accuracy also makes a difference, which however requires a basic willingness for self-questioning. When it really matters, any rigor less than the scientific methodology which "alternative" people often diss is guaranteed to lead to errors time and time again. Regarding that, willful ignorance makes intellectual honesty impossible.

Those who decide that their personal inner authority is greater than logic (including people who decide to believe something external as their "personal truth", when contrary to logic, on their inner whim), are basically placing the ego above all else in the entire creation. Recognition that logic is a greater authority than any and all individuals who exist is key to recognizing something greater than the personal self in terms of truth actually existing, without making it a matter of hierarchical order and authoritarianism. Without that recognition, intellectual maturity is left at the infantile level.

Some people simply prefer to play very fast and loose with claims about facts, despite having the "hardware" to easily be able to do better; it's quicker and easier to BS-think than to actually care about the quality of the thinking, something which always slows people down. People who mainly care about making others agree with things invest their energies into manipulation. I think that mainstream politicians, PR people, marketers, etc., tend to be just as slimy and repulsive in such things as quacks and spiritual charlatans.

Actually, in having a big soft spot for mystics and fringe thinkers who actually care instead of just generating or forwarding deceitful noise at maximum speed, here's a heuristic which may be controversial. Whenever someone "sells" something and there's a systematic pattern of dodging inconsistencies, or using impression management tactics to make people ignore that the inconsistencies are there, then the skeptical debunkers are basically right about that person unless strong evidence to the contrary is found.

Sometimes I want to leave the "alternative" worlds behind simply because of the festering mess of dishonesty which so often forms the core of its fabric. Skeptics, by contrast, acknowledge that humans are flawed and science is messy and unfinished business. I usually find the atheists and skeptical humanists to be better people, simply put, because they have more in the way of basic honesty. But at the same time I'm always inwardly a mystic, and it sucks when there's little good exchange related to that.

[Minyatur]

Our ability to reason is the central focus of our evolution within 3D. To deny reason altogether is to make oneself controlled by emotional biases and unconscious instincts, which may be outdated and easily misunderstood in what they are. I think the aim is to become more complete in integrating both of them with one another.

There will always be people to abuse things for their own gains, so maybe the best is just not to give attention to those who aim to be public figures unless you deeply resonate with what they have to offer. The charlatans can still be a gateway into spirituality for many and at some point there is a personal responsibility to outgrow them. Nowadays, there are so many atheists because spirituality was usurped for individualistic purposes for a long time. But, this is a balancing mechanism away from religions that will revert eventually to a purer spiritual path for mankind. Many things are archaic nowadays for today's age, so it makes sense that it creates a strong aversion to seeking for many.

In my personal experience, a sincere desire for truth is more powerful than a desire to share truth. As such, people who only seek truth to share it are much more likely to be distorted channels and ego driven, or even just driven by the distortions of their audience.

I do not believe that logic is necessarily the greater authority though. Our unconscious mind contains wisdom that predates by far our ability for logic, which is still quite immature in its current knowledge. In all that we know, we discovered even more things that we became aware that we do not know of. Intuition and instinct can still remain the greater authority at times, especially when we understand that our ability for logic is heavily impacted by our collective confusion.

[Loki]

Interesting topic. Logic depends on how powerful someone's mental processor is. Some who ignore logic cannot comprehend a certain level of logic and is just a genuine inability and not ego.

For me logic was the argument made me agree with the principle of an Unique Creator. I determined God exists by logically determining what "he is not": Finite. If the finite principle has forever a beyond principle then the infinite principle must be true which means the finite principle is just an illusion. I cannot prove the infinite but I can prove that finite is not enough.

I used to value truth beyond everything but then I realized that truth and kindness are not overlapping. Then I've started appreciating more the subjectivity driven by kindness than the objectivity driven by truth.

[Aion]

Who's logic are we talking about here? Logics is a massive concept with many adjacent fields, and to my understanding there is not universal agreement on the exact definition or boundaries of logic.

I remember doing free association in psychology and finding it very interesting how everybody created totally different chains of thought. Everyone also could mostly give some reason for why they thought one thing connected to the other. Some people would find other people's connections "illogical" and vice versa, but ultimately everybody ran on their own system of logic.

Personally, I think that is true even after studying the "rules of logic" and the idea of fallacies and the like. Having a method doesn't change that someone is still using fundamentally their own internal system of logic. Generally, I think people just prefer chains of thought which are comprehensive to their own logic system they have either learned or developed, cause that's when something feels like it "adds up". Let us remember that science has been a continuous process of people using logic to come to conclusions which have then later been upset and tossed over by other systems of logic.

That is to say, I think logic is a very useful and powerful tool, but the hand which wields it will vary wildly in its manner of use. I think there are valuable experiences to be had that are completely irrational and illogical, personally.

One thing I note that's interesting is that in general logic isn't really taught in schools or really in general, at least where I live. It wasn't mentioned in the slightest in all my school years except vaguely in some maths.

[Anders]

I love to use logic and rational thinking even for spiritual topics. It's very challenging because many spiritual claims are hard to verify. So what I do is to cherry pick spiritual information that fits with my overall view. The advantage is that by keeping a consistent view it all fits together. The danger with that is that it produces a self-bias where I usually only accept information that fits my preconceived idea of spirituality. And therefore I try to update my own beliefs when I learn new things that contradict my understanding.

[jafar]

Logic requires a reference where it can be based upon.
Thus shared logic requires a shared/common reference where it can be based upon.

Logic is applicable to deduce anything within a shared reality or a shared context or a shared experience.

Q:Is there any soap in the toilet?
A:Let me check, yes there is, if you don't believe me go to the toilet yourself and check it out.

And 'logically' it make sense, as usually there's a soap in the toilet.

It might be thrown out the window once..
Q: No, I Mean the toilet in the Call Of Duty universe.
A: I'm sorry I don't play Call Of Duty, so I don't know. You better ask those who also play Call Of Duty or check it out yourself within Call Of Duty.

Or..
Q: No I mean the toilet in the house within my dream universe.
Q: No I mean the toilet in the house within the astral plane..
Q: No I mean the toilet in time/space universe..
etc..

Many of 'spiritual experience' are subjective and personal by nature.
Thus no 'shared context' or 'shared experience' that can be used as 'common ground'.
As it truly depend on the perspective of those who experienced it or those who observed it.

Having said that it's still logical to say both the alternative are true, the soap exist in the toilet and the soap does not exist in the toilet. As it depends on the context.

A reference to similar discussion happening in Quantum Mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

While my personal experience on discussing with both Theist or Atheist is.
They're debating about 'something' which they don't have same definition about (ie; the word "God"), let alone the same shared context. Yet it's still logical to say both theist and atheist are true or both theist and atheist are false.

[Louisabell]

Aah, sweet logic. Logic to me is divine, as the foundation and structure of the Logoic design. I don't see that humans invented logic, but that it was discovered, with mathematics being its' purest expression. I see it as a discovered phenomenon of our universe because of how incredibly predictive it is. Set up any projectile, and it will land exactly where it was calculated to, accounting for any variables. So powerfully predictive mathematics is that it has sent human beings to the moon. And the field of philosophy does a pretty good job of attempting to apply logic to more abstract thought and human language. 

Logic reliably connects us all together in an objective reality that we can all share. It is the ultimate unbiased third party, and a powerful tool when successfully employed in reality-testing our own inner processes. Not to mention a great source of entertainment when attempting to solve the cases presented in crime-fiction before Sherlock Holmes gets the chance. 

Yet, I see a missing piece in the OP. Where does ambiguity fit into this picture? Not all thought-play needs to be constrained to proven assumptions. Anything can be entertained with the right frame of mind. I would imagine that something can be entertained quite thoroughly for a very long time, almost making it real for the person, yet never being absolutely so. That's how I see my mystical journey, always beginning and ending in mystery. So spirituality can be seen as a form of play, yet the significant changes to one's person and the growing inner resources developed as a result of spiritual practice are proof enough for me that it is a very serious form of play, even if done for the sheer joy of it.

[Dtris]

I wanted to reply yesterday but didn't have time. Gonna get this one done before i get to working.

I complete understand your repulsion toward snake oil salesmen and gurus. I have the same. However I also feel sorry for skeptics. As IME most so called "skeptics" are just as set in their beliefs as the mystical guru's, they just claim materialism and science, as they understand it, are the final arbiters of Truth ™ instead of some mystical being.

The article on the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is a good example. The website might as well be called "I am right and you are wrong." Then, instead of explaining the fallacy with an unbiased and clear example, the author spends an eternity prattling on about prophecy and other stuff which they seem to have a hard on for "debunking", before they even attempt to explain what the fallacy is.

The question for me is are these groups being honest based on their own beliefs? A person like the amazing Randi and his famous million dollar challenge has a vested interest in never believing in anything paranormal. Even if they started out honest, once they spend decades with that kind of money on the line and build an identity around being "skeptical" they become just as invested in that identity as a mystical charlatan. I guess the skeptical community rarely has anyone trying to get you to spend thousands of dollars on online courses or workshops, so maybe their are fewer con artists who enter that field.

If we discount the outright con artists from the "alternative" world and look at people who believe what they are saying, then we have an interesting situation. Both camps are basically full of people who believe they have something valuable to share, one being something not generally recognized by the world, and the skeptics basically viewing what the mystic camp shares as being harmful since it is not proven.

Very few people are adept at logic, and even people who are still make mistakes all the time without knowing it. The problem with scientific rigor is that it is a very involved method that only functions to increase the chances something is not false. The method itself can never prove something is true. That so many people misunderstand the scientific method and misapply it, including actual scientists, just goes to show how difficult it is to ever be completely logical.

I would say that everyone places their own inner authority higher than logic, since everyone believes they have come to their conclusions logically You want to place logic higher than all individuals, but logic which exists as a concept and logic which is used by people are two different things. If A < B and B < C then C > A will always be a logically true formulation given the existing parameters of reality.

But each individual is not just a logical machine, we are half logical and half intuitive. In Kaballah this is represented by Chokmah (wisdom) and Binah (understanding). The combination is Daath (Knowledge). While I typically explain Chokmah as experience and Binah as book learning, another view is that Chokmah is logical while Binah is Intuitive. Knowledge requires the blending of intuition and logic.

The fundamental difference IMO between the mystic camp and the skeptic camp is that each is heavily biased toward one way of exploring the world or the other. I personally think most people in both camps are honest in that they believe in what they are sharing.

I try to be as open as possible to new information from both a logical and intuitive point of view. I try to use logic to reconcile and explain my intuitive understandings. Sometimes the intuitive understanding is modified or thrown out, and sometimes the logic is thrown out because both can be flawed.

To answer your main question, I don't think those who don't honor logic are deceitful egomaniacs in general. I think they are intuition biased people who suck at logic but are attempting to communicate in that manner due to our cultural beliefs.

I think the deceitful egomaniacs are just as likely to use logic as anything else to gain power and influence as well. Sometimes more so than appealing to intuition.

[Diana]

Anything can become dogma. Logic as a system is no exception. 

Ultimately a balance is sought between the amorphous, intuitive, nonverbal self and the logical, organized, thinking self. This quote from Einstein comes to mind:

“After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

Very few people are adept at logic, and even people who are still make mistakes all the time without knowing it. The problem with scientific rigor is that it is a very involved method that only functions to increase the chances something is not false. The method itself can never prove something is true. That so many people misunderstand the scientific method and misapply it, including actual scientists, just goes to show how difficult it is to ever be completely logical.

Thank you for pointing this out. Empirical science, though useful, is dogmatic, and even though history bears out that there is always more to know, or that any current thinking is either wrong or at least not the whole picture, scientists, just as much as gurus with baseless claims, cling to their "truths." The problem with any dogma is "belief," whether that is belief in science or mysticism. Logic and intuition are tools, not truths, and the idea of no attachment to outcome must be the foundation on which exploration of consciousness is pursued.

I don't think you can be in 3D without logical thinking. But there is the concept of fluid intelligence, which I find to be more useful that critical thinking. Eventually one may become disassociated while here, but I don't think that is achieved through ignoring this reality, rather, it is achieved by embracing the experience and all the catalyst involved in it, without clinging to 3D beliefs (which will be challenged as is exhibited in the Lightning-Struck Tower).

[Patrick]

As a computer programmer, I have great attunement to logic.

I also love that logic has shown that materialism is fallacious.

The top-10 most fallacious arguments of materialists

• Because we cannot change reality by merely wishing it to be different, it’s clear that reality is outside consciousness.
  
• Reality is clearly not inside our heads, therefore idealism is wrong.
  
• There are strong correlations between brain activity and subjective experience. Clearly, thus, the brain generates consciousness.
  
• Because psychoactive drugs change subjective experience, it’s clear that the brain generates consciousness.
  
• Because we are separate beings witnessing the same reality, reality has to be outside consciousness.
  
• The separation between consciousness and unconsciousness is dualist nonsense.
  
• Because reality behaves according to strict, immutable laws, it cannot be generated by consciousness.
  
• To say that a collective unconscious generates reality is equivalent to saying that reality is outside consciousness.
  
• The idea of consciousness generating reality is too metaphysical.
  
• Why would consciousness deceive us by simulating a materialist world?
  

And the reasons they are all wrong? Check out the video below... have fun!

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/05/...ts-of.html

[Patrick]

...The problem with scientific rigor is that it is a very involved method that only functions to increase the chances something is not false. The method itself can never prove something is true. That so many people misunderstand the scientific method and misapply it, including actual scientists, just goes to show how difficult it is to ever be completely logical...

Yeah I so wish this was common knowledge. Science can never ever prove anything to be true. It can only serve to disprove.

[meadow-foreigner]

Is logic, in its purest form, axiomatic by definition, and therefore unprovable?

As far as I know, even the most rigorous logical systems are constantly under the risk of dismissal by inconsistency.

Even these systems are bound to relative semantic social constructs, which are as changeable as the people who set them in the first place.

Therefore, as to answer OP's question: not necessarily, as the question implies a non sequitur (affirming the consequent).

Logic itself has somewhat of fragile foundations when examined in full detail, as the social system that sets it is bound by the constraints and limits of the Self Interface that sets it: being the most common constraints correlated with the three first energy centers, considering that, despite inhabiting a 4D environment, we use a 3D body to interact in it.

[flofrog]

Sometimes I want to leave the "alternative" worlds behind simply because of the festering mess of dishonesty which so often forms the core of its fabric. Skeptics, by contrast, acknowledge that humans are flawed and science is messy and unfinished business. I usually find the atheists and skeptical humanists to be better people, simply put, because they have more in the way of basic honesty. But at the same time I'm always inwardly a mystic, and it sucks when there's little good exchange related to that.

This is so right on for me. My mother was a quiet atheist and I found it hard to find a more honest person. And it's true that there was a sort of nostalgia for other exchanges.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

(Splitting this up, here's part 1 more on logic, part 2 more on alternative vs. skeptics later.)

On the question of what logic is (in part @Aion), I had in mind mainly the rules of deduction and what fits them, as opposed to things that don't follow them but which people subjective find to "seem logical". I think the correct word for things which only subjectively seem logical (and tastes can differ) but can't be fit into formal logic is actually intuition, intuition being something which sometimes can seem logical and sometimes not.

But there's also philosophical principles to do with what makes good argumentation, e.g. that it's not valid to simply pile on more and more little claims in order to work around all objections (which otherwise can be done forever by a BS artist -- and for example some channeled sources throw in such ad hoc justifications and complications whenever the old narrative is questioned).

Honestly, I left it all kind of fuzzy, going for capturing the gist of something I've been feeling strongly about but not clearly expressed before.

Speaking of logic in a strict sense, it is by its nature limited in scope of application. Part of the foundation of theoretical computer science is Godel's logical proof that logic can't prove everything, and Turing's basic finding using the rules of computation that not everything can be computed. There's known unknowns and unknown unknowns, it has been proven, regarding what can be proven and calculated by a computer. For something to be strictly logical (decidable or not is a different question) means that it can in principle be ran on a computer (workably or never finishing is a different question), and vice versa.

The title question has a caricature of my critical attitude, so I wouldn't go on to simply answer it with a yes myself.

In my personal experience, a sincere desire for truth is more powerful than a desire to share truth. As such, people who only seek truth to share it are much more likely to be distorted channels and ego driven, or even just driven by the distortions of their audience.

I'm very disillusioned with the "sharing" in/of various "truth movements" in general. Outside of formal logic, when the names of things contain "truth", there's usually little to be found in it. Online mobs tend to use the word "truth" similarly to how some silly people use too many exclamation marks with a sense that such a subjective "might" to the message automatically makes right, eroding all real meaning.

I do not believe that logic is necessarily the greater authority though. Our unconscious mind contains wisdom that predates by far our ability for logic, which is still quite immature in its current knowledge. In all that we know, we discovered even more things that we became aware that we do not know of. Intuition and instinct can still remain the greater authority at times, especially when we understand that our ability for logic is heavily impacted by our collective confusion.

I don't mean to suggest that logic is to be the only, or even the main, tool or method of thought. As even the most hardcore materialist skeptics acknowledge (and often do pioneering work concerning), the rational part of the mind is way too slow and low in bandwidth to deal with the full reality in real time, and can only be used with selective narrow focus, something which it is a difficult art to do wisely.

Interesting topic. Logic depends on how powerful someone's mental processor is. Some who ignore logic cannot comprehend a certain level of logic and is just a genuine inability and not ego.

Actually, I was thinking of writing about the extra concern of ability vs. choice. Why people do what they do, or rather mainly argue they way they argue (because the brain normally makes people behave irrationally even if they theorize and speak rationally too). Unusual irrationality can also be a main feature in very smart people, and smarts in itself mainly increases speed and reach of ideas, not necessarily accuracy, so there's more variations of ability to consider.

For whatever reasons, some who create and promote various alternative theories tend to automatically replace the way the data points really line up with a neater arrangement in their mind, ignoring differences or unable to see that reality doesn't fit the more meaningful or preferred order they imagine. (Sometimes lots of extra effort goes into keeping the artificial order from crumbling. This reminds me of a rather literal example of a theory ignoring how dots, in the form of the Egyptian pyramids, line up in reality and imagining that it's different and points at Orion, described by skeptics here.)

It all amounts to increasing the gray area, and the difficulty in being sure whether a way of judging others is justified.

For me logic was the argument made me agree with the principle of an Unique Creator. I determined God exists by logically determining what "he is not": Finite. If the finite principle has forever a beyond principle then the infinite principle must be true which means the finite principle is just an illusion. I cannot prove the infinite but I can prove that finite is not enough.

That sounds like the basic thinking I use against a creator who is also some kind of personal god. If god has a personality, or a distinct being of any kind, within the whole, then god exists within a larger structure and is defined by laws greater than god, and then god is not god (not omnipotent). This kind of thinking says god must be formless, for example timeless and spaceless, and beyond all other possible dimensions and strcuture within them.

I used to value truth beyond everything but then I realized that truth and kindness are not overlapping. Then I've started appreciating more the subjectivity driven by kindness than the objectivity driven by truth.

I went through a similar change, more or less, some years ago. The principled idealistic "system" I believed in was inadequate, I found, and it became clear the gap surrounding what "should" on a personal level was ultimately impossible to fill through more knowledge and reason. Along with breaking down and rebuilding my old way of thought, I began to explore in heart the more ambiguous areas.

People differ in how they approach life, and I respect some here who have not (yet) commented in this discussion who seem to keep it all very simple in a personal path with a heart. It's in proportion with how much people engage in matters of knowledge, or things that impact that for others, that it becomes more important to care about the truth-centric things.

I love to use logic and rational thinking even for spiritual topics. It's very challenging because many spiritual claims are hard to verify. So what I do is to cherry pick spiritual information that fits with my overall view. The advantage is that by keeping a consistent view it all fits together. The danger with that is that it produces a self-bias where I usually only accept information that fits my preconceived idea of spirituality. And therefore I try to update my own beliefs when I learn new things that contradict my understanding.

Most simply cannot be verified, that's the basic problem with metaphysics and why it hasn't progressed much along with science. Picking things and simply caring about logical consistency in what you piece together is, in my understanding, about the best a person can do. Along with, every so many years, and when experience points to the need for a new approach, starting over inwardly and building anew on a fresher foundation.

Many of 'spiritual experience' are subjective and personal by nature.
Thus no 'shared context' or 'shared experience' that can be used as 'common ground'.
As it truly depend on the perspective of those who experienced it or those who observed it.

I think it's absolutely essential to be honest about what's subjective and mystical and then one can engage with it as such without problems.

This also ties into things like synchonicity, and connecting dots for a personal story in data of all kinds. There's enough data points in the world that any person who cared to do so could use it to construct a story placing that person at the center of the universe in a unique way. Some do and think their egocentric story is true and all others false. Skeptics think it's all just a matter of the human brain playing its usual tricks. Personally, I think people can engage the personal story as a personal story, keeping in mind that there's enough "synchronicity bandwidth" for everyone and that each thing used as a symbol has an infinite number of possible other uses, no such use more legit than any other.

While my personal experience on discussing with both Theist or Atheist is.
They're debating about 'something' which they don't have same definition about (ie; the word "God"), let alone the same shared context.  Yet it's still logical to say both theist and atheist are true or both theist and atheist are false.

A large portion of debates seem to be about popular dogmatic beliefs and for and against them. I usually find for and against Christianity debates boring to listen to, because Christianity isn't very intellectually interesting unless you're really into the Bible. (In such debates, there are more often however clear winners and losers.)

Sometimes there's debates about how things can or should be defined. And for example, Jordan Peterson (in)famously redefines many basic words so as to always be in the right, saying for example that anyone with a real value system believes in God ("God is your highest value"). That kind of speech vaguely sounds deep and superficially promotes something spiritual-sounding while ironically cheapening any real deeper spiritual meaning.

Yet, I see a missing piece in the OP. Where does ambiguity fit into this picture? Not all thought-play needs to be constrained to proven assumptions. Anything can be entertained with the right frame of mind. I would imagine that something can be entertained quite thoroughly for a very long time, almost making it real for the person, yet never being absolutely so. That's how I see my mystical journey, always beginning and ending in mystery. So spirituality can be seen as a form of play, yet the significant changes to one's person and the growing inner resources developed as a result of spiritual practice are proof enough for me that it is a very serious form of play, even if done for the sheer joy of it.

I wrote about only the tip of the iceberg, deliberately. The rest is where suitable criteria or ways of using them are missing. I think the ambiguous is not really so problematic when people are honest about it being ambiguous. It gets problematic when people confuse the ambiguous and the non-ambiguous (dogma and personal hang-ups alike can lead to that).

I also love that logic has shown that materialism is fallacious.

Not exactly. Logic has shown that arguments for materialism aren't conclusive. Logic is also often used to show that arguments for alternatives to materialism aren't conclusive. It seems logic alone can never pin it down.

[Patrick]

...

I also love that logic has shown that materialism is fallacious.

Not exactly. Logic has shown that arguments for materialism aren't conclusive. Logic is also often used to show that arguments for alternatives to materialism aren't conclusive. It seems logic alone can never pin it down.

Analytic Idealism has the most concise logical framework for its support, that I have come in contact with. Materialism as you said does not even have great support from logic. It's really a wonder why materialism is seen as being obvious in our current cultures when its arguments are so feeble and we already have much better alternatives.

The alternative even properly explain empirical observations such as this one: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26468893/

We could go as far as saying that materialism has been disproven.

At first only a few personality states regained vision whereas others remained blind. This could be confirmed by electrophysiological measurement, in which visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were absent in the blind personality states but were normal and stable in the seeing states. A switch between these states could happen within seconds.

I mean seriously !

[Azarnac]

Objective Idealism currently has the best metaphysical foundation, mainly thanks to the recent efforts of Bernardo Kastrup.
Materialism, as in metaphysical materialism, really is not tenable. The hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved by materialist assumptions about reality. But the implications of this are so terrible for the modern physicalist that they simply choose to ignore them.

Most simply cannot be verified, that's the basic problem with metaphysics and why it hasn't progressed much along with science. Picking things and simply caring about logical consistency in what you piece together is, in my understanding, about the best a person can do.

This notion usually comes from a lack of study. Metaphysics is part of Western philosophy, and its modern form has little to do with its supposedly Greek roots. Philosophy as such pretty much died in late antiquity, and turned into the handmaiden of theology in the middle ages(where you get the horrendous monster that is scholasticism) and in the last 200 years, it turned into the handmaiden of science/technology. Most academic philosophers now do little more than speculate on the data that science provides them. I've been to several Philosophy departments in Europe and China, and I can tell you that philosophy professors and students are some of the least conscious beings there are. Modern philosophers embarass the discipline by basically accepting the idea that the brain generates consciousness, and not the other way around. They will never say anything profound or personal or real. It's just sophism at this point.

You have to keep in mind that the practical part of original philo-sophia and especially metaphysics was inherited by mystical fraternities. Platonism seems abstract and speculative to many people, but what about Iamblichus and his practical Theurgy that is informed by Late Antiquity Neo-platonism? What about the neoplatonic metaphysics that was inherited by the Sufi orders? Metaphysics certainly has progressed, just not within abstract philosophy(which is dead as dry bones).

Asolsutsesvyl, I would say it really comes down to skillfully wielding the tools of logic and mysticism, which means to not overextend their use beyond what can be expected of them.
The main practical use of logic, in my opinion, is to prevent yourself from falling into traps that would have otherwise occupied your entire life, such as getting sucked into a cult and believing in their message up until you die an old groupie. Cold hard logic can help you see through inconsistencies and give you just enough of a boost to disentangle yourself from the domination of others.
Where does logic end? Logic only works in categories and is wielded by the conceptual self; therefore it will not be able to comprehend the ineffable and, more formally speaking, the coincidentia oppositorum so heavily featured in genuine mysticism. Coincidentia oppositorum can be perceived but the moment you write it down, it turns into a paradox which cannot be comprehended by any logician.
A true student of metaphysics will eventually get to the limits of speculation, which is where you realize that any proper study of being/ontology must involve personal experience and go beyond the conceptual. This naturally gives birth to the old understanding of philo-sophia and mysticism.
Mysticism proper is concerned with the practical means towards bringing you towards pre-conceptual awareness. Being as such, and well beyond the confines of science and logic, which never claim to investigate what something really is, but only measure.
Since the ego, the unself, is so hard to pierce through, and since truly dwelling in pre-conceptual awareness is no easy task, I don't see how modern attempts to marry science to mysticism(such as what the Cassiopaeans claim) is possible.
In my opinion, you're best off trying to get really good at one of them.

Also beware of the tendency of cult survivors to go on a James Randi like crusade against cults/spiritual organisations/metaphysicians, where disappointment with themselves and anger fuels a sudden obsession with logic and intellectual over-analysis.

[schubert]

if you are so interested in understanding reality through logic, then perhaps you will find this of the utmost interest! http://www.ctmu.org/ quick overview (the "ctmu tutorial" tab from the first link): http://hology.org/

[Asolsutsesvyl]

I recognize the idea of objective idealism, having now looked it up. I was not familiar with the label, though, and in general I don't think I have all of your (@Patrick and @Azarnac) broader overview of modern philosophy. I'm familiar with the more general state of arguments being made from each broad camp (materialistic and non-materialistic) and refuted by the other, though. It seems to repeat with e.g. Bernardo Kastrup trying to go a step further and refute materialism and then others launching counterarguments in turn, in a basically familiar pattern. In saying so, I am not advocating for materialism. I think, rather, like Boris Mouravieff put it in Gnosis, that reason in itself is agnostic.

When the broad ideas in favor of a position of this kind are translated into more specific arguments, usually opponents will be able to validly point out that there are other possibilities or even that an error was made. It is probably the case that if it hasn't happened yet with a new -ism, it's just a short matter of time. These broad recognitions don't translate well into solid arguments that demolish the metaphysical opposition.

I'm not really rooted in any clear explicit -ism at the moment, and write from a greater personal distance in relation to such. However, I'm basically a non-materialist.

Most simply cannot be verified, that's the basic problem with metaphysics and why it hasn't progressed much along with science. Picking things and simply caring about logical consistency in what you piece together is, in my understanding, about the best a person can do.

This notion usually comes from a lack of study. Metaphysics is part of Western philosophy, and its modern form has little to do with its supposedly Greek roots. Philosophy as such pretty much died in late antiquity, and turned into the handmaiden of theology in the middle ages(where you get the horrendous monster that is scholasticism) and in the last 200 years, it turned into the handmaiden of science/technology. Most academic philosophers now do little more than speculate on the data that science provides them. I've been to several Philosophy departments in Europe and China, and I can tell you that philosophy professors and students are some of the least conscious beings there are. Modern philosophers embarass the discipline by basically accepting the idea that the brain generates consciousness, and not the other way around. They will never say anything profound or personal or real. It's just sophism at this point.

You have to keep in mind that the practical part of original philo-sophia and especially metaphysics was inherited by mystical fraternities. Platonism seems abstract and speculative to many people, but what about Iamblichus and his practical Theurgy that is informed by Late Antiquity Neo-platonism? What about the neoplatonic metaphysics that was inherited by the Sufi orders? Metaphysics certainly has progressed, just not within abstract philosophy(which is dead as dry bones).

I'll spell out a bit more of my surrounding thoughts. While there may be progress separate from the culture of the majority, I still think that progress is smaller than that of science and technology (and the turn in many countries towards values of secular humanism to some extent).

By verified, I mean verified by shared and more universal criteria. I don't discount that individuals may be able to arrive at something others can't accept as verification, while it's good enough for that one person; I see that as a separate idea.

I also think that, regarding what people pick and choose, there exists real differences in quality, some inside of and some outside of what's verifiable (in the shared and more universal sense). Personal variation and development seems to explain most in what ends up picked and not picked, which ties into the ancient problem that seemingly, for the most part, personal advancement in that area can't be reliably passed on through culture.

Mysticism proper is concerned with the practical means towards bringing you towards pre-conceptual awareness. Being as such, and well beyond the confines of science and logic, which never claim to investigate what something really is, but only measure.

I'm not sure if "pre-conceptual" really makes that much sense as a way to put it. For example, Peter Naur basically described being rooted in non-conceptual awareness larger than words all the time, seemingly without being a mystic, and finding words and academic philosophy too mentally cramped. Some others who prefer a less verbal and more systems thinking oriented general way of thought describe similar.

Awareness without concepts seems to have varieties both smaller and larger than that of/with concepts, and both smaller and larger can occur both mystically and non-mystically, I personally find. Non-mystically, some is there in the background all the time, whatever is in the foreground, unless that kind of content somehow quiets down. Some abstract thought also seems to combine attributes of the structured and what doesn't fit formal logic, in a contemplation that feels pristinely clear and angularly shaped, yet cannot be written down in a non-vague form (but that's on the more mystical end).

Since the ego, the unself, is so hard to pierce through, and since truly dwelling in pre-conceptual awareness is no easy task, I don't see how modern attempts to marry science to mysticism(such as what the Cassiopaeans claim) is possible.
In my opinion, you're best off trying to get really good at one of them.

I have a large and loose range of thought concerning how science and mysticism are and can be related, but mainly, I think a synthesis must be moore loose, tentative, and personal than any standardized spiritual "system". If any rigid shell is created to contain it all, it will miss the essence, and become a container for things that only approximate the essence in appearance. And for example, Don Elkins seemed to work in a more open-ended way avoiding that problem. I think most persons both mystical and scientific who don't mess up solve the problem by never trying too hard to do so. The resulting solution may be only partial, but then completion is not really realistic given the scope, no more realistic than finding the Holy Grail in the latest academic paper.

I'll refer to one little idea that I found very straightforward, Plato's divided line. (Note that I'm not generally well-read on Platonism and related philosophies at a detail level.)



My interpretation is this. Logic, mathematics, or in other words knowledge of structure in the abstract, is the bounded area C-D in that picture, and it is agnostic regarding the larger area D-E which is a domain understood only to the extent that there is a personal gnosis (successful personal development of deeper understanding). Empirical science makes use of C-D for dealing with A-B and B-C, and derives explanations for how A-B works in terms of B-C and C-D, and models B-C in terms of C-D in various ways without really exploring the big questions.

The C-D area, though it contains gaps and limitations the knowledge of which are interestingly included within C-D (Godel, Turing, etc.), is authoritative regarding everything below that level (A-C). Thus, how logic matters even though it can't answer everything.

I think crass superstition represented as great truth may be A-B confused for D-E. Some popular memes (including of the doomsday and sudden world transformation varieties) which spread with great emotional charge also seem like empty noise in a way that I think fits this.

Also beware of the tendency of cult survivors to go on a James Randi like crusade against cults/spiritual organisations/metaphysicians, where disappointment with themselves and anger fuels a sudden obsession with logic and intellectual over-analysis.

I had my greatest logic obsession between a decade and a few years ago. While initially, I was giving the cultic consensus the benefit of the doubt far too often when I couldn't settle a question with genuine certainty (and the cultic consensus provided plausible rationalizations time and time again), eventually I used the force of logic in a very detail-focused way to break out by showing to myself there were too many broken things, inconsistencies and hypocrisy.

Anyway, I'm mainly interested in what skeptics have to say about material things and ideas concerning these, not what they have to say about metaphysics dealing with consciousness. What's your take on what skeptics say about things like shoddy alternative history, drinking bleach as a miracle cure, worldwide satanic conspiracies in which secret machinations will automatically conquer every soul with a vaccinated body, and various much smaller health scares and promises with shoddy argumentation about very physical things?

I've been realizing I had various smaller useless fears, and there were also other things I didn't need to care about, after some good skeptical reading. Then I can focus on what matters. Also, I think it sucks that others are often distracted by all the junk (unless that's what they really want). But it's very emotional for many non-skeptics to touch on the general area.

[Dtris]

...

Anyway, I'm mainly interested in what skeptics have to say about material things and ideas concerning these, not what they have to say about metaphysics dealing with consciousness. What's your take on what skeptics say about things like shoddy alternative history, drinking bleach as a miracle cure, worldwide satanic conspiracies in which secret machinations will automatically conquer every soul with a vaccinated body, and various much smaller health scares and promises with shoddy argumentation about very physical things?

I've been realizing I had various smaller useless fears, and there were also other things I didn't need to care about, after some good skeptical reading. Then I can focus on what matters. Also, I think it sucks that others are often distracted by all the junk (unless that's what they really want). But it's very emotional for many non-skeptics to touch on the general area.

It can be a mixed bag when skeptics get involved in those things. Lets take alternative history, or alternative theory in general.

There are theories much more coherent than the ones which are popularly known and promoted by the scientific establishment and media. Usually these theories are "debunked" in a rather cursory way usually by forming a straw man or without delving too deeply into the theory. For Cosmology you have the Electric Universe, for Geology you have Expanding Earth, for quantum mechanics you have various etheric based systems like Subquantum Kinetics. All of these theories are sound, explain observations and usually fill gaps or explain unexplainable phenomena. When Einsteins Special and General Relativity came out it was not immediately accepted, but since it explained a known problem with Newtonian Gravity it eventually won the day.

They say that new understanding is never accepted, the old theories just die out with its adherents. Most people can't change a long deeply held and invested belief, even when presented with overwhelming evidence. The skeptics provide a service of protecting the establishment from legitimate progress by being a proxy for institutional inertia.

On the alternative history front a good example is Giants. There is a book called The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America, which has numerous accounts from historic sources which would normally be accepted as academic 1st rate sources. Of course outside of select circles, your average person dismisses the book entirely without a thought and just repeats the skeptical "knowledge" that giants are a myth and never existed. Despite there being giant versions of almost every other animal type in megalithic times.

Then we have things like Flat Earth. A internet troll which naive people believe and now it has actual people who are really convinced the earth is flat. The skeptics do the job of making sure the claims of flat earthers get set straight wherever they appear.

When it comes to plots with the vaccine and other fear porn, I don't think a person needs to be a skeptic to realize most of that stuff is just not probable. Skeptics can actually boost the signal for a lot of that stuff though. Debunking the theories in some ways legitimizes them and just empowers their followers. At its root a person is gaining something from these beliefs that is otherwise missing. What they gain is worth enough to allow them to ignore the inconsistencies and logical fallacies. People usually believe what they do because they WANT TO. Logic is then used to justify those beliefs.

[Patrick]

I would be very surprised if a student of the Ra material also happened to be a materialist.

[Azarnac]

When the broad ideas in favor of a position of this kind are translated into more specific arguments, usually opponents will be able to validly point out that there are other possibilities or even that an error was made. It is probably the case that if it hasn't happened yet with a new -ism, it's just a short matter of time. These broad recognitions don't translate well into solid arguments that demolish the metaphysical opposition.

To put it simply, Kastrup and his colleagues have constructed an argument which is more parsimonious than their physicalist opponents, and at the same time, gives more plausible explanations for a greater amount of existing studies than the materialist camp can provide. This is the most you can expect from the application of human logic.

I'll spell out a bit more of my surrounding thoughts. While there may be progress separate from the culture of the majority, I still think that progress is smaller than that of science and technology (and the turn in many countries towards values of secular humanism to some extent).

By verified, I mean verified by shared and more universal criteria. I don't discount that individuals may be able to arrive at something others can't accept as verification, while it's good enough for that one person; I see that as a separate idea.

They are apples and oranges though. Scientific "progress" is inherent to science, and doesn't quite apply to other schools of thought. For example, since my academic background is in medical anthropology, I know that I can't apply test criteria from standard double blind studies from biomedicine to the study of Siddha Medicine in Southern India. It simply doesn't work, because of structural blindness(in fact, this faulty logic is used a lot to drive non-European medicines out of the world on the competitive medical marketplace). In addition to that, everything outside of European Science is not as "standardized" as European Science, so going out looking for it will be futile. It has slight application in finding frauds, but ultimately, it will make you blind to fine nuances that in the end, mean everything in understanding non-European philosophies and practices.

I'm not sure if "pre-conceptual" really makes that much sense as a way to put it. For example, Peter Naur basically described being rooted in non-conceptual awareness larger than words all the time, seemingly without being a mystic, and finding words and academic philosophy too mentally cramped. Some others who prefer a less verbal and more systems thinking oriented general way of thought describe similar.

On your suggestion, I've read his dictionary and he reminds me of my first professor in Religious Studies, who like Naur, had a hard-on for William James, specifically his Principles of Psychology and Varieties. What they have in common is that you can tell by their writing and by what they focus on that they are firmly rooted in abstract philosophy and when they speak of "non-conceptual awareness", their personal experience of it differs greatly from the people I would eventually meet during my field studies in China and Southern India. You have to be skeptical about their claims because it often comes down to nothing more than what I would call cardio-vascular relaxation. People who are engaged in academia have a constant monologue going on and are very focused on concepts. Been through the whole thing myself. So they often get wow'ed by the first few steps of relaxation they get from retreats or personal attempts at stillness. But the chasm is very wide, and people don't just fall into pure consciousness or sahaja samadhi accidentally or at retreats. Well, extremely rarely it seems, and the people that do are not from intellectual backgrounds. It just takes a s*** ton of work for most people, and is simply not compatible with the working life of modern people. They'll tell themselves that a seeming lack of internal monologue equals silence or pure consciousness, but they can only do so because they don't apply the rigorous standards from actual schools to their practice. Otherwise they'd notice that they can barely hold it for longer than a few minutes.

I have a large and loose range of thought concerning how science and mysticism are and can be related, but mainly, I think a synthesis must be moore loose, tentative, and personal than any standardized spiritual "system". If any rigid shell is created to contain it all, it will miss the essence, and become a container for things that only approximate the essence in appearance. And for example, Don Elkins seemed to work in a more open-ended way avoiding that problem. I think most persons both mystical and scientific who don't mess up solve the problem by never trying too hard to do so. The resulting solution may be only partial, but then completion is not really realistic given the scope, no more realistic than finding the Holy Grail in the latest academic paper.

What about the problem of only being able to look down from where you stand, and not up? How can we synthesize or combine schools of thought without having mastered either of them? I've never met anyone who is both a fantastic scientist and a fantastic mystic at the same time. You yourself are familiar with the absurd attempts by Gurdjieff/Ouspensky and LKJ/Cassiopaeans to come up with some kind of scientific mysticism. We now have the luxury of looking back at both of them and seeing them for what they are: fantastic claims, but upon closer inspection, just clever marketing to adapt to their customers of their era, which, as it is ruled by science/metaphysical materialism, requires them to make people believe that what they're doing is scientific and not whacky.
When your intellect dominates your personality, you can have the tendency to over-analyze and construct fantastic attempts to synthesize large amounts of "data" from all kinds of places, but it all crumbles down when one simply attempts to do exercises by just one of the schools one claims to understand. Sitting down and getting to 3 hours of real silence would require a lifetime of dedicated practice for most people. Same with a thorough academic understanding of one field. For all the valid criticism of academic hyperspecialization, one look at Naur's Antiphilosophical Dictionary, for example, shows you already why people tend to embarass themselves once they step outside of their area of expertise. Naur was a computer scientist, and an excellent one as I understand it, but he was not a philosopher or psychologist, and it shows. That's why I suggested to get good at one thing. The actual practical problems you'd encounter on the way would already give you enough work to last a lifetime, and you'd likely be able to resolve the type of inner conflicts that remain in one's mind if one hasn't commited to a path yet.

What's your take on what skeptics say about things like shoddy alternative history, drinking bleach as a miracle cure, worldwide satanic conspiracies in which secret machinations will automatically conquer every soul with a vaccinated body, and various much smaller health scares and promises with shoddy argumentation about very physical things?

Well, you know the answer to that, right?
Your ability to make sensible decisions comes down to your insight. The more you know, the less you'll fall for claims like those made by flat-earthers.
There's a certain limit though. While it's best to always experience others and their claims in person(quality cannot be transferred in text; standing in front of a truly silent practitioner in Tiruvannamalai was very different from all those talky-talky Buddhist priests and philosophy professors I had met before) we cannot be everywhere and thus have to often go by what we find in the literature.
For example, is it true that the Smithsonian Institution has systematically hidden evidence for advanced pre-historic civilizations in Northern America? Hard to say, right? So it's mostly speculation based on newspaper clippings.
But then there is also Klaus Dona, an Austrian Curator, who has systematically collected out of place artifacts and given public demonstrations and talks. You can find them on youtube(some are in English, and some are in German) and show that he's tried to consult as many scientists as he can to make sense of his collection. It's all physical, and there is a lot of weird stuff that is fascinating.
We all know that the whole "alt-archeology", new age and spiritual "marketplace" is filled with frauds. Always has been. But with enough discernment, you can find some gems, and in the case of Klaus Dona, for example, they're quite physical and make you think about history.
But when it comes to metaphysics, the recent revival of academic idealism is probably the best you can get in the form of rigid logic. Beyond this, it all comes down to your own practice, as logical arguments can only serve to convince you of the truth value of something, and only direct experience will truly convince your heart.

[flofrog]

I agree with you Azarnac…

A few years ago I went to the desert to attend a four days seminar on Science and Spirituality. It was interesting, they were scientists who had had a strong spiritual experience and thought about it and related it, there were discussions and questions and answers, but in the end it all sent us back to our personal unique experience, everyone agreed on this in the very end. Too bad our incarnation is so short…

[jafar]

Many of 'spiritual experience' are subjective and personal by nature.
Thus no 'shared context' or 'shared experience' that can be used as 'common ground'.
As it truly depend on the perspective of those who experienced it or those who observed it.

I think it's absolutely essential to be honest about what's subjective and mystical and then one can engage with it as such without problems.

This also ties into things like synchonicity, and connecting dots for a personal story in data of all kinds. There's enough data points in the world that any person who cared to do so could use it to construct a story placing that person at the center of the universe in a unique way. Some do and think their egocentric story is true and all others false. Skeptics think it's all just a matter of the human brain playing its usual tricks. Personally, I think people can engage the personal story as a personal story, keeping in mind that there's enough "synchronicity bandwidth" for everyone and that each thing used as a symbol has an infinite number of possible other uses, no such use more legit than any other.

The underlined statement is the thing that both 'materialist' and 'non-materialist' agree upon.
The differences lies on:
- Materialist think that anything outside of the 'conscious mind' (brain) is the trick of the brain.
- Non-Materialist think that anything inside of the 'conscious mind' (brain) is the trick of the brain.

Non materialist think that everything that's being experienced in the conscious state are Maya (Virtual).
Materialist think that everything that's being experienced in the conscious state are Real.

Non materialist think that we're living in 'simulated VR world' and the real 'me' / 'we' actually reside outside of the VR world. Materialist think that the 'simulated VR world' is the only reality that exist.

In gamer lingo we can also say that the materialist are 'fully immersed' into the game, while the non materialist are 'not fully immersed' into the game.

As such, there is no 'good' and 'bad' in both approach, it merely a 'choice' of how the player wishes to experience the game.

While some folks within the group labelled 'scientist' is now starting to explore the "Non materialist" approach.
Example:
You are a Simulation & Physics Can Prove It:
https://youtu.be/Chfoo9NBEow

While my personal experience on discussing with both Theist or Atheist is.
They're debating about 'something' which they don't have same definition about (ie; the word "God"), let alone the same shared context.  Yet it's still logical to say both theist and atheist are true or both theist and atheist are false.

A large portion of debates seem to be about popular dogmatic beliefs and for and against them. I usually find for and against Christianity debates boring to listen to, because Christianity isn't very intellectually interesting unless you're really into the Bible. (In such debates, there are more often however clear winners and losers.)

Sometimes there's debates about how things can or should be defined. And for example, Jordan Peterson (in)famously redefines many basic words so as to always be in the right, saying for example that anyone with a real value system believes in God ("God is your highest value"). That kind of speech vaguely sounds deep and superficially promotes something spiritual-sounding while ironically cheapening any real deeper spiritual meaning.

Yes Christianity (or other dogmatic religion) is not intellectual at all, thus not intellectually interesting.

However...
Christianity (or other dogmatic religion) is POLITICALLY and HISTORICALLY interesting.
As any dogmatic religion was created as political tools with objective to control the masses.

Once it's accepted and viewed as 'political tools' then many things within Christianity (or other dogmatic religion) are starting to make perfect sense, politically...

[Patrick]

Materialism is not bad. It's the whole point of coming here to be subjected to the illusion in order to do this special type of work that requires the veilling.

One of the special work is working out that you are within an illusion. But for those still needing to be under the spell of the illusion, they will find it very easy to dismiss any viewpoints that would threaten their worldview.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

After my previous post, I felt very torn about too many things, in addition to feeling I had written everything I could distill at the time, and ended up just leaving it all for longer than I had expected. (Something on why may be provided by what ended up at the end of this post.)

In addition to that, everything outside of European Science is not as "standardized" as European Science, so going out looking for it will be futile. It has slight application in finding frauds, but ultimately, it will make you blind to fine nuances that in the end, mean everything in understanding non-European philosophies and practices.

I'm not sure I have enough building blocks to get your main point. I basically simply group things into that which is centered around and depends on physical properties and how they work (where scientific criteria apply), and that which is centered around and depending on consciousness and its action (in a way that does not fit the scientific mold). So, I don't really know what you mean by fine nuances. Maybe, or maybe not, you mean things in which the second of my categories here is superimposed on the first, or takes precedence.

I'm not sure if "pre-conceptual" really makes that much sense as a way to put it. For example, Peter Naur basically described being rooted in non-conceptual awareness larger than words all the time, seemingly without being a mystic, and finding words and academic philosophy too mentally cramped. Some others who prefer a less verbal and more systems thinking oriented general way of thought describe similar.

On your suggestion, I've read his dictionary and he reminds me of my first professor in Religious Studies, who like Naur, had a hard-on for William James, specifically his Principles of Psychology and Varieties. What they have in common is that you can tell by their writing and by what they focus on that they are firmly rooted in abstract philosophy and when they speak of "non-conceptual awareness", their personal experience of it differs greatly from the people I would eventually meet during my field studies in China and Southern India.

I think we had different ideas about what the topic in this particular place is. Specifically, what does it mean for something to be outside of "conceptual awareness"? I think that my view of that is more like if something is outside of a specific room in a house, where your view is more like if something is outside of the whole house, if you consider a larger area to be the possible world of "inner experience". I fully agree Naur seemed centered in a more conventional way, but I think he had grown beyond a more narrow range of thinking styles which many can't see beyond, and that not only the working of his mind but also his direct experience of inner life had changed compared to his earlier years. He seemed to eventually find the philosophical definitions he was familiar with misleading when he found them a poor fit with direct experience. A separate topic is how well (or poorly) he did in reaching further and formulating something to usefully replace the old, where he basically simply rejected the usefulness of trying.

I think of many types of mystical practice as striving to move awareness far from a smaller mental environment where it usually is, and having a very different inner experience for a short time, then afterwards there is a movement right back and not much has changed. If such states are viewed as a continuum of possible "type" and "focus" of awareness of a kind, then there can be change with personal development in how things are experienced along any part of it. Change closer to the "conventional end" can change the structure of thought, and a large change of that kind (years or decades of some type of "mental growth") moves the frame of reference further from the norm in a more permanent way in non-mystical states.

Basically, I think Naur "grew up" in part of his being to an extent beyond what most do, including myself, though I'm extrapolating in part from some experience. But I don't associate this with the more "spiritual" end of the continuum I suggested. But I do associate it with going beyond a narrow type of conceptual awareness, which I think change of either kind accomplishes.

I think there's large differences in structured contents in awareness between people, from person to person. Beginning with differences in which qualia are there or not, where I don't presume to know what others experience, I think differences are significant and mostly unexplored in conventional knowledge. Then in lower layers of structure formed from them, and the roles these play, I think there's great plasticity and much can change over the years, and the usual psychological frameworks are very thin and capture very little. Most of what could potentially be systematized simply hasn't been, and won't be as long as minds are assumed too generally to be all alike.

And I think it's very tricky and error-prone to say where a dividing line between spiritual and non-spiritual may go. I think many who are not consciously engaging in spirituality in everyday awareness do what amounts to much, the waking consciousness only being a small window, in a sense going both ways, to what's there in action. I think the diving lines people are taught to look for as part of standard religions and cults alike are misleading and lead to selective blindness (sometimes by design). I don't have much of any clear further elaboration on this, though.

I have a large and loose range of thought concerning how science and mysticism are and can be related, but mainly, I think a synthesis must be moore loose, tentative, and personal than any standardized spiritual "system". If any rigid shell is created to contain it all, it will miss the essence, and become a container for things that only approximate the essence in appearance. And for example, Don Elkins seemed to work in a more open-ended way avoiding that problem. I think most persons both mystical and scientific who don't mess up solve the problem by never trying too hard to do so. The resulting solution may be only partial, but then completion is not really realistic given the scope, no more realistic than finding the Holy Grail in the latest academic paper.

What about the problem of only being able to look down from where you stand, and not up? How can we synthesize or combine schools of thought without having mastered either of them? I've never met anyone who is both a fantastic scientist and a fantastic mystic at the same time. [...] That's why I suggested to get good at one thing. The actual practical problems you'd encounter on the way would already give you enough work to last a lifetime, and you'd likely be able to resolve the type of inner conflicts that remain in one's mind if one hasn't commited to a path yet.

The following could be useless. There's endless lists possible to make of what to avoid, and zero recipes for success (among many things to try and some things worth doing), in what I've been studying. Some kind of approach which doesn't become unresponsive to what is there to be learned, is the general requirement, and the great difficulty, given human nature. That's become my current overall view.

I think of what each person has to do as building something, and one can't copy complete structures from elsewhere and then reach a synthesis, only some limited types of information and materials can be brought in. Note that everything I've come up with is tied to, whatever you may call it, some kind of personal path not really in tune with any cultural tradition I know of. The part about the overall approach needing to be "loose and tentative" is because of considering all those patterns of people painting themselves into corners, of which endless examples have been provided in the reading we've found recommended by a particular community (and then got to see another striking example of as part of actually digesting their input).

What's your take on what skeptics say about things like shoddy alternative history, drinking bleach as a miracle cure, worldwide satanic conspiracies in which secret machinations will automatically conquer every soul with a vaccinated body, and various much smaller health scares and promises with shoddy argumentation about very physical things?

Well, you know the answer to that, right?
Your ability to make sensible decisions comes down to your insight. The more you know, the less you'll fall for claims like those made by flat-earthers.

In terms of something seeming more likely than unlikely, while there's still a fairly large sense of uncertainty about where you (and others) may draw a dividing line, yes.

Uncertainty very generally, with a kind of anxious pressure, for in part the same reason as why I got so into going with that past community, and tied in part to old personal issues involving one of my parents. Intellectually, this is old stuff, by now. The weight has lightened up more, recently, though.

Long story short, I think I tried to escape my mom's influence, and tried to avoid being or becoming like her, by rushing and trying to unrealistically use that cult as a shortcut of sorts to something completely different. But it turned out to include, in part, a more extreme and intellectually sophisticated version of the same thing (narcissistic patterns), along with much else. The more I got stuck in unrealistic hopes tied to that group, the more life outwardly approached the pattern I wanted to avoid (failing to actually do something responsible in the long term).

Here the psychology books recommended by the cult, on narcissistic patterns, came in very handy after having left the fold. A difficulty has been more fully leaving behind having part of my worldview formed by what my mother claims is normal and healthy even despite intellectual knowledge. Only in succeeding more fully in that has the world of people felt less at odds with me and potentially hostile in a very generalized way, recently. It took realizing that she's basically like a quack (of the kind that fools herself first, and others only thereafter, habitually, always sure that she knows best), which was weirdly very difficult, and can apparently take many years.

[Nikki]

@Asolsutsesvyl
You are on your own very special path back to yourself. I find it interesting but I cannot judge what you judge as right for you, nor can your experiences be anything else than your desire to learn and grow in truth. Look within self for all answers in and with love, all you need is within and every search you take is perfect for you and will lead you to all that you are. Connect your mind to your heart in meditation or quiet times. Acceptance of yourself will lead to acceptance of all life. This does not mean you see them as right but, like you, they too have a right to express themselves as they wish. Choose your polarity whatever is right for you. Shared in thoughts of love and light.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

@Nikki, you bring up the biggest-picture questions, briefly, and I'll more generally try to write a bit on how I relate this whole topic to them, in experience.

The more a person thinks about possible consequences of actions, and the more it matters, the more it becomes important to be accurate. After all, inaccuracy so often leads to consequences other than those intended. That's why I can't settle for simply feeling that I have positive intent as being good enough a way to be positive. I know very well that people who feel they intend good can hurt and harm. I think that positive spirituality needs to balance a striving for pure intent with a competent striving for accuracy. Otherwise it becomes shallow and ineffective.

Self-acceptance has been a very tricky issue for me in the long term, since childhood and on. I've been torn on a deeper emotional level and only begun healing that after the past period of years with a cult.

When looking within for answers, often I get one answer, then the opposite, and what amounts to a kind of reminder from the self to the self that I need to do further work to develop the understanding. If you think of life as being in a game of sorts, then I suppose the player-part of the self is saying, "no, that's not how it works at this point", in response to expecting anything else at such times.

I can't embed myself fully in any cultural camp, such as e.g. a skeptical one or one such as what you may call this community. A part of the self may fit, but not the rest. So far I haven't found any place genuinely an exception. (A more unified worldview is building in my mind, over time, in large part not formulated in words, and however incomplete it may be, it's still at odds with everything too simplified in some way. In part culture consists of what people make and copy from one another, and it part it's all sloppiness and oversimplification and clinging to mostly unformulated divisions and contortions in attitude and ways of relating.)

[Nikki]

@Nikki, you bring up the biggest-picture questions, briefly, and I'll more generally try to write a bit on how I relate this whole topic to them, in experience.

The more a person thinks about possible consequences of actions, and the more it matters, the more it becomes important to be accurate. After all, inaccuracy so often leads to consequences other than those intended. That's why I can't settle for simply feeling that I have positive intent as being good enough a way to be positive. I know very well that people who feel they intend good can hurt and harm. I think that positive spirituality needs to balance a striving for pure intent with a competent striving for accuracy. Otherwise it becomes shallow and ineffective.

Self-acceptance has been a very tricky issue for me in the long term, since childhood and on. I've been torn on a deeper emotional level and only begun healing that after the past period of years with a cult.

When looking within for answers, often I get one answer, then the opposite, and what amounts to a kind of reminder from the self to the self that I need to do further work to develop the understanding. If you think of life as being in a game of sorts, then I suppose the player-part of the self is saying, "no, that's not how it works at this point", in response to expecting anything else at such times.

I can't embed myself fully in any cultural camp, such as e.g. a skeptical one or one such as what you may call this community. A part of the self may fit, but not the rest. So far I haven't found any place genuinely an exception. (A more unified worldview is building in my mind, over time, in large part not formulated in words, and however incomplete it may be, it's still at odds with everything too simplified in some way. In part culture consists of what people make and copy from one another, and it part it's all sloppiness and oversimplification and clinging to mostly unformulated divisions and contortions in attitude and ways of relating.)

Dearest @Asolsutsesvyl:  As I read your reply, do see many things that you have accepted about yourself, some are world reality truth, some spiritual truth.  To not embed yourself in any cultural camp is a positive way, the way it should be as you develop and realize your path and discover who and what you are.   From my perspective, this is called a Truth Seeker and see this in your posts and I can only give you respect for this seeking.   If you are getting messages from within, your awareness is expanding which is truly a gift.  When you learned about others in the cult, you were actually learning about yourself and within you knew this was not your truth.   When you accepted others as they are, you realized that you are not bound by their thoughts, it was free will at at work.  Everything that is outside of self, is self, within and without.  This may help that you look at all that you think you are and examine it in yourself through others who reflect your desires.  I certainly did not have any easy time getting to where I am today, but all the pain, confusion and getting lost in thoughts, endless searching, it is all worth it. 
You will come to see yourself, a wondrous being of love and light, because you are.   

You may find this video helpful in learning how to realize all that you are in acceptance and love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUC34Z0SfKY

[Spiritual Ronin]

Reading this thread has given me an appreciation of the academic, logic oriented approach that the commenters hold. While I'm sure it isn't the full expression of your beings the parts you've all shared here are honest attempts to discuss a very rarely understood aspect of ourselves. While I don't have a deep academic trove of knowledge to pull from, I have had the inner battle with logic and intuition, both having won out at different parts of my life. It is a curious thought how hard it is to master both the intellect and the intuition. Is mastery truly the goal or do we all simply have our own balance of the two that we eventually (or never) step into?

You've given me threads to explore, and I hope I can use them to better understand you all. After all, life is all about learning to ask better questions.

[flofrog]

@Nikki, you bring up the biggest-picture questions, briefly, and I'll more generally try to write a bit on how I relate this whole topic 
(…)
.

I can't embed myself fully in any cultural camp, such as e.g. a skeptical one or one such as what you may call this community. A part of the self may fit, but not the rest. So far I haven't found any place genuinely an exception. (A more unified worldview is building in my mind, over time, in large part not formulated in words, and however incomplete it may be, it's still at odds with everything too simplified in some way. In part culture consists of what people make and copy from one another, and it part it's all sloppiness and oversimplification and clinging to mostly unformulated divisions and contortions in attitude and ways of relating.)

I so agree on this Asolsutsesvyl, very much what I feel too. Thank you