Philosophical Speculations

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 7:19 pm Yeah maybe I'm just not getting something and need to give it some time. It feels like Kastrup's idealism has only taken off in the past few years so perhaps I just need to give it space to grow. My primary worry is that we're just going to be ignored, especially since the Essentia Foundation includes parapsyhcologists. It just provides great fodder for the radical skeptics and materialists not to take us seriously. It just feels like we're hindering oureselves but maybe I'm wrong and it will produce something. I'm just more interested in empirical data and experiments than spiritual musings honestly.

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 7:50 pm Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:11 pm

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 7:50 pm Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:23 pm

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:11 pm

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 7:50 pm Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:43 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:23 pm

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:11 pm

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm not interested in spriitual musings. I actually have had a deep interest in esotercism, name Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and other things of that vein as well as more eastern things. I've read the Corpus, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, much of the Nag Hammadi library, a litany of Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist texts plus various occult writings. I probably would've considered myself to be an esoteric Christian up until recently when I began really feeling like I had no answer to materialism. Until I discovered things like the hard problem of consciousness and the realization that the jury is still out I felt a lot of despair. I just don't want to feel like I'm only trying to find a justification for my beliefs instead of just believing empirical evidence. I'm not trying to delude myself.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:50 pm

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:43 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:23 pm

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm not interested in spriitual musings. I actually have had a deep interest in esotercism, name Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and other things of that vein as well as more eastern things. I've read the Corpus, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, much of the Nag Hammadi library, a litany of Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist texts plus various occult writings. I probably would've considered myself to be an esoteric Christian up until recently when I began really feeling like I had no answer to materialism. Until I discovered things like the hard problem of consciousness and the realization that the jury is still out I felt a lot of despair. I just don't want to feel like I'm only trying to find a justification for my beliefs instead of just believing empirical evidence. I'm not trying to delude myself.

That's very interesting. If I am understanding correctly, apart from the hard problem of consciousness, you feel like most of the science stacks up in favor of materialism? And that also caused you to question/abandon esoteric Christian theology?

Cleric K wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:33 pm We are not that innocent as we would like to think of ourselves. Even if we are at the bottom of the pecking order.

There are things that are currently blasphemies in the eyes of physical science. What if we say that the patterns of vicious weather and earthquakes have mysterious connection with our collective unconscious - the hatred and lies bred everywhere - not only on global elite level but also in the very mundane personal level? Or if we say that a vast part of the nervous diseases plaguing our modern civilization result from the release of astral elements of pain and terror by the mass execution of thousands of animals each second?