Why are people transcendentalists of a Sort?

Why does it seem like all the new folks recently have been Posting things like
“Ultimate reality” or “greater than This world” things of a completely non-immanent nature. It just seems to me that there’s been a lot of world denying woe is Me type philosophy going on lately where people just post ideas about how everything is transcendent and nothing is immanent and everything sucks.

is it just me?

“non-immanent” nature?

“a lot of world denying woe is Me type philosophy”

this has to be the best post i’ve see here in a long time… lol
i never really thought about it until you said something…but 'tis true hermes

“Ultimate Reality”?? This is a phrase I’ve heard a thousand times on another site and also that the world is illusion. If these forums are going to be trampled by the “illusionists” I’m getting out of here!! :angry:

what is non immanent nature? i’m definately not going to stick up for anything here. but what do you mean by world denying and all that crap about how it sucks?

I have no idea, but if I had to guess, it is probably a matter of transition… people are more apt to discuss those ideas they are comfortable with, at least at first. Still that doesn’t explain the shared tones in certain posts, but then again, I might be over generalizing also.

Probably becuase it is a lot easier to invest ones emotion into an idea than it is to consider it with inherent knowledge of subject.

Everybody wants to possess some magic. philosophy attained thru the spiritualiztion of individual religion

We might as well get this straight. If posts are more about personal feelings of the ‘woe is me’ sort, and these feelings seem more prominent in a single message than the presence of any formal philosophical conviction, then the author(s) are mislead and must be corrected for the folly of their ways.

It is not for me to say whether the reader(s) enjoy the unclassified denigration of the author(s), since the standard approach in response to the feelings evoked by the message content must surely be sourced by compassion and tolerance. With misgivings such as these, decisions must and have been made.

Having noticed an overwhelming amount of the type of message that not only places you into a summarily defensive mode but frequently instils the format of responsive material largely belonging to tentative reassurance, I am urged to respond in this late hour. Please consider for my own reservation that generally, I see you all as miniature Turing’s ‘Chinese Rooms’. That is to say of the remarkable diversity of members and their remarks, largely contextualy unfounded yet irresistable in their manner of supply and near-consumable content. Perhaps I have learnt to accept these posts as merely whimsical enquiry, a floating board of pale and insignificant running text. Much like the transpiration of human emotion, I can be largely unaffected as I lie in wait for my next victim of subterfuge. If I am now the one who leaps into this puddle of mischief, please forgive my wanton premise.

Thankfully the responses to my own untimely posts should and would be the crucial judges of content. Unfounded they may be, new and appealing in comparison to a wash of neo-tyrannical tepor they will not, yet still, being able to stand the test of reformation by unidentifiable cops of the virtual world, I am still proud of a belonging whose indefinible crux lies somewhere in the manner of common misplacement.

My answer to your post, mr. monkey, should now be clear. I want my peace to be spelled out. In a way that only I can, I want to shock, provoke and hammer home the incontinence of my own deserted plinks without having to remit to some ‘rule of efficiency’, created by a trifling stipulator of its own demise. Please forgive the final reminisence of charge, as I tail off into insignificance…

We are are own insight.

I’m tired so I’ll speak plainly - the site is starting to bore me. I recently looked at the posts from about a year and a half ago and they’re awesome. They’re arguing about the Skokal Hoax for god sake! Of late it seems that the general nature of the “philosophy” posts have been a lukewarm toothless New Age version of transcendence. ie I think we have been overrun by hippies.

immanence is the opposite of transcendence. I’m sorry - immanence is a very very useful term that isn’t used very much anymore. You find it mostly at work in the Stoics and in Spinoza. What It basically means is that a) there is no mind/body split - all is body (which can be a great evil or a great good) and b) that there is No God outside the system who’s going to swoop in an give meaning to everything. I mean this in three areas - logic and Philosophy of language, theology, and ethics. the Logos Spermatikos is an immanent. The Logos of the Gospel Of John is transcendent.

On a bright note several of the new folks really have come in with a loud strong voice and the technical skills to back it up and they have brought forth some lovely posts… Welcome.

h3m

Spinoza takes advantage of circular reasoning to unreasonable lengths. He seems to undermine his own determination through this and other fallacies, yet not be aware of the result. Why did no-one question this poor misguided individual before it was too late? What are the prolonged effects of studying by candle light?

well, Ok - but I might point out that everything reduces to circular reasoning. Secondly, I’d also like to point out that circular reasoning is only a problem for folks that are stuck suffering with Airstotle.Nobody’s really cared about circular reasoning since the concept of feedback came into widespread use.
None of this means that c.r is A bad thing or a good thing.

Circular reasoning specifically pertains to non-linear or dynamic systems though and before the late ninteenth century and then the later invention of the computer, folks couldn’t deal with non-linear systems Or their weird types of causation.

Either way, just because Spinoza supposedly used circular reasoning doesn’t effect in the slightest the fact that we have had some serious bellybutton reality posts of late.

Your father’s name is Stu. Your name is Stu. Your brother’s name is Stu. Your sister’s name is Stu.

Do you accept the theory of the big bang? Do you accept that you, an apple, a rock, all are the constituents of the universe?

If you do, accept that there is a common ground for all, just like accepting that your name is Stu.

If that’s not enough to convince you, why don’t you study some Yin & Yang, and try to apply it whenever you can. Soon you’ll find out, that trancendence, happens all the time!

Dude your post is just bad. Just really bad. I’m sorry I’m usually more polite than this but… It… it’s … just wrong-bad, bad-wrong, replete with wrong-osity.

So you jump from Russell’s Theory of Logical typing to The existence of transcendental objects, hanging out there in the nous sphere? Just because something exists in language doesn’t mean it exists in the lived world. If we all share the name Stu, all that means is that we are descendents of either a fella who was once a Scots king, or a Waiter/butler of some type; that what was once a label used to describe a real CONCRETE, (IMMANENT!) human being and some attribute of that person has become a dead metaphor and has been attached, through kinship mechanisms, to the male descendants of that individual. Now the attributes are ALSO dead metaphors that once were new (like a form of poetry) that described concret real lived experiences. These metaphor-attributes lost their complete meaning as they were repeated over time and soon voila an english adjective was born.

I do not accept the Big Bang theory. I believe it is a subconscious Judeo-Christian Myth masquerading as science. The Origin of the Universe was never a singularity.

In the way we use them it makes No difference how much scholastic being an apple and a rock share.

The Chinese don’t give a Rat’s ass about transcendence - they aren’t tainted by greek thought (actually indo-european thought).

With all due respect, I doubt you have the slightest idea what yin and yang mean in context. Do you speak/read Chinese? Have you ever fought somebody using taijiquan or perhaps one of the external styles of Chinese martial arts that use swallow/spit theories?

I don’t want to whitelotus out on you and I’ll bever say that you won’t understand yin yang theory unless you read the original Laozi in Classical Chinese. However, do yourself A favor and read some real commentary on Chinese Philosophy by Benjamin Schwartz or A. Graham or Chad Hansen perhaps. I’ll even give you a website to check it ou.t

My question is this - Why do you need transcendence to make your belief system work?

here’s that page -

hku.hk/philodep/ch/

Hermes, I can hear your eyelid twitch. Relax. This has never been a winning battle. You remind me of an ER doctor at the end of his shift.
There’s nothing novel about injuries after awhile. But the night bleeders need the same attention as the morning bleeders. Sorry if you’re sick of it.
Hang in there.

To Hermes’ point…there is nothing that is supernatural, and please, beware of sloppy language that takes us into the realm of the absurd. No word can ever be perfectly defined, and so communication is always sloppy. But some words need better definitions before we build arguments around them. Words like “love,” “soul,” and “God,” and “energy.” Many of us believe these vague terms lead to physical and psychological explanations – explanations every bit as powerful and compelling as the hippie dippy ones, except without compromising the puny share of intellectual honesty us humans might be capable of on some days.

I would hate to see this place degrade into a new age forum. This place should be a respite from the psuedo-science, new age drivel and pedestrian simplifications and generalizations that many of us suffer through in the real world. There’s nothing wrong with novice thinkers in this forum, as long as we all realize the goal is clarity. Wisdom has no easy shortcut, no catch phrase.

Yep, everything could reduce to circular reasoning. That is until we adopt transcendental ideas for a logical completion of metaphysical reasoning. By introducing these steps, philosophers have afforded a complete series of conditions which can be more easily undertaken by our own understanding.

The concurrence of international trade between countries can never be met with the same veracity; since having been established by those founding investors, the fulcrum on which the lever of economic prosperity now rests is seldom heard creaking. The base country’s political stability is the only design fault in this simple demonstration.

Do you know where I can pick up some good wax for my baby seal skin boots?

WE. This is a quote. There is no way.

So wait, you’re going to contingently take on, that is “adopt”, transcendental ideals. If they were transcendent, you wouldn’t have any damn choice in the matter. They would crush you with their inevitability. all you would be adopting is the cultural practices of a particular time and place and then calling them “transcendental”

I can only assume you are making a connection between non linear systems and their use in economic modeling (such as W Brian Arthur’s ideas of path dependency and lock in in technologies and economics) Otherwise, I have no idea what in the hell you are talking about. I understand the words, it’s the sense I don’t get.

um…once again I can only try to read sense where I find none. Are you saying that be removing the distincition between mind and body, spinoza made it okay to club baby seals?

Remember - I don’t really care about ethics, so if we’re arguing about ethics, you’re gonna have to pick somebody else

i’m not going to lie, i haven’t read most of these posts, i just scrolled down. nor am i gonna stick up for anybody trying to play of a take on transcendental idealism. (which still has a hint of residual realism, mind you)
i’m just gonna toss in, cheaply i might add, that the world was explained when kant published the second edition of the KrV.