No, I didn't say that. I said that was one way of thinking about it. It's not necessarily the right way of thinking about it. Even if we don't take Kant's arguments about this seriously, we can't simply ignore the implications of quantum mechanics. We have reason to believe that the noumenal world is not what we instinctively believe it to be. It may be very different indeed.Little John wrote:So, in summary there is an NP world out there...
That is one way of thinking about it, but we're also making assumptions here about other branches of philosophy, including philosophy of perception, philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.and we cannot directly experience it because our experience of it is necessarily filtered through our evolutionary limited sensory apparatus and then passed on to our PP perceptional apparatus. In other words, our "mind".
No, we absolutely cannot say that. We can't make any predictions at all about the noumenal world. It may not even be "physical" in any sense that we normally think of as "physical".So what?
We can say, with some confidence, that although our PP perception of, say, sound is not the NP sound itself, whilst not a valid NP perception, is reliable enough to make very accurate predictions about the NP world it is based upon.
Think about it in terms of quantum mechanics. The noumenal world, from a QM point of view, is the world as it is when not being observed. And there are a whole load of radically diverging theories about what that world is like. Some of them involve an NP world very like the PP world. Others involve an infinite array of NP worlds, or types of reality that can't really be described in normal language and are only understandable via complex mathematics.
In short, this is a massive unanswered question. And so what? Well, the relevance is that some of the possible answers to that question leave the door wide open for mysticism and religion. Indeed, most of the founders of Quantum Mechanics were mystics, especially Schroedinger.
Exactly. And quantum mechanics is modern physics. The "billiard ball", naive materialistic view of physical reality died a scientific death in the early 20th century, just as it had died a philosophical death in the late 18th. And yet it is exactly that naive materialistic belief about the nature of reality that underpins the worldview of people like Richard Dawkins and the sort of people who try to respond to views like mine with dismissive ridicule. They think their views are modern, well-informed and rational, but they are actually based on way of thinking about reality that belongs in the history books and which very few modern philosophers even attempt to support.At which point the distinction between reliable (PP) perceptions and valid (NP) perceptions is largely moot for all practical purposes. Where this breaks down completely, of course, is in the arena of quantum physicality.
They don't just "appear" strange and unusual. Maybe they are strange and unusual. I certainly think they are, and I'm not alone.But, like the combined throwing of a die, reality at the level at which our sensory and perceptual apparatus evolved, is a game of averages. It is hardly surprising, then, that way down below that level at the point where the individual throws are being made, that things can appear to be strange and unusual.
There is no way of "extrapolating" mysticism. All this reasoning and assessing what we know about the nature of reality and knowledge can do is establish what we don't know about these things. We're establishing the limits of "normal" knowledge and also thinking about what is possible in terms of noumenal reality and human knowledge. Mysticism is, and has always been, supported solely by the claims of mystics - claims about their direct mystical experiences. Ultimately all of these claims boil down to two things, which have been repeatedly said by mystics of all religious traditions as well as having been explored in a more intellectual manner by numerous religious philosophers from Plato onwards. Those two claims are:None of which is any kind of basis for extrapolating the existence of a mystical reality over and above the NP world which we (indirectly and reasonably reliably) perceive via PP.
(1) That Atman is Brahman. That the individual soul of a human being is identical to the root of all reality. That there is only one "I" and that it is pure Infinity. Or God.
(2) That all things are connected, and in ways that on a normal level we completely fail to comprehend. This is otherwise stated in the form of Panentheism - that not only is everything in God, but that the whole of God is in everything.
Mystics do not reason their way to these knowledge claims. They directly experience them, and the attempt to experience them is ultimate purpose of things like meditation and yoga, although there are also other paths.
There is no conflict between science and mysticism, and no "hierarchy of validities". Scientific knowledge is knowledge of the phenomenal world and mystical knowledge is knowledge of the noumenal world. Although in the end, the mystics also claim that there is only one world - that the phenomenal and noumenal are just two different aspects of the same reality, like two sides of the same coin.Thus, in the hierarchy of validities, science wins hands down.
No. Hopefully this post makes clearer what my own position is. The long post you are responding to is an attempt an objective history of the relevant bits of philosophy, not so much my own position. There is a difference between philosophy and mysticism, regardless of how their histories overlap. Philosophy is accessible to anyone. It just requires research and thought. But mysticism is only accessible to mystics - by its very nature it is about direct experience and knowledge acquired by direct experience, and we're talking about experiences that non-mystics, by definition, do not share. My own position is a synthesis of everything I believe about science and philosophy, but I'm also a mystic. I am not trying to convince anybody that mysticism is true. What I'm doing is trying to demonstrate why it might be true, and that is all that is needed to support the claim that we can't just dimiss religion in general.Your position seems to be basically that, due to our perceptions being merely a reliable model of the world beyond themselves rather than the valid world itself, then a level of mystical reality must exist. That is a completely unnecessary and nonsensical extrapolation.