Wednesday, July 28, 2010

My bond with tradition is not broken

another shining example of trumpery from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman) Jul 27, 2010 
Quantum theory is less than 100 years old, so perhaps it’s not quite in a position yet to consign the libraries of the millennia to the ranks of naive village superstition. Especially not when QED founder Richard Feynman said that “no one understands quantum theory,” and I’m aware of nothing since his death to have changed that reality.

My life-work has been too intimately visited by modern secular winds for me to be able to take unquestioningly for granted my inherited modes of thought and living. But I am also unable, because my bond with tradition is not broken, to take the modern present as normative or as giving me a right to sit in judgement on those traditional norms which still reach down to me with magisterial authority. 6:17 PM

Consciousness and Its Transformation - Introduction Integral psychotherapy: personal encounters, Soumitra Basu, Matthijs Cornelissen (Ed.) (2001)
My problem is that my training as an analyst does not suffice to unlock the riddle of existence. While I believe that the Freudian subconscious is the source of our atavistic and biological drives, I cannot also ignore the mystic’s description of the superconscious as the source of our highly evolved impulses. This means that one suffers not only from repression of one’s biological drives but also can suffer from suppression of the sublime. (Reddy, 1988)
This also means that to increase my repertory of counselling skills, I need a framework of reference where the subconscious and the superconscious are both accommodated in their proper places. This pursuit leads me to a search for a model of Integral Psychotherapy. A model of integral psychotherapy needs to be preceded by a model of integral psychology which is a paradigm of psychology that emerges from a consciousness perspective. 

At the same time I should like to emphasis that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learnt is never to think for myself; I fully agree with Andre Gide that "Toutes choses sont dites deja", and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the "inferior philosophers". Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse" transcending the differences of tongues". After dinner speech on the occasion of his 70th birthday 1947,  Boston

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Inability to control one's circumstances with the precision one seeks

Increasing our interest lies in the outcome, and the process is seen to be a technical detail of interest only to the practitioner of the craft. Science becomes craft, belief becomes expectation, and outcomes become products one can shop for. … We implicitly embrace a position of disembodied empiricism … The overriding interest is in oneself, not in the means adopted. …
Sandwiched between an overwhelming regard for oneself and an inability to control one's circumstances with the precision one seeks, we are looking for newer technologies of the self. New age beliefs may or may not be science but they certainly in technologies in that they seek to manipulate the world around us in order to give us outcomes we desire. … Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional.

As a scientist, I am fairly satisfied with science's explanations for raindrops, but find science's explanation for humans' concerns unsatisfying, or just missing entirely. If I consider science's description of object-object interactions, and then add OOO, I don't see where OOO improves my understanding. It and correlationism sound like metaphysics. 

Yes, this is the standard continental attitude. The natural sciences are doing fine already with the non-human world, so let’s hole up in an inner phenomenal sphere that science cannot touch. It’s a fairly reactive move, and ripe for assault by cognitive science. If you take the position Enowning is taking, you’re consigning yourself to a permanent defensive war against the encroachments of neuroscience.

response to Mormon Metaphysics from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)
If there is one theme running throughout my work, it’s that philosophy must be universal. It must be capable of accounting for purely physical interactions just as it accounts for the mind.
Hence, the object-oriented standpoint. What exists in all spheres of the cosmos –physical, mental, fictional, etc.– are objects with qualities. Yes, many people assault this very point, but they can be dealt with case by case as they appear. In fact, I think dumping on objects is the standard “radical” gesture throughout philosophy, but I’ve already written about that in some forthcoming pieces. As for why a metaphysics of objects is needed, see any of my books.
The standard continental attitude sees a division of labor, where science gets the rocks and dirt while philosophy gets the people. Philosophy has nothing to add about rocks and dirt, while science will never understand people. But this is wrong on both counts. Cognitive science and neuroscience most likely will be able to revolutionize our understanding of how the mind works. If you get defensive about that (Mormon Metaphysics is not, but many continentalists are) it simply means that you’ve painted yourself into a corner by limiting philosophy to one supposedly extra-scientific space: human mentality. But there’s no reason to believe it’s extra-scientific, and that’s what the scientistic camp has right.
In one sense, everything is amenable to scientific treatment. But in another sense, nothing is (since the object is precisely what resists all attempts at adequate modelling, and since no layer of objects can be the privileged explainer of any other). And you need both hands to play the piano.

Scientistic philosophy loves to claim that mainstream philosophers restrict themselves to the commensensical and the intuitively plausible, while observing that brave natural science has shown many initially counterintutive things to be true. (And my sarcasm here is directed against scientism, not science: the latter has indeed heroically shown many counterintuitive things to be true. Scientism, by contrast, is the parasite trying to live on borrowed glory from its big brother.)

Wolf Singer’s ethics panel from Object-Oriented Philosophy by doctorzamalek (Graham Harman)
The old settlement was this: the sciences talk about the world itself, and the humanities talk about the castle of culture and meaning. Already a rotten settlement. But since the castle of culture and meaning will now be taken over by neuroscience as well, either by finding “minimally sufficient neural correlates” for everything we do, or by a bit of “there are good evolutionary reasons for why we enjoy symphonies,” the humanities get to become professional ethics consultants. I’m telling you, philosophy made a giant mistake by ever agreeing to restrict itself to the castle of culture and meaning. We have to get out there and deal with the stones, trees, dust, and sunlight, or we are going to end up as Wolf Singer’s ethics panel. 

Sri Aurobindo explains: “When we sleep and the surface physical part of us, which is in its first origin here an output from the Inconscient, relapses towards the originating inconscience, it enters into this subconscious element, ...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Hartmann, like Sri Aurobindo, adopts a valuational standpoint

Eutopia: The Gnostic Land of Prester John - Page 64 Alan Jacobs - 2010 - 128 pages
We also think highly of the Indian poets Tagore and Aurobindo. Of course we study the best translations of the mystical poets from ... attention Dives inward, with breath and thought retention, Searching for the source of 'phantom me'. ...
The Alchemy Of Leadership - Page 71 Srinivas Pandit - 2009 - 160 pages
... unmistakable conclusion in his book, What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in
America, that integral practice is now the only viable mode for human transformation. In his work Murphy drew on the pioneering insights of Aurobindo. To prove the point further I will ... Exemplary CEOs: insights on organisational transformation - Page 397 Shrinivas Pandit - 2005 - 468 pages
Science, Spirituality and the Modernization of India - Page 99 Makarand Paranjape - 2009 - 296 pages
Alluding to this outside influence, Sri Aurobindo says: It (European influence) has compelled the (Indian) national mind to view everything from a new, searching and critical standpoint, and even those who seek to preserve the present ...
Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India - Page 121 Makarand Paranjape - 2009 - 214 pages
The process of mending is also one of minding, like searching for and splicing together the scattered threads of a cloth that has been torn or ... Gandhi, like SriAurobindo, taught us how to turn our disadvantages to our advantages. ...
The Yoga Party: Philosophical Writings - Page 73 Douglas E. Frame - 2009 - 206 pages
But suffice it to say that even Aurobindo in all his wisdom would not hold any belief as most important but only useful in understanding a larger truth. It's with this attitude that I will approach my work searching for the larger truth ...
Spirituality and Business: Exploring Possibilities for a New ... - Page 30 Sharda Shirley Nandram, Margot Esther Borden - 2009 - 263 pages
According to Sri Aurobindo, “Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other ... In his view, in order to grow, one should focus on searching for the inner force to ...
Sri Aurobindo - A Contemporary Reader Sachidananda Mohanty, Aurobindo Ghose - 2008 - 180 pages
Only it will be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit, not by suppression and restriction, but by a self-searching, self-controlled expansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, ...
The lives of Sri Aurobindo Peter Heehs - 2008 - 496 pages
books.google.com The Rainbow bridge: a comparative study of Tagore and Sri Aurobindo Goutam Ghosal - 2007 - 235 pages books.google.com
Understanding thoughts of Sri Aurobindo Indrani Sanyal, Krishna Roy, Jadavpur ... - 2007 - 317 pages
Sri Aurobindo noted that a considerable amount of work had already been done in the clearing away of misconceptions about Indian art by Havell and Coomaraswamy and others, but he felt that a "more general and searching consideration of ...
Science and the Indian tradition: when Einstein met Tagore - Page 22 David L. Gosling - 2007 - 186 pages
His conviction that true knowledge is to be found by searching for unity in diversity was expressed at a time when different branches of ... and inspired Jagadish Chandra Bose and his scientific colleagues in their research. Aurobindo ...
Glimpses of Devāyaa: a short synopsis of the third epic of India Hajārī, Amitā Nathavāī - 2007 - 337 pages
As Sri Aurobindo has so well said in his Savitri, A gas belched out from some invisible Fire Of its dense rings were ... Manu went searching for her in the water and applied his creative will on her. As a result, she created soil in the ...
Jouissance as Ananda: Indian Philosophy, Feminist Theory, and ... - Page 217 Ashmita Khasnabish - 2006 - 239 pages
At the above phase, however, they are searching for it, and in their search they ascend to a higher plane of consciousness, just like Satyavan and Savitri (the characters in Sri Aurobindo's the Savitri). But, in order to really find the ...
Affective communities: anticolonial thought, Fin-De-Siècle ... - Page 125 Leela Gandhi - 2006 - 254 pages
It is to the terms of such amenability that we must now turn, searching for the discursive components in the ... of the collaborative transformation of subjectivity to which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo devoted themselves from 1914, ...
Letting be: Fred Dallmayr's cosmopolitical vision Stephen Frederick Schneck - 2006 - 382 pages
In this way, instrumental reason traps us into searching for ways to satisfy our personal gratifications and blinds us to other, richer possibilities, something thatAurobindo thinks that critical ...
Philosophy of Education - Page 222 S.S. Chandra, S.S. Chandra & Rajendra Kumar Sharma - 2006 - 256 pages
In his philosophy of education, as in his metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy and social philosophy, Sri Aurobindo searches after the principle of harmony in the individual, community and humanity and aims at its realisation ...
Education in Emerging Indian Society - Page 338 Y.k.singh
Jeffrey John Kripal, Glenn W. Shuck - 2005 - 323 pages
... historic and contemporary appeal to Americans searching for something to enrich their spiritual experience. ... Aurobindo ...
Reflections and mobilizations: dialogues with movements and ... - Page 267 Ananta Kumar Giri - 2005 - 436 pages
A School for the Subject: The Vision and Experiments of Integral Education Almost all over the world at present, as people are becoming more and more aware of the gods that have failed them, the heroic in them is searching for ...
Nationalism, religion, and beyond: writings on politics, society, ... Aurobindo Ghose, Peter Heehs - 2005 - 364 pages
We have now throughout the world a search, an attempt on various lines to discover some principle of significant form in Art which shall escape from the obvious and external and combine delight with profundity, the power of a more ...
Dharma and development: the future of survival Makarand R. Paranjape, Samvad India - 2005 - 329 pages
and the Mother who were searching for an alternative in education and also for a more meaningful field for embodying ... This has helped many more people to readAurobindo and the Mother in their mothertongue and has contributed to the ...
Concept of truth in science and religion - Page 216 K. D. Gangrade, L. S. Kothari, Ajit Ram Verma - 2005 - 228 pages
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of ... We are grateful to Shri SN Johar for providing accommodation at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to a large number of participants. ...
A sociable God: toward a new understanding of religion - Page 100 Ken Wilber - 2005 - 172 pages
Hegel, for instance, or Aurobindo. In this sense, religion is actually a term for the transformative drive in general. The religious impulse here means, not searching for meaning, integration, mana or value on a given level (which is ...
Bengalis: The People, Their History and Culture - Page 13 S.N. Das - 2002 - 284 pages
In other words, Sri Aurobindo searches the identity of India in terms of her spiritual heritage and thus in the history of Bengali ideas he occupies his place as a prophet of spiritual nationalism. The spiritual view of Indian history ...
The Bengali intellectual tradition: from Rammohun Ray to ... Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay - 1979 - 288 pages
Socialist perspective Council for Political Studies - 1978
Sri Aurobindo searches for the true nature of man in the divine Infinite Being. He has discovered a gulf of unconsciousness in between the Infinite Brahma and the human being. By an imaginary inner power of Brahma (The Supreme God) he ...
Modern Indian thought: a philosophical survey Vishwanath S. Naravane, Indian Council for ... - 1964 - 310 pages
Hegel, like Aurobindo, seeks to preserve both unity and difference; but he identifies the Absolute with the human consciousness, and he has no conception of Divine Grace. Plato, like Aurobindo, searches for a Supermind; but his demiurge creates more difficulties than it can solve. Hartmann, like Aurobindo, adopts a valuational standpoint; but he creates a dichotomy between value and disvalue. ...