Mystical Realism

[GeorgeW]

Anyway, perhaps I'd better stop while I'm losing......

 

You are certainly not losing. You are providing worthwhile insights.

 

The author I quoted earlier suggests that there is not an absolute binary distinction between Eastern and Western thought processes. He says, "East Asians also naturally categorize, but Peng and Nesbett argue that Eastern thinking and philosophy are less guided by categorization and more by movement and process."

 

To the extent they do differ, it is useful to know it and to discover how the 'other' organizes their world. I offer this, of course, from my Grecian perspective.

 

George

[GeorgeW]

Along the lines of differences in the way we mentally organize our world, I recall reading something some time ago about the interaction of language and culture. The author gave the example of an Amerindian language in which 'lighting' is a verb (an action) where in English, we describe it with a noun (a thing). Simarly, a child watching a bouncing ball would say 'bounce,' where an English-speaking child would say 'ball.'

 

George

[Nick the Nevermet]

George,

 

Latour's view of translation & mediation is exactly that complex. All knowledge is experienced knowledge, and he likes the word translation because he doesn't want to claim that as knowledge moves it necessarily deforms and lessens in quality.

[GeorgeW]

At the risk of thread hijacking, it has been argued that ontological categories are not only the way we organize the world, but this both influences and constrains the way we mentally process the concept of God.

 

Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, says, “Religious representations are particular combinations of mental representations that satisfy two conditions: First, the religious concepts violate certain expectations from ontological categories. Second, they preserve other expectations.” He gives some examples:

 

[The ontological category]

 

Omniscient God: [person] +special cognitive powers

Reincarnation: [person] + no death + extra body available

Virgin birth: [person] + special biological feature

 

The more expectations that are violated, predictably the less likely the concept is to take root. This is why, IMO, the pejorative “flying spaghetti monster” depiction of God misses a basic point: It violates too many ontological expectations of [person].

 

Sorry for the digression and hijacking.

 

George

[Mike]

Hi Derek,

 

Sorry, I did not mean to project my own experiences onto yours. But I feel strong resonance with what you’re saying. Moving from the ‘skeptical observer’ to ‘student’ for me hasn’t meant that ‘skepticism’ just vanished, but rather that I’ve glimpsed a deeper dimension to that doubt, and a new meaning to what can be meant when we say ‘reality’ and ‘truth’. Just getting to the point where we can say ‘this really could be the way things are’ is an enormous leap for those of us who’ve been raised in a culture of Cartesian doubt and materialism.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[tariki]

Hi Derek,

 

Sorry, I did not mean to project my own experiences onto yours.

 

Mike, absolutely no need for apologies, I saw nothing wrong at all in what you said. I just wished to clarify, partly because the quote of my words you used erased my emphasis of the word "could".