Literary News

[Justin Isis]

I don't think you can categorically or syllogistically say things like "substances manipulate the brain and nothing in the brain is real therefore all substances can't result in anything real," which seems pretty tautological. If someone makes an extraordinary claim like "tryptamine molecules may allow access to some other kind of reality or existence," it seems incumbent to test that experientially.

And I'm fine with people deciding on materialism...once they've tried what I said.

I've consistently underplayed the actual effects of everything I've mentioned so far, and I've done that on purpose. Actually using DMT or DPT while peaking on lots of acid or psilocin makes "skydiving into the heart of Azathoth" look like a nice Sunday picnic. Things happen which defy any kind of explanation and do seem to break physics and "reality" in significant ways. Or at least that's my interpretation - I am always interested to hear what other people make of it or what they think is going on. The problem is that at present Dawkins or Dennett or anyone else who hasn't done it can only do that in a secondhand way, which in fact means not at all. You could continue to ask questions like "Did what just happen only take place as a subjective feeling or kind of internal dream?"

But those questions need to be asked after doing it. You can't a priori decide it without knowing what is under consideration.

Quote Originally Posted by qcrisp

Under two of these there is no contradiction in undercutting materialism through material means. Under one of them, calling the means material in the first place is question-begging. Under strict materialism - the remaining category - everything that happens is material. That is precisely the view that is being questioned.

I'm not convinced there is anything like what most people think of as "matter" under normal circumstances anyway (much less "objects"). That said, I don't have a problem with science and in fact have taught it before for money...but I also don't find it inextricably tied to what would normally be thought of as materialism. In fact I think "local conditions" is as good a description of anything we can refer to in "consensus reality" as it is of anything we can imagine.

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by Trau

Materialism isn't justified because it's materialism. Materialism is justified through the scientific method, which so far has been the most accurate way of understanding and describing reality. Other ways of describing reality are indistinguishable from just making stuff up.

At another point mr. V mentioned the scientific method going back to the ancients, and it strikes me that in the classical period there were less qualms about following an argument into the wholly abstract, with a sense, perhaps that describing reality is by definition "making stuff up"( reality being already present, and the description of it an addition to what is already present)...

[Ibrahim]

And then- also to bend the discussion back to literature -there is this ( from M. John Harrison's excellent review of Machen's autobiography in the TLS ) :

"What if it is not the mystic but the office boy or grocer who handles every day 'the signs which tell the Secret of Secrets'? What if the language of the immaterial is in fact the material?"

&

"While Machen walked 'the white road to Carleon' of his youth, it was walking him. That's another thing and it remains inexpressible."

Or, from the Welshman himself:

“I believe that there is a perichoresis, an interpenetration. It is possible, indeed, that we three are now sitting among desolate rocks, by bitter streams . . . And with what companions?”

[Druidic]

Justin, I'm not saying "nothing in the brain is real." Quite the contrary. I'm saying all we know of reality is determined by that organ. You distort normal functioning with drugs, you can expect all sort of "revelations."

I have no use for acid or hallucinogens--we can see the wonders it did for Ligotti and many others--but I have experience with a variety of narcotics. Ligotti once said in an interview that narcotics came closer to changing consciousness than other drugs he's known. I agree. The euphoria is wonderful, But there's nothing real abut it.

It's the same with all drugs. Look at a keyboard. An inept musician may hammer out some meaningless sounds. A real musician may turn out a masterpiece. But it's the same keyboard, sames rules apply, nothing mystical in the equation. The brain is the same. Some substances manipulate it in a different way. Some may present pleasing visions and revelations, some may present horrors. None of it has objective validity. Or, at the very least, you can't prove that it has. The intensity of the vision is never enough.

[Druidic]

Abe, if the "...language of the immaterial is in fact the material" that means materialism is the path to the immaterial truth, what?

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Abe, if the "...language of the immaterial is in fact the material" that means materialism is the path to the immaterial truth, what?

Personally, I don't find this strange - no stranger than saying we investigate matter (whatever that is) with our minds.

I think this also relates to something Justin said about us not knowing what materialism, or matter, actually is. This is especially true if there is only matter. Then we ask, as opposed to what? It's the same as saying, "There is only X" and not specifying what X is.

This is also why (sorry, I should have done multi-quote), to respond to one of Trau's recent points, science, or at least, the natural sciences, don't describe 'reality', though it/they can be said to describe the natural world. In terms of the reality status of the natural world, we must turn to metaphysics.

[Druidic]

This one's for James

That quote of mine you seem so fond of LOL simply means--

Materialism keeps us from making fools of ourselves.

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Abe, if the "...language of the immaterial is in fact the material" that means materialism is the path to the immaterial truth, what?

Well, qcrisp has once again explained that better than i ever could myself, however the primary reason for posting that was to show that literature has the ability, through its playfulness, its aesthetics, to make one consider things that one usually wouldn't.

What's more, the worlds and visions conjured by literature and art are immaterial, so the thing we ( usually, when not diverted by other fun topics ) all come here to discuss is, after a fashion, proof of that quote.

And, of course, it is true that we cook vegetables in a thing that is not a vegetable, so the path to cooked vegetables is not itself a cooked vegetable.

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

This one's for James That quote of mine you seem so fond of LOL simply means-- Materialism keeps us from making fools of ourselves.

As an aside-

I'd cut that quote down to fit my own philosophy:

Materialism keeps us.

[Druidic]

Abe, bools are pictures in the brain born of physical objects. The imagination is born of a material organ.

I write as simply as I can.