I’ll try a bit but it would take like 5000 words to fully elaborate, so I’d need more info on which part is unclear or not trueseeming.
One piece is thinking of individual humans vs collectives. If an individual can want in the fullest sense, then a collective is some sort of combination of wants from constituents—a reconciliation. If an individual can’t want in the fullest sense, but a collective can, then: If you take several individuals with their ur-wants and create a collective with proper wants, then a proper want has been created de novo.
The theogenic/theopoetic faculty points at creating collectives-with-wants, but it isn’t a want itself. A flowerbud isn’t a flower.
The picture is complicated of course. For example, individual humans can do this process on their own somewhat, with themselves. And sometimes you do have a want, and you don’t understand the want clearly, and then later come to understand the want more clearly. But part of what I’m saying is that many episodes that you could retrospectively describe that way are not really like that; instead, you had a flowerbud, and then by asking for a flower you called the flowerbud to bloom.
Thanks for the elaboration. Your distinction about creating vs reconciling preferences seems to hinge on the distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”. I’m not really drawing a type-level distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”, and think of each flower as itself being a flowerbud that could further bloom. In my example of Alice wanting X, Bob wanting Y, and Carol proposing Z, I’d thought of X and Y as both “proper wants” and “ur-wants that bloomed into Z”
I’m saying that a religious way of being is one where the minimal [thing that can want, in the fullest sense] is a collective.
I don’t really get how what you just said relates to creating vs reconciling preferences. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?
I’ll try a bit but it would take like 5000 words to fully elaborate, so I’d need more info on which part is unclear or not trueseeming.
One piece is thinking of individual humans vs collectives. If an individual can want in the fullest sense, then a collective is some sort of combination of wants from constituents—a reconciliation. If an individual can’t want in the fullest sense, but a collective can, then: If you take several individuals with their ur-wants and create a collective with proper wants, then a proper want has been created de novo.
The theogenic/theopoetic faculty points at creating collectives-with-wants, but it isn’t a want itself. A flowerbud isn’t a flower.
The picture is complicated of course. For example, individual humans can do this process on their own somewhat, with themselves. And sometimes you do have a want, and you don’t understand the want clearly, and then later come to understand the want more clearly. But part of what I’m saying is that many episodes that you could retrospectively describe that way are not really like that; instead, you had a flowerbud, and then by asking for a flower you called the flowerbud to bloom.
Thanks for the elaboration. Your distinction about creating vs reconciling preferences seems to hinge on the distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”. I’m not really drawing a type-level distinction between “ur-want” and “proper want”, and think of each flower as itself being a flowerbud that could further bloom. In my example of Alice wanting X, Bob wanting Y, and Carol proposing Z, I’d thought of X and Y as both “proper wants” and “ur-wants that bloomed into Z”