“Virtue” is a category;...” I do not know what meaning you intended to convey here.
The capital ‘V’ could be the result of beginning a sentence
or
it could be reification—the raising of virtue to the level of a moral absolute.
I have learned to beware terms with capital letters; Morality, Altruism, Truth, Spirit, Noble… each of these gets used by those who adopt a Neo-Platonist theory of mind.
[In Plato’s parable of the Cave, mind is where the category of the universe intersects his (invented) category of Forms.]
It is simple enough to comprehend the ‘Form of the Good’ but it must remain an empty category because anything I try to put there fails to define ‘good’; I may put the virtue of honesty in the highest position but it does not account for the virtues of kindness or valour. Honesty is modified by other virtues so it cannot be the Absolute.
I keep encountering the word Truth, capital ‘T’, used as if it were a moral absolute independant of mind and the universe.
When this mind-set are challenged to define ‘Truth’ the authors hold that, since I find nothing in that category, I have no such category, thereby reinforcing their notion that we do not comprehend it.
In their mind it comes down to “I get it by faith” and, by extension, “you don’t get it because you have no faith.”
Simply asking for evidence or definitions can serve to reinforce their cognitive bias.
It is important, to me at least, to think in terms of empty categories because I can then say that I DO believe in the Truth, without comiting myself to anything others may try to put in that category.
I similarly believe in ‘nobility’ because that is the means by which I frame the question “what is nobler in the mind...?”
My former brethren are the sort who use the phrase “what would Jesus do?”—but I came to realise that I was in fact usin that question in the same way as Hamlet; seeking my own response and calling that ‘spiritual’ when, in fact, it is scanning one’s subconscious/memory.
We search for a pattern which must both
relate to the current problem
and
ensure one remains the hero in that story.
Thus, for example, when I confronted the main leader of my former church on gay rights issues, rather than trying to understand something new he reached for the explanation/the story that
“anything I do not understand is spirit, therefore this is a spirit speaking to me. It is not nice, like the Holy Spirit, so it must be an evil spirit...”
In his view I still have a demon and he and his followers either do their best to cast it out, mock me or avoid me altogether. After all, it is human nature, from childhood, to avoid becoming the villain in one’s own narrative. We tend to throw tantrums or sulk when we’re caught out.
To conclude; having a naturalistic explanation of mind as a subset of the universe, does not mean we do not have categories for what could, without evidence, be beyond the universe. We even retain categories when we realise they’re evidently empty, like the category ‘Intelligent Design’. One can only hope for a future humanity in which that category is no longer an idol.
“Virtue” is a category;...”
I do not know what meaning you intended to convey here. The capital ‘V’ could be the result of beginning a sentence or it could be reification—the raising of virtue to the level of a moral absolute.
I have learned to beware terms with capital letters; Morality, Altruism, Truth, Spirit, Noble… each of these gets used by those who adopt a Neo-Platonist theory of mind.
[In Plato’s parable of the Cave, mind is where the category of the universe intersects his (invented) category of Forms.]
It is simple enough to comprehend the ‘Form of the Good’ but it must remain an empty category because anything I try to put there fails to define ‘good’; I may put the virtue of honesty in the highest position but it does not account for the virtues of kindness or valour. Honesty is modified by other virtues so it cannot be the Absolute.
I keep encountering the word Truth, capital ‘T’, used as if it were a moral absolute independant of mind and the universe.
When this mind-set are challenged to define ‘Truth’ the authors hold that, since I find nothing in that category, I have no such category, thereby reinforcing their notion that we do not comprehend it.
In their mind it comes down to “I get it by faith” and, by extension, “you don’t get it because you have no faith.”
Simply asking for evidence or definitions can serve to reinforce their cognitive bias.
It is important, to me at least, to think in terms of empty categories because I can then say that I DO believe in the Truth, without comiting myself to anything others may try to put in that category.
I similarly believe in ‘nobility’ because that is the means by which I frame the question “what is nobler in the mind...?”
My former brethren are the sort who use the phrase “what would Jesus do?”—but I came to realise that I was in fact usin that question in the same way as Hamlet; seeking my own response and calling that ‘spiritual’ when, in fact, it is scanning one’s subconscious/memory. We search for a pattern which must both
relate to the current problem and
ensure one remains the hero in that story.
Thus, for example, when I confronted the main leader of my former church on gay rights issues, rather than trying to understand something new he reached for the explanation/the story that “anything I do not understand is spirit, therefore this is a spirit speaking to me. It is not nice, like the Holy Spirit, so it must be an evil spirit...”
In his view I still have a demon and he and his followers either do their best to cast it out, mock me or avoid me altogether. After all, it is human nature, from childhood, to avoid becoming the villain in one’s own narrative. We tend to throw tantrums or sulk when we’re caught out.
To conclude; having a naturalistic explanation of mind as a subset of the universe, does not mean we do not have categories for what could, without evidence, be beyond the universe. We even retain categories when we realise they’re evidently empty, like the category ‘Intelligent Design’. One can only hope for a future humanity in which that category is no longer an idol.