Difference bewteen Philosophy and Spirituality

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I was using your approach as a comparison, it has really no affect whatsoever on how I
view FMF or people like FMF. Am I better able to understand how people like FMF,
those who do not adhere to a particular religious affinity are able to love, accept and
relate to the world around them? Have i stated that you are unable to love, relate to
and accept those in the world around you? Nope.

You said that spirituality is something that is found deep within oneself and is thus your way of loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them and appears to you that spirituality is the way or manner in which we lead our life from the values we have come to discern as pertaining to the spirit.

That was what you said in your purported "comparison" with people "like FMF". But you offered no detail about people "like FMF", so what kind of "comparison" is it?

Does it mean that you simply do not know how people "like FMF" lead their lives and get their values or is it that you can't bring yourself to make an actual fair-do comparison? Has your religious certainty deprived you of your capacity to understand what makes your fellow humans tick?

Originally posted by FMF
You said that spirituality is something that is found deep within oneself and is thus your way of loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them and appears to you that spirituality is the way or manner in which we lead our life from the values we have come to discern as pertaining to the spirit.

That was what you said in your purported " ainty deprived you of your capacity to understand what makes your fellow humans tick?

Its a comparison of differing approaches, firstly those who have a religious affinity,
secondly those who believe yet have no religious affinity and those who do not believe
but find spirituality within themselves. Is this really so hard to discern from the text,
really?

deprived you of your capacity to understand what makes your fellow humans tick?

and here you are after haven been told that there was no appraisal being made
upon your mode of approach to spirituality and yet you cannot bring yourself to
afford the same degree of magnanimity to others but instead must insinuate that it
has deprived them of humanity, was this not the very same accusation that you
were accusing me off only minutes earlier, oh dear FMF, that such hypocrisy should
exist in you is a cause for deep concern.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Its a comparison of differing approaches, firstly those who have a religious affinity,
secondly those who believe yet have no religious affinity and those who do not believe
but find spirituality within themselves.

What was the comparison you thought you made? What was the substance of it? There was stuff - I read it - about spiritual people like yourself "loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them". What were you "comparing" this to?

Originally posted by FMF
What was the comparison you thought you made? What was the substance of it? There was stuff - I read it - about spiritual people like yourself "loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them". What were you "comparing" this to?

oh dear, this is not made with reference to me at all, but those who find spirituality
within themselves, that is not me, my spirituality is not of my own originality. Did you
understand anything about my text, anything at all?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
here you are after haven been told that there was no appraisal being made upon your mode of approach to spirituality

No appraisal being made? Indeed, there was no detail whatsoever about people "like FMF". For spiritual people, there was stuff about "loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them" and about "values". So with nothing to compare this to, what is the substance of the "comparison" you claim you were making?

Originally posted by FMF
No appraisal being made? Indeed, there was no detail whatsoever about people "like FMF". For spiritual people, there was stuff about "loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them" and about "values". So with nothing to compare this to, what is the substance of the "comparison" you claim you were making?

I have already stated, its simply a comparison of approaches, no conclusions,
judgements, appraisals of validity having been drawn. Give it up for goodness sake,
you have nothing here.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
oh dear, this is not made with reference to me at all, but those who find spirituality
within themselves, that is not me, my spirituality is not of my own originality. Did you
understand anything about my text, anything at all?

I think I have picked it apart for what it was in a way that makes you uncomfortable - and THAT is why you're talking about me not "understanding" it and asking deflecting questions like "are you having a bad hairdo day?"

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I have already stated, its simply a comparison of approaches, no conclusions,
judgements, appraisals of validity having been drawn.

Tell me what was the substance of the comparison. I see a series of human qualities and the foundation for "values" on the 'spiritual people's side. But I see nothing on the people "like FMF"s side. What was the substance of the comparison you claim you were making? It's a point blank question robbie.

Originally posted by googlefudge
However there are also those who when they talk about being spiritual and spirituality are
talking about things like 'oneness with nature' or 'inner contentment' ect. Which does not
necessarily suppose or require the existence of any spirit or life force at all.

Is that version of spirituality simply to be said to be wrong, or can we have a definition of
spirituality that includes it as well?

For me, “spirituality” refers to the Reality that is prior to all of our conceptualizations, images, ideas, names and words about it—which are activities of philosophy (including epistemology, metaphysics generally, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion—and theology—etc.). That Reality includes us in the act of philosophizing.

Because no one has a “view from nowhere” from which to describe the whole of that Reality, and because of the recursive nature of our non-separability from it (even as I use such language), the wholeness of that Reality is ultimately ineffable. This is why I think that spiritual language is properly elicitive or evocative, not descriptive or propositional truth-claims—even that preceding sentence is not a claim about that Reality, but only a (philosophical) claim about an aspect of our own existential dilemma. This is why I think that music (sans lyrics) and perhaps spontaneous dance might be the best aesthetic (and elicitive/evocative) expressions; in language, poetry (including song) and such things as Zen koans.

As some of us are continually arguing on here, confusion often results when terms are transferred from one language game (ala Wittgenstein) to another—even though their usages in each language game may be quite valid and coherent. As you can see, I am distinguishing between the kind of language game that I think is proper to “spiritual” discourse from that which I see as proper to philosophical (and scientific) discourse.

______________________________________________


I don’t think the definitions you mention can be said to be wrong—and such usages of the word are pretty ancient, so I don’t think that “spiritualism” necessarily has any priority. For example, Gregory Hay, in the introduction to his translation of Marcus Aurelius Meditations, has this commentary about Stoic usage of the word pneuma (breath, wind or spirit—the word translated, for example, in the New Testament as “spirit” ):

“In its physical embodiment, the logos [which, he notes, is to the Stoics “an actual substance that pervades the world” ] exists as pneuma, a substance imagined by the earliest Stoics as pure fire, and by Chrysippus as a mixture of fire and air. Pneuma is the power—the vital breath [though I think not limited to physical breathing here]—that animates animals and humans. It is, in Dylan Thomas’s phrase, ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,’ and is present even in lifeless materials like stone or metal as the energy that holds the object together—the internal tension that makes a stone a stone. All objects are thus a compound of lifeless substance and vital force [no matter-energy equation in their day]. … When the object perishes, the pneuma that animated it is reabsorbed into the logos as a whole. This process of destruction and reintegration happens to individual objects at every moment. It also happens on a larger scale to the entire universe, which at vast intervals is entirely consumed by fire (a process known as ekpyrosis) and then regenerated.”

—Brackets mine.

With all that said, I’d be happy for a better word than “spiritual” because of the understandings that blackbeetle points out, that are likely more prevalent than other usages. But then one might lose the understanding of those usages, which I believe are perfectly valid.

Originally posted by FMF
I think I have picked it apart for what it was in a way that makes you uncomfortable - and THAT is why you're talking about me not "understanding" it and asking deflecting questions like "are you having a bad hairdo day?"

I dont think you understood anything, you have mistakenly thought it was a dig at you,
a comparison of the validity of your approach to mine, you have mistakenly thought
that i have ascribed merit to my approach while denigrating yours, you even thought
that the phrase, loving, accepting and relating to the world around them was made with
exclusiveness and on top of that you insinuate that my approach has left me deviod of
humanity. dear oh dear.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I dont think you understood anything, you have mistakenly thought it was a dig at you, a comparison of the validity of your approach to mine...

On the contrary robbie. I am saying that you were not making a genuine comparison. And I sense that you are conceding that you weren't actually comparing anything to anything, but you are going to try to frame it as me "not understanding". You were offering no details about people "like FMF" and 'contrasting' that with 'spiritual people' like yourself with their "loving, accepting and relating to the world and people around them" and their "values". Not a "comparison" as you claim, in fact. More a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.

Originally posted by FMF
On the contrary robbie. I am saying that you were not making a genuine comparison. And I sense that you are conceding that you weren't actually comparing anything to anything, but you are going to try to frame it as me "not understanding". You were offering no details about people "like FMF" and 'contrasting' that with 'spiritual people' like yourself with their ...[text shortened]... a "comparison" as you claim, in fact. More a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.

hmmm, it was a listing of approaches, from which a comparison of those approaches is
to be found not in their validity, but in how they derive their core values. The first one
from an affinity to and with a religious body, the second from a belief derived from
personal evaluations and the third, requiring no belief at all, but merely seeking to
understand from a purely subjective examination. why this is now being construed as
a rhetorical slight of hand i cannot say, from the tone of your earlier posts it certainly
seemed that you had taken umbrage as if I had personally attacked your whole belief
system, which i had not. Perhaps its a misunderstanding, i dunno, it happens
sometimes.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
hmmm, it was a listing of approaches, from which a comparison of those approaches is
to be found not in their validity, but in how they derive their core values. The first one
from an affinity to and with a religious body, the second from a belief derived from
personal evaluations and the third, requiring no belief at all, but merely seeking t ...[text shortened]... ief
system, which i had not. Perhaps its a misunderstanding, i dunno, it happens
sometimes.

No "umbrage" robbie. None at all. I would simply describe the way you post, all to often, as being furtive.

Originally posted by FMF
No "umbrage" robbie. None at all. I would simply describe the way you post, all to often, as being furtive.

its only furtive to those who are unwilling to impute pure motives to others.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
its only furtive to those who are unwilling to impute pure motives to others.

Someone being furtive pretty much always has a motive for it, robbie.