Mythology is a reality

[Keith&Co.]

Either mythology says something about he human psyche or it does not. Frankly I can't see how it cannot. Can you?

But you're saying that the story intentionally tells us about the psyche. It could be the reverse. The stories that resonate with the psyche are going to be more popular than those that don't. Your phrasing reminds me of people using evolutionary theory shorthand, like 'the wolves found that teeth were better than switchblades and evolved in that direction.'

 

[modernPrimitive2]

Either mythology says something about he human psyche or it does not. Frankly I can't see how it cannot. Can you?

But you're saying that the story intentionally tells us about the psyche. It could be the reverse. The stories that resonate with the psyche are going to be more popular than those that don't. Your phrasing reminds me of people using evolutionary theory shorthand, like 'the wolves found that teeth were better than switchblades and evolved in that direction.'

Do you mean there is a teleological flavour to what I'm suggesting? Could you elaborate on what you mean by "it could be the reverse"? Not sure I'm understanding...

 

[Keith&Co.]

But you're saying that the story intentionally tells us about the psyche. It could be the reverse. The stories that resonate with the psyche are going to be more popular than those that don't. Your phrasing reminds me of people using evolutionary theory shorthand, like 'the wolves found that teeth were better than switchblades and evolved in that direction.'

Do you mean there is a teleological flavour to what I'm suggesting?

No, that's not what i mean.

 

[abaddon]

But you're saying that the story intentionally tells us about the psyche. It could be the reverse. The stories that resonate with the psyche are going to be more popular than those that don't. Your phrasing reminds me of people using evolutionary theory shorthand, like 'the wolves found that teeth were better than switchblades and evolved in that direction.'

Do you mean there is a teleological flavour to what I'm suggesting? Could you elaborate on what you mean by "it could be the reverse"? Not sure I'm understanding...

If I understand him right, he’s talking about projection. For rationalists, the dumb unconscious seems to only stupidly spit out “i want fuck” and similar basic impulses since it’s not a fully consciously deliberate process like 'rationality' is believed to be. So, likely he sees myths as similar to inkblots: random patterns based on human's most mundane impulses that people only afterwards layer a meaning on top of according to what features of the stories resonate with their values. And since one person will say “it means this” and another will say “it means that” then there’s no truth inherent to the story, myth or dream.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So does this mean that gods exist? I would argue yes. In exactly what way they exist depends on your metaphysical belief. If metaphysical idealism is true then they exist as collective psychic entities, primordial archetypal forms made of some "mind stuff". If metaphysical materialism is true then they exist as a type of collective virtualization of the human psyche, ie: in "abstracted form", exactly the way memes exist. Either way, they exist. Dawkins even admits as much (gods exist as memes) however does he realize the real significance of this? Just because they are memetic in nature and exist in a virtualized sense does not mean we are any less subject to their "whims". We may choose to be atheist and push ourselves outside the influence of a particular set of religious gods, or spend our time debating against them (which only demonstrates our belief in their "virtual" existence) but then on the other hand are we also aware of the "devil" (metaphorical, if you wish) that lives within us? By that I mean even if we are extremely rational are we longer subject to the devices, deceptions and manipulations of our own instincts? Can the rational function truly conquer the irrational function and is that even desirable? Life without it (the irrational) would be a terribly sterile existence.

So gods exist as thoughts or neural constructs. Cool. But nothing new, no different than the number 7.

Outside the brain, gods are best understood as behaviors undertaken by superstitious and ignorant human beings. That's about as real as gods get.

 

[modernPrimitive2]

If I understand him right, he’s talking about projection. For rationalists, the dumb unconscious seems to only stupidly spit out “i want fuck” and similar basic impulses since it’s not a fully consciously deliberate process like 'rationality' is believed to be. So, likely he sees myths as similar to inkblots: random patterns based on human's most mundane impulses that people only afterwards layer a meaning on top of according to what features of the stories resonate with their values. And since one person will say “it means this” and another will say “it means that” then there’s no truth inherent to the story, myth or dream.

Thanks for explaining Abaddon. Must be 10 years since the days of IIDB and I see a lot of familiar names here. Are you well?

That's a good analogy with the in blot. In a way it kind of proves my point because people are not seeing an ink blot as merely an ink blot which suggests that the world we live in is coloured by the psyche. The fact that some people see one archetypal image and others a different one simply means that those projections are coloured by their individual unconscious. The significance of this is that we do NOT live in a world of scientific materialism but rather in a world of psychic projection and if we are to be "realists" we need a philosophy that accounts for that.

There are some really good ideas around this in the video I posted on the previous page by the modern philosopher Slavoj Zizek. He unpacks Jacques Lacan's model of the symbolic order - well worth watching even if you can only watch the first few minutes.

 

[modernPrimitive2]

So gods exist as thoughts or neural constructs. Cool. But nothing new, no different than the number 7.

Outside the brain, gods are best understood as behaviors undertaken by superstitious and ignorant human beings. That's about as real as gods get.

Yeah but keep unpacking that and follow through with the implications....

So if we take for example the Lacanian concept of the "Big Other" - this is the idea that a developing child's psyche is so dependent on it's parental influence that this child-to-parent relationship becomes a fundamental and internalized pattern of behaviour. To the developing psyche the parental image is that of a god and when we grow up we merely begin to project this elsewhere - onto society at large, onto a religious god, onto an ideaology, a peer group and so on. So you will find for example that an atheist may begin to deify science and in such a case one has not escaped the influence of god(s) but merely redirected it.

I'm not arguing that atheism is a bad position - I would agree it's a far more rational position than a typical theistic position. What I'm suggesting is that one needs to account for the psyche in all of this. We don't live in a cosmological or quantum world, we live a particularly subjective experience and to deny the colouring of our experience by the psyche is to deny the reality, albeit subjective in which we find ourselves.

 

[skepticalbip]

So gods exist as thoughts or neural constructs. Cool. But nothing new, no different than the number 7.

Outside the brain, gods are best understood as behaviors undertaken by superstitious and ignorant human beings. That's about as real as gods get.

Yeah but keep unpacking that and follow through with the implications....

So if we take for example the Lacanian concept of the "Big Other" - this is the idea that a developing child's psyche is so dependent on it's parental influence that this child-to-parent relationship becomes a fundamental and internalized pattern of behaviour. To the developing psyche the parental image is that of a god and when we grow up we merely begin to project this elsewhere - onto society at large, onto a religious god, onto an ideaology, a peer group and so on. So you will find for example that an atheist may begin to deify science and in such a case one has not escaped the influence of god(s) but merely redirected it.

I'm not arguing that atheism is a bad position - I would agree it's a far more rational position than a typical theistic position. What I'm suggesting is that one needs to account for the psyche in all of this. We don't live in a cosmological or quantum world, we live a particularly subjective experience and to deny the colouring of our experience by the psyche is to deny the reality, albeit subjective in which we find ourselves.

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

 

[Angry Floof]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that what is lost in this thread from the OP is that the act of myth making precedes conscious articulation. People seem to be talking about the after-the-fact stories from mythology as if the stories are the myth making process, when the stories are actually the result of that process, and that process comes part and parcel to human thought. Myth making is about human experience - all of it, not just the conscious stories about experience - and less about ignorance or non-scientific explanations.

Where do you think conscious articulation comes from? What is the source of thoughts in a human mind? Conditioning and culture impinge on thoughts and articulation, but are they the source? Which comes first, the experience or the story about the experience? When there is no story to describe the experience, we make new stories, or we try to rend and torture our experiences into the stories we're given, the latter being a potent recipe for mental illness and suffering as we see in religious believers who are denied the freedom of their own wild humanness in favor of conformity, delusion, and avoidance of social punishment.

 

[modernPrimitive2]

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

I have no argument against science or empiricism and their usefulness.

It has less to do with explanations of phenomena and more to do with the "psychological primacy" of our experience. For example, when I am talking to somebody my cognitive functions remove entire strata from the objective reality of the person. Rationally I know that they shit, have body odours, are perhaps digesting some food and so on but that doesn't enter the "image" I'm dealing with, it's hidden or abstracted from my cognition (unless I intentionally explore the idea). In fact, in order for it to be "real" in the sense of efficacy, for it to have the desired effect in the world, the "image" cannot be the objective reality of the person.

You can take this a step further and see a whole new strata of psychic reality. Does the average modern Western Christians really believe in God? I would argue that the large majority in fact do not. Because the reality of their behaviour (dictated by their unconscious position) contradicts their conscious ("Lacanian symbolic" or "spoken") position. Much in the same way that there is an objective reality that is abstracted, repressed, denied in my above example, the conscious position, the "image presented" is an abstraction from the reality where we see the average Western Christian obsessed with materialism is all it's forms - mass consumerism, ecological plundering, financial gain - all to do with this material existence and having very little to do with a fictional hereafter.

Ok, so why is this important? Because if we are going to have any idea of what the fuck we are actually doing and where we are going we are going to have to recognize this psychological primacy. Science is great but it's not going to solve our political problems, our inter-personal relationship issues, school shootings and so on. And what has this got to do with mythology? Well I would argue that mythology provides key insights to human behaviour, in some sense it's even "objective" in an abstracted form, in that it points to a reality.

Do gods exist? Yes of course they bloody exist. Why the hell are you here wasting your time arguing with Christians if you truly don't also believe they exist? You might argue that they exist merely as "fictions" in light of scientific materialism but there you would also be wrong. Does space-time exist in a significantly different way to gods? Here's my answer to that (read the first post):

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?8123-Why-materialism-is-a-metaphysical-position

 

[modernPrimitive2]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that what is lost in this thread from the OP is that the act of myth making precedes conscious articulation.

Thanks for clarifying that Hyldae. Quite correct.

 

[skepticalbip]

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

I have no argument against science or empiricism and their usefulness.

It has less to do with explanations of phenomena and more to do with the "psychological primacy" of our experience. For example, when I am talking to somebody my cognitive functions remove entire strata from the objective reality of the person. Rationally I know that they shit, have body odours, are perhaps digesting some food and so on but that doesn't enter the "image" I'm dealing with, it's hidden or abstracted from my cognition (unless I intentionally explore the idea). In fact, in order for it to be "real" in the sense of efficacy, for it to have the desired effect in the world, the "image" cannot be the objective reality of the person.

You can take this a step further and see a whole new strata of psychic reality. Does the average modern Western Christians really believe in God? I would argue that the large majority in fact do not. Because the reality of their behaviour (dictated by their unconscious position) contradicts their conscious ("Lacanian symbolic" or "spoken") position. Much in the same way that there is an objective reality that is abstracted, repressed, denied in my above example, the conscious position, the "image presented" is an abstraction from the reality where we see the average Western Christian obsessed with materialism is all it's forms - mass consumerism, ecological plundering, financial gain - all to do with this material existence and having very little to do with a fictional hereafter.

Ok, so why is this important? Because if we are going to have any idea of what the fuck we are actually doing and where we are going we are going to have to recognize this psychological primacy. Science is great but it's not going to solve our political problems, our inter-personal relationship issues, school shootings and so on. And what has this got to do with mythology? Well I would argue that mythology provides key insights to human behaviour, in some sense it's even "objective" in an abstracted form, in that it points to a reality.

Do gods exist? Yes of course they bloody exist. Why the hell are you here wasting your time arguing with Christians if you truly don't also believe they exist? You might argue that they exist merely as "fictions" in light of scientific materialism but there you would also be wrong. Does space-time exist in a significantly different way to gods? Here's my answer to that (read the first post):

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?8123-Why-materialism-is-a-metaphysical-position

I can only repeat the part of my post that you didn't address:

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

If there is a societal concern for the social problems you list then philosophers arguing over their just-so-stories isn't the way to address them. There first must be some method instituted to determine which if any of the proposed just-so-stories are true. For the last three thousand years, philosophical argument has proven to be ineffective at determining "truth". To select any (even yours) as a basis for public policy to address the problems you list could well only exacerbate the problems.

 

[abaddon]

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

I keep seeing this as the ultimate justification for how “true” or “factual” the findings of science are: “it works”. Especially, it produces technology. Nevermind we’re wrecking the world largely with the technology, but it’s efficacious anyway. Yes, it works, albeit with massive negative side-effects.

I see the negative side-effects of putting science to use as evidence that it works but "off" enough that it's problematic, indicating it paints a picture of the world that is a flawed picture (or story).

Science is a method AND a picture of the world. Even the stuff about side-stepping subjectivity, when put back into mythic/imagistic terms, gives a picture of a disembodied mind hovering outside of our “fleshbag” appendages (our bodies) and looking down upon the world… much like Descartes’ take on god and how we connect with him/it via “mind”. This is a tale with lots of holes in it.

Objectivity is a tale about a disembodied mind. And we wreck the world because we don’t feel connected to it; our story tells us it is there for our use, it’s a mechanism to be decoded, it’s a grab bag of resources. And that’s the Story that motivates the behaviors of our culture.

Our technological culture has its “just-so story”. The story's evidence-based, but what you’re to make of that evidence is told to you by the story and the values it teaches. No method obviates the story, that there’s a method that does this is actually part of the story.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Science is great but it's not going to solve our political problems, our inter-personal relationship issues, school shootings and so on.

I have never seen anyone claim that it would.

 

[Angry Floof]

Science is great but it's not going to solve our political problems, our inter-personal relationship issues, school shootings and so on.

I have never seen anyone claim that it would.

Lots of people claim that it would, or rather, that science and a secular culture that values the usefulness of science, certainly can and does offer the best problem solving methods known.

A black and white argument that science solves all problems perfectly or doesn't solve any will fail either way.

 

[skepticalbip]

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

I keep seeing this as the ultimate justification for how “true” or “factual” the findings of science are: “it works”.

Then you are listening to people that don't understand science. Science doesn't declare "truth". Science is a methodology that works at giving us a better understanding of the universe and how it works - not "truth".

Especially, it produces technology. Nevermind we’re wrecking the world largely with the technology, but it’s efficacious anyway. Yes, it works, albeit with massive negative side-effects.

I see the negative side-effects of putting science to use as evidence that it works but "off" enough that it's problematic, indicating it paints a picture of the world that is a flawed picture (or story).

Science is a method AND a picture of the world. Even the stuff about side-stepping subjectivity, when put back into mythic/imagistic terms, gives a picture of a disembodied mind hovering outside of our “fleshbag” appendages (our bodies) and looking down upon the world… much like Descartes’ take on god and how we connect with him/it via “mind”. This is a tale with lots of holes in it.

Objectivity is a tale about a disembodied mind. And we wreck the world because we don’t feel connected to it; our story tells us it is there for our use, it’s a mechanism to be decoded, it’s a grab bag of resources. And that’s the Story that motivates the behaviors of our culture.

Our technological culture has its “just-so story”. The story's evidence-based, but what you’re to make of that evidence is told to you by the story and the values it teaches. No method obviates the story, that there’s a method that does this is actually part of the story.

The uses that our better understandings are put to (and what you see as negatives) are not science. Those uses are driven by governmental and societal decisions, in many cases spurred by philosophical arguments of what "government ought to do". The fact that you even have knowledge of the "detrimental side effects" from the implementation of our gained knowledge, can be credited to scientific studies.

But then you are suggesting that understanding and knowledge themselves are evil?

 

[modernPrimitive2]

I can only repeat the part of my post that you didn't address:

But then you are only offering a “just-so-story” spun from imagination. Many equally valid “just-so-stories” are spun by others to explain the same phenomena – the reason that philosophy today is just a series of arguments between opposing “just-so-stories”.

If there is a societal concern for the social problems you list then philosophers arguing over their just-so-stories isn't the way to address them. There first must be some method instituted to determine which if any of the proposed just-so-stories are true. For the last three thousand years, philosophical argument has proven to be ineffective at determining "truth". To select any (even yours) as a basis for public policy to address the problems could well only exacerbate the condition.

Also part of your original reply:

You also don’t seem to understand what science is. Science is a methodology, not a series of statements to be believed as truth. The methodology weeds out subjectivity leaving only demonstrateable objective relationships. Of course, during the process of reaching an understanding of these objective relationships requires wading through a sea of guesses as to the nature of those relationships to eliminate those with incorrect assumptions that fail the objective testing. I guess you could say that this methodology is just a psychic meme but it does work to reach an understanding reality well enough to give us the technological world we live in today.

Technically the scientific method is based on empiricism - the entire basis of which is founded on philosophical dialectic. But empiricism is not restricted to the hard sciences and has application in the soft sciences (such as psychology) as well. The problem however is that the systems being researched are generally so complex that the level of isolation required to demonstrate exact objective relationships is often not viable or exceedingly difficult. You seem quite forgiving with the idea that science requires "wading through a sea of guesses" but don't extend the same level of forgiveness to those areas of empirical research that are more complex.

With regards to something like mythology one is able to discern "objective relationships". For example "creation myths" or "hero myths" are a common form of myth across different cultures. Precisely what this implies about the objective nature of the psyche does indeed become more challenging due to the complexity of the human psyche and here so we need to do some of that "wading through a sea of guesses" and simply hazard our best rational guess. For example, we might say that a common theme in myth is a confrontation with a "dark mother archetype". Baba Yagga, Hansel & Gretel, Medusa, Repunzel to name a few. In combination with empirical data we gather about human relationships, human behaviour and clinical counselling we can infer that there is an objective relationship between the aforementioned myths, emerging as "creative narrative" and psychological trauma experienced in relation to "mothering". So here we can deduce quite reasonably that these narrative myths imply something objective about human behaviour and the structure of the human psyche. Sure there's some "wading" going on but it's the best we can do at this stage, just like Special Relativity was "the best we could do" at one stage.

 

[abaddon]

Then you are listening to people that don't understand science. Science doesn't declare "truth". Science is a methodology that works at giving us a better understanding of the universe and how it works - not "truth".

Yeah, yeah, that’s why there are both quotation marks and an alternative word to cover more people. You’re being a pedant.

The uses that our better understandings are put to (and what you see as negatives) are not science. Those uses are driven by governmental and societal decisions, in many cases spurred by philosophical arguments of what "government ought to do". The fact that you even have knowledge of the "detrimental side effects" from the implementation of our gained knowledge, can be credited to scientific studies.

I’m suggesting our culture’s values need a drastic overhaul. The story of the world as a dead mechanism and resource, peppered only with some important bits (viz, humans… or some of them… and those favored ‘resources’) is old and deadly news. The point is, we all have a story and there’s no stepping out of stories into a story-less objective place. Saying there's such a place is just to repeat a story were you brought up inside of.

But then you are suggesting that understanding and knowledge themselves are evil?

No I said science is incomplete, as everyone knows; not "evil" or even in any way "bad". (Assuming it's really science you're feeling defensive about).

 

[modernPrimitive2]

Objectivity is a tale about a disembodied mind. And we wreck the world because we don’t feel connected to it; our story tells us it is there for our use, it’s a mechanism to be decoded, it’s a grab bag of resources. And that’s the Story that motivates the behaviors of our culture.

[emphasis mine]

Quite right, the rational function is a form of psychic dissociation. A necessary and evolutionary dissociation yes, but failure to re-associate with the rest of the psyche has potentially dire consequences. How do we know that? Well from the perspective of clinical psychology an overly rational individual tends to struggle with emotional relatedness. In the psychology of Jung, which was more mythically oriented he spoke about "possession of the psyche by the animus or anima". While that may conveniently be brushed off as a "fiction" by scientism Jung had the empirical data of thousands of patients in order to make that "objective assessment". In a more literal way you could say that he observed unhealthy behaviours attributed to the rational function and irrational functions in individuals - meaning that this "possession" led to psychological pathologies or difficulties in dealing with day to day social reality.

There are mythologies about the consequences of a "possession by the rational / irrational functions" and they don't tend to end very well.

 

[skepticalbip]

Yeah, yeah, that’s why there are both quotation marks and an alternative word to cover more people. You’re being a pedant.

Truth was in quotes for a couple reasons. First, I was responding to your post where you used quotes. Second, only philosophy and religions (a branch of philosophy) claim to offer truths. Science never makes such a claim. Even established theoretical models are constantly tested for their validity. Newtonian mechanics was accepted as a valid model for several hundred years but was constantly tested until a test in 1887 showed it to have problems. The theory that replaced it, relativity offered in the early 20th century, has been continually tested for validity ever since.

The uses that our better understandings are put to (and what you see as negatives) are not science. Those uses are driven by governmental and societal decisions, in many cases spurred by philosophical arguments of what "government ought to do". The fact that you even have knowledge of the "detrimental side effects" from the implementation of our gained knowledge, can be credited to scientific studies.

I’m suggesting our culture’s values need a drastic overhaul. The story of the world as a dead mechanism and resource, peppered only with some important bits (viz, humans… or some of them… and those favored ‘resources’) is old and deadly news. The point is, we all have a story and there’s no stepping out of stories into a story-less objective place. Saying there's such a place is just to repeat a story were you brought up inside of.

This is in the wrong thread since it addresses a very different question.

But then you are suggesting that understanding and knowledge themselves are evil?

No I said science is incomplete, as everyone knows; not "evil" or even in any way "bad". (Assuming it's really science you're feeling defensive about).

No one would disagree that science is incomplete. The very nature of science says that it can't be unless humans somehow magically become omniscient. But that doesn't mean that we are not continually learning more about the universe and how it works.