Philosophy Now Forum

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:14 pm

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:08 pm

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 7:25 pm

Once again, I wasn't speaking just of dowsing. Are you being intentionally obtuse?

As to dowsing the following is a much more reasonable explanation:

But I *am* talking about dowsing though, so it's clearly you who are being obtuse.

And, as I said earlier when you posted that same quote, I prefer to rely on my own experience and that of others who know what they're doing. Whoever wrote that clearly doesn't know the subject very well, if they think that dowsers ascribe supernatural power to the rods.

Try it yourself. It's easy.

Well, it's clear that you aren't about to start bringing any intellectual honesty to the table. Not about numinosity. Not about where you got lost in the discussion. Not about dowsing.

And so it goes...

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 1:48 pm

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 12:03 pm Wasn't asking her to "compare and contrast" her feelings with mine. I was asking her to "compare and contrast" her own feelings.

Ah, ok, apologies.
As a tangent I can have powerful experiences with places (generally in nature) and also with music. Someone mentioned Arvo Part, some of whose works I love. There is a difference from what I experience in nature. In music I feel like it can take me back to older experiences or even combine experiences or sort of play me like an instrument. I might even use the word numinous for some of these experiences. In nature I feel like I am in the presence of an entity or entities.

Both my experiences of music and my experiences in nature are very, very diverse and of course often pretty mundane even with works or in places that at other times have different effects.

But music seems to be eliciting something in me, even when it is something I would call spiritualish. While nature seems like direct contact with some other, some others.

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 4:16 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 2:13 pm

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 12:02 am

I know what you mean by it, but you have elevated it to the status of a religious dogma.

Well, from my frame of mind, that is ridiculous. But if, from your frame of mind, that is actually what you believe given our many, many exchanges over the years then I can only assume this comes back to how little we can truly grasp about each other given the very different lives that we have lived. That and the part where we both agreed that above all else we would make every effort to avoid causing others pain and suffering given the behaviors we choose.

We can try, though. It may not be possible to fully understand what other people are thinking, but language has evolved for this exact purpose.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:06 pm

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 4:16 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 2:13 pm

Well, from my frame of mind, that is ridiculous. But if, from your frame of mind, that is actually what you believe given our many, many exchanges over the years then I can only assume this comes back to how little we can truly grasp about each other given the very different lives that we have lived. That and the part where we both agreed that above all else we would make every effort to avoid causing others pain and suffering given the behaviors we choose.

We can try, though. It may not be possible to fully understand what other people are thinking, but language has evolved for this exact purpose.

Language has evolved for that purpose when what we are attempting to understand can be encompassed objectively for all of us by the use of language. But in regard to such things as moral and political and spiritual convictions, human language hasn't even come close to accomplishing that. The part I subsume in dasein. The part you subsume in, well, something else.

The fact that on this thread alone we can't encompass numinosity in a language we all agree on speaks volumes regarding the limitations of language.

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 3:44 pm What evidence can you provide that the feeling in fact emanates from "direct contact with some other, some others". Is it just an irrational feeling?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 10:42 pm

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 3:44 pm What evidence can you provide that the feeling in fact emanates from "direct contact with some other, some others". Is it just an irrational feeling?

That's a different issue. I don't know about Maia, but for me my reactions to music and my reactions to nature, when they come to this numinous type of experience, are not the same kind of experience.

Maia wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:36 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:06 pm

Maia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 4:16 pm

We can try, though. It may not be possible to fully understand what other people are thinking, but language has evolved for this exact purpose.

Language has evolved for that purpose when what we are attempting to understand can be encompassed objectively for all of us by the use of language. But in regard to such things as moral and political and spiritual convictions, human language hasn't even come close to accomplishing that. The part I subsume in dasein. The part you subsume in, well, something else.

The fact that on this thread alone we can't encompass numinosity in a language we all agree on speaks volumes regarding the limitations of language.

I don't really know what else to say. If you ask me something specific, I'll try and answer it.

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 12:41 am The only difference for you is that you irrationally get the sense from some places that it emanates from "direct contact with some other, some others". But at the core, the feeling is same. If it wasn't, you would not use the word "numinous" for both.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 3:40 am

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 12:41 am The only difference for you is that you irrationally get the sense from some places that it emanates from "direct contact with some other, some others". But at the core, the feeling is same. If it wasn't, you would not use the word "numinous" for both.

1) you have no reason to assume it is irrational. Or to call, as you earlier did, it irrational emotion. Emotions are non-rational. They are not working something out in a logical, verbal process. 'Irrational' is generally pejorative. I prefer to expand the range of options: rational, non-rational and irrational. I mean, empathy, for example, is non-rational. If we are talking about an immediate emotional response to someone's visible pain, for example. 2) You don't know they are the same feeling, but you are telling me it is. 3) I wouldn't use numinous for The Talking Heads. I wouldn't use 'joyful' for much of Peter Gabriel. I would use 'joyful' for some interpersonal experiences and some experiences where there is no other. As I said, I can feel like music is calling me back to past experiences, and these can be of many kinds. Music also seems to manage to combine past experiences, or call back combinations. This can include experiences that were numinous. It's different when I am in nature. In those instances when I feel what I could call numinous. It's also different when I feel something that is not numinous, per se, in nature, but interpersonal also. Like chatting with an animal. Or any other experience that does not seem so vast..

I can take a shower and feel joyful feelings. I can encounter a friend and have joyful feelings. The experiences do not feel the same, despite the same adjective, even if one facet of the feeling(s) is the same: joyfulness. And remembering meeting someone and meeting someone now, also feel different. Feeling also being broader term than emotion for me. Covering more facets of experiences. It feels different to remember my friend Joe, then to meet my friend Joe, even if both experiences, one of memory, one not, make me happy or sad or whatever.

You can feel things related to pheramones or related to chemicals released by plants where one is not aware of what is causing the changes, but one notices (or doesn't) the changes made. Or the difference between being in a large quiet space in darkenss and a small space, even if one is not consciously noticing the way very low volume sounds are different.
Just to expand on feelings that aren't emotions.

irrational: not based on reason, good judgment, or clear thinking
• She had an irrational fear of cats.
• an irrational prejudice

From <https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/irrational>

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:03 pm And then there's what the word actually means. I have every reason to call it irrational. Prefer whatever you want. Doesn't change what the word actually means. Reread your post. It's nonsense. Littered with strawmen, illogical leaps, etc. You're being irrationally defensive.

irrational: not based on reason, good judgment, or clear thinking
• She had an irrational fear of cats.
• an irrational prejudice

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 9:00 pm

ThinkOfOne wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:03 pm And then there's what the word actually means. I have every reason to call it irrational. Prefer whatever you want. Doesn't change what the word actually means. Reread your post. It's nonsense. Littered with strawmen, illogical leaps, etc. You're being irrationally defensive.

irrational: not based on reason, good judgment, or clear thinking
• She had an irrational fear of cats.
• an irrational prejudice

You could have focused on one point I made. You could have pointed out a specific strawman or leap. You could have asked for clarification. You could have been polite, as I was. But no, you followed a sadly common approach...

State opinion. Get a response. Repeat position without interacting in the slightest with the response. Label the other person's response negatively, without justifying the labels. And for good measure throw in an insulting mindread at the end. (the irony of all this, especially the last, seems not to have occurred to you)

There are a few people here who while disagreeing with me can manage to actually interact with points made and surprisingly enough manage to avoid using mindreading insults.

I'll interact with them and ignore you.

Maia wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 7:36 am

Atla wrote: ↑Mon Apr 21, 2025 4:40 am

Maia wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 7:36 am

Here's my latest conjecture: I wonder if Lake Victoria and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa were the primordial numinous places to us. And they also could have been the primordial boundaries in the world to us.

I remember what an unusually strong effect Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro had on me when I was younger. I didn't really know why. It wasn't the story itself, I can't even remember the story, but it was the setting itself. This lone, large and tall mountain, stretching up to the sky, and one lone leopard climbing up to the sky to die.

Now the leopard may have actually been chasing a goat and/or maybe felines also have some vague naural sense of the spiritual, the divine, like we humans do. But I think we humans sure have this sensation, a fascination with mountains. This sense of ascending to the sky because that's where the heavens are. Reach it and it will become clear to you what this world and life is, was all about. And up there, in a sense you become one with the divine, the spiritual, yourself.

And then there's Lake Victoria, maybe it's just me, but when I saw pictures of it, it evoked some unusual response from me. Like there was this vague and eternal sense of belonging and acceptance, peace. Lifegiving freshwater. And it's almost as if I've already been there. Not sure how to describe it.

But I've never been to these places, I've never even been to Africa. And there are countless other mountains and lakes that I've seen and been to, and while they generally evoke similar reactions from me, those reactions aren't nearly this strong. It's like Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria were somehow THE mountain and THE lake.

So lately I put 2 and 2 together and wondered that maybe it's because that is exactly what they are, or rather were. It says, the lake formed about 400000 years ago, and the largest concentration of prehistoric hominid sites in Africa were actually found between this particular lake and mountain, so they also could have served as boundaries somewhat. The top of the mountain was the only place where our ancestors ever saw snow. It mustn't melt. And it was cold up there, unlike anywhere else in Central Africa. Many of our very distant ancestors may have lived and evolved there for hundreds of thousands of years, under the equator sun. So these two places may sort of have become part of their being, they may have been shaped by them. The memories and perceived significances of these two places may still be somewhat embedded deep in our psyches today.