The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 2:04 pm Interesting. I guess there are two questions that arise out of that, in my thinking. One would be how we would know such a thing...is it a voice in one's head? Is it something else? I'd be interested in knowing what your view of the "channel" is. The second question would be, what's your assurance that, if such a "voice" or "insight" comes to you, that it's beneficent, not malevolent? How would one judge that?

I said that in my view Divinity, which is a category that all men and cultures recognize, is an “entity” of many facets. You are really asking me a sociological and anthropological question. And since “ad hominem” is relevant in our analysis, I would necessarily have to describe my cultural matrix, my parents influence, the influence of N California culture, and a great deal about adventurous, rebellious investigations by people whose experiments were their own selves. What am I declaring that I know? All I said is that whatever this “Divine” is, it manifests in and through men in myriad ways. So, take a Lakota Sioux medicine man or shaman (Black Elk or Lame Deer) and the Vision Quest. The undertaking of strenuous isolation on a high mountain where one fasts and prays. And the arrival of visionary experiences or powerful, guiding dreams.

Whatbis this? Where does it cone from? What presides over it? What does it mean that such things occur in our selves, in the Cosmos?

I don’t know, if you yourself did such a thing, and you did experience visions and intense experiences that were strong and meaningful, would you dismiss them as demonic? A strict Christian would, of course, because of that attitude of paranoia which for us is really a leftover of concepts that derive from The Great Chain of Being: that the earth is the cesspool of the Cosmos. As distinct from the “starry heavens” composed of transcendent light. So experiences that come “out of the Earth” are entirely suspect. Consider the story related in The Wizard of the Upper Amazon. An urban Latino, I think Peruvian, lived with a tribe in the Amazon where they used powerful hallucinogens. The man relates an encounter with the presiding spirit of the jungle: the Anaconda. What could be more horrifying to a strict Christian?! But the Anaconda taught this man the lore of living in and hunting in the jungle.

In my own case, and I don’t mind speaking of it, my parents took myself and my sister to India, and to Benares, and I had the freedom to roam around. Naturally, the intensity of the total experience (India will do that) turned my sense of order and continuity upside-down.

What I am trying to get at is that I am aware that I am a product of radical movements, radical choices, and of course radical experiences. It was not my choice, it was a current that I was swept in to by environmental forces and certainly my parents.

I have recently been *studying* the life and photographic work of Diane Arbus. And though she is of my parent’s generation (my parents were a decade younger) I am forced to confront that her generation (in NY) and my parent’s generation in the Bay Area of California, veered into intensely rebellious and exploratory territories. I am of course interested in Arbus’s photographic work because of my own involvement in photography. I do not know what to say though. These people “broke continuity” with traditional cultural lines. Was it “demonic”? It depends so much on how one understands “divinity”. I am certain there were many results that were spiritually negative, but the truth of the matter seems to be that one of the major consequences of The Great War, as Hermann Hesse explores in Demian, was the “shattering” of what he referred to as an “egg”of a created world. He meant Europe but he also meant much more, and things “inner”. And then again I mention it: Harry Haller in Steppenwolf. His spiritual growth arose as a result of his adventures into a chaotic, even a somewhat dark world of experience. It had to happen.

Consider as well Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Heretic of Soana. It is hard to explain but the protagonist, a young priest, finds that he cannot avoid entering into the world of intense nature and there discovers a different aspect of divinity best represented by Pan.

It turns his world upside-down. But though it transformed (or ‘ruined’) his path, he does not regret it nor see it as “sinful”.

The “world” was shattered in so many ways as a result of that Great War. And really the trend is ever downward. I mean, Europe is in crisis. The Occident is in crisis. And everyone writing on this forum writes in so many senses from agonized perspectives.

Apparently, only Alexis Jacobi has the philosophical wherewithal to rise up to such Wondrous Heights thanks to Providential golden steps that continually appear before him. It seems quite probable that I was once Lucretius and wrote these vibrant lines:

Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds
Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
To watch another's labouring anguish far,
Not that we joyously delight that man
Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;
'Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife
Of armies embattled yonder o'er the plains,
Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught
There is more goodly than to hold the high
Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise,
Whence thou may'st look below on other men
And see them ev'rywhere wand'ring, all dispersed
In their lone seeking for the road of life;
Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,
Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil
For summits of power and mastery of the world.
O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!
In how great perils, in what darks of life
Are spent the human years, however brief!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 12:31 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Sep 15, 2026 2:04 pm Interesting. I guess there are two questions that arise out of that, in my thinking. One would be how we would know such a thing...is it a voice in one's head? Is it something else? I'd be interested in knowing what your view of the "channel" is. The second question would be, what's your assurance that, if such a "voice" or "insight" comes to you, that it's beneficent, not malevolent? How would one judge that?

I said that in my view Divinity, which is a category that all men and cultures recognize, is an “entity” of many facets. You are really asking me a sociological and anthropological question.

No, not at all...I was thinking of it as an epistemological ("How do you know...?") type of question.

All I said is that whatever this “Divine” is, it manifests in and through men in myriad ways.

Well, maybe. But if there is such a thing as a "good" entity of such kind, why not an "evil" or "malevolent" one? All ancient traditions I can think of make a place for such a "bad" entity...Loki, Shiva, Hades, the Wyrm around the World, the Great Dragon...and so on.

So my question was, if you feel yourself to have been contacted from that sort of a realm, what gives you confidence that the agency is benevolent, truthful or good, not malevolent, deceptive or evil? It's a reasonable question, in view of the claim, I would think.

I don’t know, if you yourself did such a thing, and you did experience visions and intense experiences that were strong and meaningful, would you dismiss them as demonic? A strict Christian would, of course,...

No, I think an informed Christian would know of the injunction to "test the spirits," (1 Jn. 4:1), and not jump to any conclusions without having done so. But then, a Christian has a test he can use. What would you use?

I have recently been *studying* the life and photographic work of Diane Arbus. And though she is of my parent’s generation (my parents were a decade younger) I am forced to confront that her generation (in NY) and my parent’s generation in the Bay Area of California, veered into intensely rebellious and exploratory territories. I am of course interested in Arbus’s photographic work because of my own involvement in photography. I do not know what to say though. These people “broke continuity” with traditional cultural lines. Was it “demonic”? It depends so much on how one understands “divinity”. I am certain there were many results that were spiritually negative, but the truth of the matter seems to be that one of the major consequences of The Great War, as Hermann Hesse explores in Demian, was the “shattering” of what he referred to as an “egg”of a created world. He meant Europe but he also meant much more, and things “inner”. And then again I mention it: Harry Haller in Steppenwolf. His spiritual growth arose as a result of his adventures into a chaotic, even a somewhat dark world of experience. It had to happen.

Consider as well Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Heretic of Soana. It is hard to explain but the protagonist, a young priest, finds that he cannot avoid entering into the world of intense nature and there discovers a different aspect of divinity best represented by Pan.

It turns his world upside-down. But though it transformed (or ‘ruined’) his path, he does not regret it nor see it as “sinful”.

Perhaps. But then again, what's the test?

It looks to me like you're finding yourself amid "voices" of various kinds. But to sort them out, anybody would need some sort of meta-system or stable set of criteria for discerning which to attend, and which to dismiss. How do you choose to do it? What's your touchstone, or your criteria?

Fanman wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2026 2:43 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 9:19 pm

Fanman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 7:36 pm Personally, I believe that it is a category error to discuss the attributes of “God” or “gods”, because they would exist in a different ontology. Without an understanding of the ontologies they exist in, it would be a hasty generalisation fallacy to claim what they are and what they can and cannot do. With that in mind, when it comes to an argument like the omnipotence paradox, I am happy to discuss omnipotence as a concept, but not a being. That’s how I maintain category discipline.

The word omnipotence means all-powerful. So my first thought relative to the paradox is: how can something be impossible for a concept without limitations? That is not logical; therefore, is there an issue with how omnipotence is being understood? I think so. Omnipotence necessarily means (not implies) no upper limit. Therefore, omnipotence cannot create a circumstance it cannot exceed — conceptually, no matter how heavy omnipotence makes the stone, it will always be able to lift it because it always has more power.

So, the question for me is not what God or the concept of omnipotence can do — because it has no upper limit — but rather: Why do people impose a limit on the concept of being all-powerful (without limitation)? From my perspective, the omnipotence paradox is a human category misunderstanding, rather than a thought experiment questioning the capacity of a being that exists in a different ontology.

NB: To avoid semantic arguments, my use of the term "omnipotence" is consistent with the Merriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries. So, I won't be discussing that.

Is believing God to be perfectly benevolent and all-knowing also a "category error"? And if God is not omnipotent in the sense of "can do anything", then are there some things God cannot do? For example, can God stop an earthquake from happening in a big city on Earth, or can God not do so? Did God create the universe in which the Earth consists of tectonic plates that create earthquakes? Could it not have been created differently? Did God create anything at all? Or is God just something humans label some being that is superior to us but didn't create the universe? And if God didn't create anything at all, then did biological beings miraculously appear in their present form from nothing? Or did they evolve slowly over time from other beings (that evolved from non-living biological molecules that form on their own according to chemistry and physics) according to the properties or conditions present in the physical universe?

I do not believe in God, so I don’t have an opinion on anything you’ve stated. My post refers to the omnipotence paradox, not the what and whys of ‘God’. A being who purportedly exists in another ontology. My argument is conceptual; your argument is ontological — I will not mix those categories.

So you do not believe in God. And yet you say that the human conception of omnipotence cannot be applied to God. What if God exists? If so, then how do you know the human conception of omnipotence cannot be applied to God?

Also, when you say you do not believe in God are you suggesting that God does not exist, that God is a completely human fabrication, such as unicorns or the tooth fairy, which are completely fabricated by humans and do not exist?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 1:31 am It looks to me like you're finding yourself amid "voices" of various kinds. But to sort them out, anybody would need some sort of meta-system or stable set of criteria for discerning which to attend, and which to dismiss. How do you choose to do it? What's your touchstone, or your criteria?

Let’s rather organize our comparison of ‘modes of experience’ and certainly of background and cultural matrix by recognizing the distinction: your experience, your formation, was nothing like mine and yours does not include nor would it ‘validate’ (as far as I can tell) any of the sources of experience that I referred to. Naturally, your ‘objective’ is to analyze the elements as a committed Evangelical and certainly you have the objective of “conversion” as it is the primary imperative. It is the larger reason of why you are here.

I do understand that you desire to frame for question as epistemological but I had good reasons to redirect your ‘inquiry’ to stories about formation, cultural influences, and of course the entrance of the “exotic” and the strange. An epistemological framing, for issues of subjective experience and impression, requires a structure, devised or received, into which experience can be slotted or cubbyholed.

For this reason I mentioned Gerhard Hauptmann and also Hermann Hesse. But this reference did not ‘resonate’ with you because the literary references would seem irrelevant to you, and since you once told me that you had not read Steppenwolf, I assume the same for Hauptmann since he is more esoteric still.

Ultimately, and it is far more interesting to get right to the nitty-gritty of this exchange, your question is: Are my experiences of a demonic or of an angelical sort?

And so my “answer” follows a line that I have been developing for a long time now, but which does not interest you and indeed you cannot hear, and it is that: the world of Nature (i.e. this Plane of Reality) if it is God’s creation, as it cannot BUT be, requires a different understanding than is typical. The world is a very very strange place and as a reflection of its creator is multivalent and ‘multi-faceted’. The experiences that come to one are, to put it lyrically, both angelic and demonic all at once, or rather compacted together. This is why I referred to Hesse and Demian. In the post-Great War period, one might say, ordered worlds were shaken. Hesse began to understand God as Abraxis. All of this is strange material for a man of your strict orientation and commitment. But I am talking about what happened sociologically and indeed anthropologically.

The epistemological question could be relevant, perhaps highly so, but it is backgrounded at least for a while.

I would submit that in your world you avoid as far as possible an experience of the world that allows or permit me to say that ‘honors’ the stranger aspect, or to put it differently that aspect which is Pan-like. Pan was, naturally, converted into a devil as was Cupid. The Christian outlook tends, overall, to create or intensify separation from Nature and from wide and strange experience.

AJ: All I said is that whatever this “Divine” is, it manifests in and through men in myriad ways.

iC: Well, maybe.

You might have said “Well, certainly!” but you didn’t and in fact you do not think so.

But my view is “Very definitely it is like that”.

This is another element I have focused on often but which has little or no relevance for you (you as Evangelical Christian). In your System a person, a soul, is created along with the body. It is born into this world, this realm, and has one shot as it were to “get it” (which in your world is effectively one solitary ‘thing’ if putting it like that makes sense). Then, that soul is lifted out of everything that is “world” and translated to a non-specific realm that is not-world. I.e. no danger, no ambiguity, no struggle, effectively no life (as we understand it).

But in my view — is this ontological or epistemological? — I think we repeat existences and therefore we have to describe what this process is and Why it has been set up like this. Who did this? How has this come about? Why am I in this world? And what is it that I am experiencing here? And what happens to me as I go through the world with all its experiences?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:16 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 1:31 am It looks to me like you're finding yourself amid "voices" of various kinds. But to sort them out, anybody would need some sort of meta-system or stable set of criteria for discerning which to attend, and which to dismiss. How do you choose to do it? What's your touchstone, or your criteria?

Let’s rather...

No, I'd "rather" have an answer to my question, please. It's terribly straightforward...one would only "redirect" if one had no answer.

Ultimately, and it is far more interesting to get right to the nitty-gritty of this exchange, your question is: Are my experiences of a demonic or of an angelical sort?

Essentially...though those are not the words I used.

The experiences that come to one are, to put it lyrically, both angelic and demonic all at once, or rather compacted together.

This only makes the problem more urgent. It doesn't solve it at all.

What it means is that you sense that the "voices" amid which you find yourself are of a mixed sort; and since this is the case, it becomes all the more urgent that you have a means of navigating between good "advice" and bad "advice" from these sources. And I'm simply curious about how you achieve this.

I don't see the need for your evasiveness here, if you have an answer. This business of navigating among the "voices" is, of course, something you must be doing all the time.

How do you prevent yourself from being misled by the bad while you seek the good?

AJ: ...but do not have, and have no way even to conceive of, a “holistic frame” or an integrated picture.

Wilbur: What do you think an integrated picture entails?

But Wilbur, you are the philosopher. And you’ve charged through Philosophy’s Doors. You are certainly aware of the evolution of thought. You have all the background in the movement of thought through time and history and you of all people must have the genuine clarity to see, as no one else can see or has ever been able to see, man’s quandary; and by Jove you must be aware, as no man has been aware before, the degree to which we approach The Brink or that The Brink moves toward us. And therefore I must intuit and I must believe that it is you, with all those letters letters that dance after your name, that you are ready to tell ME what really is going and also what the integral relationship to lived life is and must be!

Instruct me, for thou knowest

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 1:10 pm

Fanman wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2026 2:43 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 9:19 pm

Is believing God to be perfectly benevolent and all-knowing also a "category error"? And if God is not omnipotent in the sense of "can do anything", then are there some things God cannot do? For example, can God stop an earthquake from happening in a big city on Earth, or can God not do so? Did God create the universe in which the Earth consists of tectonic plates that create earthquakes? Could it not have been created differently? Did God create anything at all? Or is God just something humans label some being that is superior to us but didn't create the universe? And if God didn't create anything at all, then did biological beings miraculously appear in their present form from nothing? Or did they evolve slowly over time from other beings (that evolved from non-living biological molecules that form on their own according to chemistry and physics) according to the properties or conditions present in the physical universe?

I do not believe in God, so I don’t have an opinion on anything you’ve stated. My post refers to the omnipotence paradox, not the what and whys of ‘God’. A being who purportedly exists in another ontology. My argument is conceptual; your argument is ontological — I will not mix those categories.

So you do not believe in God. And yet you say that the human conception of omnipotence cannot be applied to God. What if God exists? If so, then how do you know the human conception of omnipotence cannot be applied to God?

Also, when you say you do not believe in God are you suggesting that God does not exist, that God is a completely human fabrication, such as unicorns or the tooth fairy, which are completely fabricated by humans and do not exist?

The whole point is that God, if it exists, does so in a different ontology — a different ontology is a different category of being. I'm not going to mix the ontology (or category) of humans with that of God; I hope I have made it clear this time. Also, I identify as agnostic.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:56 pm No, I'd "rather" have an answer to my question, please. It's terribly straightforward...one would only "redirect" if one had no answer.

“Too terribly straightforward!” said the Mad Hatter. “Please, come at things sideways, like a crab”.

Alexis Jacobi does not now and will not ever answer question directly. Alexis Jacobi, by way of Abraxian counsel, answers question in accord with a didactic method that rises up like smoke out of a crevice in the Blessèd Earth.

AJ: Ultimately, and it is far more interesting to get right to the nitty-gritty of this exchange, your question is: Are my experiences of a demonic or of an angelical sort?

IC: Essentially...though those are not the words I used.

This is good. We at least have this established. It is what you mean.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 3:12 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:56 pm No, I'd "rather" have an answer to my question, please. It's terribly straightforward...one would only "redirect" if one had no answer.

“Too terribly straightforward!” said the Mad Hatter. “Please, come at things sideways, like a crab”.

Alexis Jacobi does not now and will not ever answer question directly. Alexis Jacobi, by way of Abraxian counsel, answers question in accord with a didactic method that rises up like smoke out of a crevice in the Blessèd Earth.

I see.

So you have no answer. If you did, it would be very, very easy to provide one. But there is none...just another "redirection."

Okay, that's all I needed to know.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 3:34 pm I see.

Through a glass, darkly.

From The Heretic of Saona by Gerhart Hauptmann:

…truly grand sensation of existence course through him, making him forget for moments that he was a priest and why he had come here. All his notions of piety, which were intertwined with a host of ecclesiastical rules and dogmas, had not only been displaced by this sensation, but extinguished by it. Now he even forgot to cross himself. Below him lay the beautiful Lugano region of the Upper Italian Alpine world…
…

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:56 pm How do you prevent yourself from being misled by the bad while you seek the good?

I need to know more of what you understand of “the good”. Again I refer to Hauptmann. His protagonist followed a path conventionally understood to be “good” but up there in the Alps as Spring turned to Summer and Nature intensified in power and if you will glory, he had experiences that he could not classify through strict binaries.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 3:50 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:56 pm How do you prevent yourself from being misled by the bad while you seek the good?

I need to know more of what you understand of “the good”.

You can define it as you please.

You can even call what I call "evil" "good," and what I call "good" "evil." Or you can say there are only "things that please," and "things that won't." Whatever.

It won't change the problem. It's simply one of how one distinguishes ANYTHING in a realm of "voices."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 4:10 pm It won't change the problem. It's simply one of how one distinguishes ANYTHING in a realm of "voices."

But you are asking me to answer a question that is your concoction. I do not believe that I referred to “voices” and in reality you are asking a question strictly within your own framework which is not one I can say I share, or only with many caveats.

For this reason I presented a much larger picture of what has happened to “us” in the last 100 years. I spelled it out quite clearly in fact. But you quite simply refuse to cooperate if it does not occur within your framing. We have encountered the exact same impasse a dozen times. And, in my view, it is your impasse to get through, not mine.

I ask you to define this “good”, which is crucial for deciding things in relation to ‘experience’ yet you refuse. But an answer is crucial! Define it as I please? What?! You have a very strict snd very defined sense of what is good, certainly, but there are liminal areas that if explored would I think confound your certainties.

And that is one of my points.

As always Alexis Jacobi does not accept that you frame, direct or control how conversations proceed. You only need to see that you have these traits and motives that require just a wee bit of modification.