"There’s a common idea that we lost meaning because of rationality.
According to this story, the world was “enchanted,” pervasively charged with meaning, before rationality was invented."
Hmm, I don't think that's what people mainly mean by "disenchantment". What was pervasive before rationality was the presence of "agents" - gods, demons, spirits, etc, both like and unlike us, inscrutable but interactable with. It turned out that belief in such agents was useless for most practical purposes, whereas math was very useful. But (most) human brains are wired for thinking about agents, not highly abstract structures, thus the great consternation.
For the record, I agree with most. And most strongly with the proposition that we never lost meaning. Or enchantment. Some I don't understand enough to agree or disagree. For example, I'm not sure how much of our culture code today is not just noise(s) instead of signal(s). And how much what we are suddenly able to do (or feel, or know) isn't a bigger problem than what we are no longer able to do (or feel, or know). I'm thinking here of the evolving discord between our environments and our bodies and minds. Anyway, thanks 🙏
Exactly, “rock” in that phrase is part of a compound noun, not an adjective.
I studied linguistics in college, and an example we learned was “small large shirt” vs. “large small shirt”. To most English speakers, a small large shirt is one that’s labelled as large, but is on the small side for a large shirt (it shrunk, the brand’s sizing is smaller, or whatever). And a large small shirt is the opposite: officially a small shirt, but it’s bigger than usual compared to other small shirts.
It makes sense that it’s easier to think about these things when they’re modern, manmade types of things (like a shirt that’s labelled “size large”). Like the example of a salt shaker in the original article, we have an understanding of what people invented these things for. The question of “what does it mean that I’m a woman?” is much harder.
In your attack on Metaphysics as True and Metaphysics as Good, I think you are catching Metaphysics as Beauty as collateral damage.
Any conceptual structure, being a form, has an aesthetic. Is the aesthetics of a particular metaphysical view worth other aspects of confusion? Depends on an individual's purposes and circumstance, as usual.
Understanding this potentially positive aspect of Metaphysics can, among other things, allow even those of us who prefer a metaphysics-free life to appreciate other's unreflective enjoyment of their metaphysics, and ward off impulses to interfere or criticize other's enjoyment of their metaphysics unless a supervening reason arises.
The more I sit with this, especially alongside your disagreement with Vervaeke, the more it makes me think about cognition before language. Watching my 18-month-old, there’s clearly structure and pattern recognition happening, but not yet these rigid categories or metaphysical assumptions layered on top. Meaning seems to show up through interaction and relationships rather than fixed definitions, which in some ways feels closer to reality than the frameworks we inherit later. That’s why I’m not sure we ever lost meaning so much as layered over it with increasingly rigid abstractions. What you’re calling thought soup feels like the residue of those structures continuing to shape things even after they’ve stopped matching reality.
This is an interesting article. It really pulled me in. I don't have much to say about it, though, and I can't share it with my friend group because they just dump on your stuff. No point to doing that.
Going back to this after I just dropped the previous comment about Hellenic Tantra...
I think that you think that you are bashing metaphysics while you are actually bashing dualism. Isn't that the case? It seems to me there is a metaphysical component in both Neoplatonism and Vajrayana. On one occasion you have the One that manifests as Many, and can only manifest that way. It can't be known directly. And then you have Dharmakaya that is in some context an absolute compassionate principle as well, from which the other kayas and actually the whole world follow. Both metaphysical approaches are non-dual, meaning that there is no real difference between all the pieces. Some Neoplatonic philosophers were becoming Gods in a very similar way tantrikas become deities. They all let themselves be channels for something else, and by that they participate.
You can surely say that we can drop non-dualism as a concept, because it simply means that everything is one, so there is no added meaning or explanatory power. But perhaps we need this just to remember and experience the world as it can be.
The whole meaning crisis is a folly put together by Christians, we could say semi-jokingly. Christians were the ones that dismantled Neoplatonic non-dualism where Gods, nature and us were one and everything was meaningful. The issue was not created by losing Christianity. It was created by dualism, which was brought upon us by Christianity, it seems to me. So the issue is not that we have dismantled Christianity, the issue is that we haven't dismantled it enough.
Honestly I feel like I've just today managed to drop the Christian in me. That dualism goes extremely deep. The cultural grammar and what not. That feeling of poverty. And you know what happened? The whole universe came to life. I can't explain it. I've been practicing Vajrayana for like 2 years, but it feels like I've only managed to drop dualism today. It's a weird feeling. But it feels like going back home, in an absolutely embodied way.
Chalk and cheese are different from each other. They are not essentially different, nor merely accidentally different. They are also similar (whitish biologically-derived homogeneous solids of intermediate hardness). The differences are meaningful for some purposes, and the similarities are meaningful for some purposes.
Vajrayana does include metaphysics. I think that’s unfortunate, and try to practice and explain Vajrayana without the metaphysics.
Vajrayana’s metaphysics comes mainly from late Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana metaphysics explicitly rejects both monism and dualism as metaphysical errors, and promotes an alternative that is neither. As far that goes, I think it’s correct.
This is often a main point in philosophical arguments between Buddhism and Hinduism, including between Vajrayana and non-dual Hindu tantra. According to Buddhist philosophers, Advaita Hinduism is monist, and therefore Vajrayana and Hindu tantra are essentially different, despite accidental similarities. According to their Hindu opponents, Advaita is not monist, and therefore Vajrayana and Hindu tantra are essentially the same, despite accidental differences.
I was a bit imprecise in my writing, I didn’t really want to point to monism, but rather to the fact that I agree that we can practice without these concepts altogether. If I had to use a word, I would turn to non-dual as in “there is no separation”, whatever that means. It’s more of a feeling.
So yeah, my personal stance is also that I don’t care about metaphysics. Or I would love not to care. But it’s kinda funny to see that it somehow happened to me that I dismantled the unconscious dualistic Christian metaphysics with non-dual metaphysics, which now creates more space to actually give up on either. If you can jump to the finish line immediately, I guess good for you, but… 🙂
Vajrayana without metaphysics is an interesting topic. I started practicing without being interested in metaphysics, at least consciously, but it always keeps creeping back in when you read more traditional authors. Or even when you get to practices like tummo and the overall subtle body. For me metaphysics is already believing in any story that “can’t be proven” really. These are wrong words but unsure what to say really. When somebody talks about the actual subtle body, bardo or whatever. My approach is really, this is useful, it works, I will see how far I can push this. And it’s essentially all mythic mode. There you don’t care what “can be proven”.
Even writing the previous paragraph still feels like getting back to metaphysics, into that split and grasping. It feels confused. Better to turn towards nebulosity and patterns already…
Anyway, I follow your work because I essentially agree with articles like the God-Emperror one and the whole nobility saga. It’s lovely not because it’s true, but because it all shows how you can live your life and be empowered. I like doing Chenrezig or whoever deity yoga not because I want to channel cosmic energy, but because I just find it worthwhile to offer my life to a meme/myth like that. The same with the Bodhisattva vow. I don’t care about any framework in the end. Find what you want to become and become that fully. Also know that it’s totally empty and arbitrary. Do that until your last breath. Die happy, holding your life and your own personal vow as fulfilled.
If there is any reincarnation, it's reincarnation of a myth.
I am reading Hellenic Tantra by Gregory Shaw. It's about what Neoplatonism should have been, or what it was before it was messed up by the Church. And it's actully on par with Shaiva Tantra. Nice reading 😋
If I understand correctly, this more correct metaphysics/grammar may (at least presently) be more the output of than input to a 5th order of consciousness, meta-rational stance in our meaning making vs a world that is more and more accelerating 'over our heads'. In that sense, it may be a correct diagnosis of the meaningness crisis and culture wars while the cure, at a collective level, remains opaque?
Yes, even pre-verbal cognition is metaphysically primed. Appearances are quickly sorted into "trees," "chairs," "people," etc. and qualifiers like "good," "bad," "useful," etc. are also quickly appended. All this happens "under the hood" and is totally fine (and often necessary) so long that one is aware that this is happening. Slowing down and then carefully examining how cognition happens (first in meditation and then off the cushion) is a powerful antidote to letting faulty metaphysical assumptions (i.e., those that cause dis-ease) run the show.
Another way essences are baked into grammar is with the verb "is." Our language encourages us to jump directly from X appears to me to be Y to X *is* Y.
I've heard of a form of English called E-Prime where one bans themselves from using the word "is" and all its variants. It tends to force you to think about what you're actually saying and sabotages pointless metaphysical arguments, leaving me to wonder if there exists anything worth saying which can only be said with the word "is".
"Emptiness contains form; form contains emptiness"?
How are you thinking of meaning vs purpose here? Is the meaning of the salt shaker to pour salt, or is that its purpose as determined by a specific user of the instrument?
Hmm, I'm not sure of the intent of the question? Purpose is one sort of meaning. But, the point here is just that we do not find the world meaningless.
I have not quite wrapped my head around what you mean by "meaning" (despite reading some of your Meaningness website).
Are you saying that believing in the instrumentality / purposefulness of objects (like salt shakers) around us gives us meaning?
Or are you saying that the perceptual capacity to regard things as useful can somehow be expanded (perhaps to include beauty, sacredness, etc.) to dissolve our crisis of meaning?
I'm still not sure what you are asking... is this specifically about the paragraph starting "Meaning is obvious" and ending "we never lost such meanings"? That's what the salt shaker illustrates. It's a (trivial) refutation of "full-strength nihilism," i.e. the stance that nothing is meaningful at all.
Or are you asking about a broader point? (If so, what?)
To be clear: I am not doing analytic philosophy here. This isn't conceptual analysis. I'm not trying to define "meaning," here or anywhere. I hope nothing I say depends on getting precise about that. I'm using the term in a vague, everyday way.
You do a bait and switch between a certain metaphysical view and the broader category of metaphysics. You jump from "here is an example of how a rule we don't think about affects how we view the world" (fine) to "this entire category is wrong." You're also not defining what you mean by metaphysics (if you have done so elsewehere you should link to it). If you're attempting a critique of philosophy of this scale, you should be much more rigorous about it. I realize this will come off as unduly antagonistic, but I felt compelled to comment out of respect for some of your previous writings. Had you been anyone else I would have rolled my eyes and scrolled past.
"Metaphysics is only ever credible when you deliberately un-see the actual world, and imaginatively inhabit the domain of metaphysical abstractions instead. Doing so is silly and harmful."
Instead of harmful, I would suggest "dangerous." You can keep "silly," but you should add "and sometimes incredibly useful and exceedingly practical." In that case it ends up looking a lot more like riding a bicycle than some esoteric secret that escaped containment and is contaminating our ways of otherwise pure, plain-living. Maybe you want to argue that Einstein's physics were orthogonal to his metaphysics if he had any, but I think it gets harder the further back you go, and by the time you get to Newton it starts to seem absurd. Whether you call it a thought experiment or make-believe, our most creative moments seem to rely on taking metaphysics seriously, even if just for awhile.
"Metaphysics is only ever credible when you deliberately un-see the actual world, and imaginatively inhabit the domain of metaphysical abstractions instead."
What a grand, presumptuous generalization.
One might think that you actually know how everyone other than yourself 'sees' the world.
"There’s a common idea that we lost meaning because of rationality.
According to this story, the world was “enchanted,” pervasively charged with meaning, before rationality was invented."
Hmm, I don't think that's what people mainly mean by "disenchantment". What was pervasive before rationality was the presence of "agents" - gods, demons, spirits, etc, both like and unlike us, inscrutable but interactable with. It turned out that belief in such agents was useless for most practical purposes, whereas math was very useful. But (most) human brains are wired for thinking about agents, not highly abstract structures, thus the great consternation.
For the record, I agree with most. And most strongly with the proposition that we never lost meaning. Or enchantment. Some I don't understand enough to agree or disagree. For example, I'm not sure how much of our culture code today is not just noise(s) instead of signal(s). And how much what we are suddenly able to do (or feel, or know) isn't a bigger problem than what we are no longer able to do (or feel, or know). I'm thinking here of the evolving discord between our environments and our bodies and minds. Anyway, thanks 🙏
I would disagree with you on the rock eaters.
I'd parse "red big rock eater" as a red eater of big rocks. It doesn't have to be big, the rocks it eats just have to be big.
Exactly, “rock” in that phrase is part of a compound noun, not an adjective.
I studied linguistics in college, and an example we learned was “small large shirt” vs. “large small shirt”. To most English speakers, a small large shirt is one that’s labelled as large, but is on the small side for a large shirt (it shrunk, the brand’s sizing is smaller, or whatever). And a large small shirt is the opposite: officially a small shirt, but it’s bigger than usual compared to other small shirts.
It makes sense that it’s easier to think about these things when they’re modern, manmade types of things (like a shirt that’s labelled “size large”). Like the example of a salt shaker in the original article, we have an understanding of what people invented these things for. The question of “what does it mean that I’m a woman?” is much harder.
That would be a red big-rock eater, not a red big rock eater.
Hyphens are often omitted. See: the purple people eater.
Proving the point, no? The sentence is so ungrammatical to your ears that you can't even hear it.
In your attack on Metaphysics as True and Metaphysics as Good, I think you are catching Metaphysics as Beauty as collateral damage.
Any conceptual structure, being a form, has an aesthetic. Is the aesthetics of a particular metaphysical view worth other aspects of confusion? Depends on an individual's purposes and circumstance, as usual.
Understanding this potentially positive aspect of Metaphysics can, among other things, allow even those of us who prefer a metaphysics-free life to appreciate other's unreflective enjoyment of their metaphysics, and ward off impulses to interfere or criticize other's enjoyment of their metaphysics unless a supervening reason arises.
The more I sit with this, especially alongside your disagreement with Vervaeke, the more it makes me think about cognition before language. Watching my 18-month-old, there’s clearly structure and pattern recognition happening, but not yet these rigid categories or metaphysical assumptions layered on top. Meaning seems to show up through interaction and relationships rather than fixed definitions, which in some ways feels closer to reality than the frameworks we inherit later. That’s why I’m not sure we ever lost meaning so much as layered over it with increasingly rigid abstractions. What you’re calling thought soup feels like the residue of those structures continuing to shape things even after they’ve stopped matching reality.
This is an interesting article. It really pulled me in. I don't have much to say about it, though, and I can't share it with my friend group because they just dump on your stuff. No point to doing that.
Going back to this after I just dropped the previous comment about Hellenic Tantra...
I think that you think that you are bashing metaphysics while you are actually bashing dualism. Isn't that the case? It seems to me there is a metaphysical component in both Neoplatonism and Vajrayana. On one occasion you have the One that manifests as Many, and can only manifest that way. It can't be known directly. And then you have Dharmakaya that is in some context an absolute compassionate principle as well, from which the other kayas and actually the whole world follow. Both metaphysical approaches are non-dual, meaning that there is no real difference between all the pieces. Some Neoplatonic philosophers were becoming Gods in a very similar way tantrikas become deities. They all let themselves be channels for something else, and by that they participate.
You can surely say that we can drop non-dualism as a concept, because it simply means that everything is one, so there is no added meaning or explanatory power. But perhaps we need this just to remember and experience the world as it can be.
The whole meaning crisis is a folly put together by Christians, we could say semi-jokingly. Christians were the ones that dismantled Neoplatonic non-dualism where Gods, nature and us were one and everything was meaningful. The issue was not created by losing Christianity. It was created by dualism, which was brought upon us by Christianity, it seems to me. So the issue is not that we have dismantled Christianity, the issue is that we haven't dismantled it enough.
Honestly I feel like I've just today managed to drop the Christian in me. That dualism goes extremely deep. The cultural grammar and what not. That feeling of poverty. And you know what happened? The whole universe came to life. I can't explain it. I've been practicing Vajrayana for like 2 years, but it feels like I've only managed to drop dualism today. It's a weird feeling. But it feels like going back home, in an absolutely embodied way.
Chalk and cheese are different from each other. They are not essentially different, nor merely accidentally different. They are also similar (whitish biologically-derived homogeneous solids of intermediate hardness). The differences are meaningful for some purposes, and the similarities are meaningful for some purposes.
So, monism—the stance that everything is the same, “really”—is as wrong as dualism. I wrote about that in https://meaningness.com/big-three-stance-combinations (and elsewhere).
Vajrayana does include metaphysics. I think that’s unfortunate, and try to practice and explain Vajrayana without the metaphysics.
Vajrayana’s metaphysics comes mainly from late Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana metaphysics explicitly rejects both monism and dualism as metaphysical errors, and promotes an alternative that is neither. As far that goes, I think it’s correct.
This is often a main point in philosophical arguments between Buddhism and Hinduism, including between Vajrayana and non-dual Hindu tantra. According to Buddhist philosophers, Advaita Hinduism is monist, and therefore Vajrayana and Hindu tantra are essentially different, despite accidental similarities. According to their Hindu opponents, Advaita is not monist, and therefore Vajrayana and Hindu tantra are essentially the same, despite accidental differences.
Thanks.
I was a bit imprecise in my writing, I didn’t really want to point to monism, but rather to the fact that I agree that we can practice without these concepts altogether. If I had to use a word, I would turn to non-dual as in “there is no separation”, whatever that means. It’s more of a feeling.
So yeah, my personal stance is also that I don’t care about metaphysics. Or I would love not to care. But it’s kinda funny to see that it somehow happened to me that I dismantled the unconscious dualistic Christian metaphysics with non-dual metaphysics, which now creates more space to actually give up on either. If you can jump to the finish line immediately, I guess good for you, but… 🙂
Vajrayana without metaphysics is an interesting topic. I started practicing without being interested in metaphysics, at least consciously, but it always keeps creeping back in when you read more traditional authors. Or even when you get to practices like tummo and the overall subtle body. For me metaphysics is already believing in any story that “can’t be proven” really. These are wrong words but unsure what to say really. When somebody talks about the actual subtle body, bardo or whatever. My approach is really, this is useful, it works, I will see how far I can push this. And it’s essentially all mythic mode. There you don’t care what “can be proven”.
Even writing the previous paragraph still feels like getting back to metaphysics, into that split and grasping. It feels confused. Better to turn towards nebulosity and patterns already…
Anyway, I follow your work because I essentially agree with articles like the God-Emperror one and the whole nobility saga. It’s lovely not because it’s true, but because it all shows how you can live your life and be empowered. I like doing Chenrezig or whoever deity yoga not because I want to channel cosmic energy, but because I just find it worthwhile to offer my life to a meme/myth like that. The same with the Bodhisattva vow. I don’t care about any framework in the end. Find what you want to become and become that fully. Also know that it’s totally empty and arbitrary. Do that until your last breath. Die happy, holding your life and your own personal vow as fulfilled.
If there is any reincarnation, it's reincarnation of a myth.
That's wonderful, thank you!
It is indeed wonderful, isn’t it 🙂
I am reading Hellenic Tantra by Gregory Shaw. It's about what Neoplatonism should have been, or what it was before it was messed up by the Church. And it's actully on par with Shaiva Tantra. Nice reading 😋
If I understand correctly, this more correct metaphysics/grammar may (at least presently) be more the output of than input to a 5th order of consciousness, meta-rational stance in our meaning making vs a world that is more and more accelerating 'over our heads'. In that sense, it may be a correct diagnosis of the meaningness crisis and culture wars while the cure, at a collective level, remains opaque?
Yes, even pre-verbal cognition is metaphysically primed. Appearances are quickly sorted into "trees," "chairs," "people," etc. and qualifiers like "good," "bad," "useful," etc. are also quickly appended. All this happens "under the hood" and is totally fine (and often necessary) so long that one is aware that this is happening. Slowing down and then carefully examining how cognition happens (first in meditation and then off the cushion) is a powerful antidote to letting faulty metaphysical assumptions (i.e., those that cause dis-ease) run the show.
Another way essences are baked into grammar is with the verb "is." Our language encourages us to jump directly from X appears to me to be Y to X *is* Y.
I've heard of a form of English called E-Prime where one bans themselves from using the word "is" and all its variants. It tends to force you to think about what you're actually saying and sabotages pointless metaphysical arguments, leaving me to wonder if there exists anything worth saying which can only be said with the word "is".
"Emptiness contains form; form contains emptiness"?
We have a word for "contains": "is".
That "is" the "is" of Mutual Interpenetration
Is of Identity — the two sides name the same entity. "Hesperus is Phosphorus."
Is of Predication — the subject has a property. "The sky is blue."
Is of Existence — the subject exists (full stop). "I am." / "There is a God."
Is of Class Inclusion — the subject belongs to a kind or category. "A whale is a mammal."
Is of Constitution — the subject is made of, or realized by, the other side. "The statue is bronze."
Is of Mutual Interpenetration — the two sides co-arise and contain each other without remainder, only while the relation is in motion.
More examples of the last in common speech
- The dancer is the dance.
- The teacher is the student.
- The conversation is the relationship.
- The map is the territory.
- The market is the participants.
How are you thinking of meaning vs purpose here? Is the meaning of the salt shaker to pour salt, or is that its purpose as determined by a specific user of the instrument?
Hmm, I'm not sure of the intent of the question? Purpose is one sort of meaning. But, the point here is just that we do not find the world meaningless.
I have not quite wrapped my head around what you mean by "meaning" (despite reading some of your Meaningness website).
Are you saying that believing in the instrumentality / purposefulness of objects (like salt shakers) around us gives us meaning?
Or are you saying that the perceptual capacity to regard things as useful can somehow be expanded (perhaps to include beauty, sacredness, etc.) to dissolve our crisis of meaning?
or something else...?
I'm still not sure what you are asking... is this specifically about the paragraph starting "Meaning is obvious" and ending "we never lost such meanings"? That's what the salt shaker illustrates. It's a (trivial) refutation of "full-strength nihilism," i.e. the stance that nothing is meaningful at all.
Or are you asking about a broader point? (If so, what?)
To be clear: I am not doing analytic philosophy here. This isn't conceptual analysis. I'm not trying to define "meaning," here or anywhere. I hope nothing I say depends on getting precise about that. I'm using the term in a vague, everyday way.
No worries, I was just probing my sense that the salt shaker wasn't a satisfactory counterexample to the lack of meaning people feel.
Ah, yes... This may be relevant: https://meaningness.com/nihilism-hardcore-vs-lite
You do a bait and switch between a certain metaphysical view and the broader category of metaphysics. You jump from "here is an example of how a rule we don't think about affects how we view the world" (fine) to "this entire category is wrong." You're also not defining what you mean by metaphysics (if you have done so elsewehere you should link to it). If you're attempting a critique of philosophy of this scale, you should be much more rigorous about it. I realize this will come off as unduly antagonistic, but I felt compelled to comment out of respect for some of your previous writings. Had you been anyone else I would have rolled my eyes and scrolled past.
"Metaphysics is only ever credible when you deliberately un-see the actual world, and imaginatively inhabit the domain of metaphysical abstractions instead. Doing so is silly and harmful."
Instead of harmful, I would suggest "dangerous." You can keep "silly," but you should add "and sometimes incredibly useful and exceedingly practical." In that case it ends up looking a lot more like riding a bicycle than some esoteric secret that escaped containment and is contaminating our ways of otherwise pure, plain-living. Maybe you want to argue that Einstein's physics were orthogonal to his metaphysics if he had any, but I think it gets harder the further back you go, and by the time you get to Newton it starts to seem absurd. Whether you call it a thought experiment or make-believe, our most creative moments seem to rely on taking metaphysics seriously, even if just for awhile.
"Metaphysics is only ever credible when you deliberately un-see the actual world, and imaginatively inhabit the domain of metaphysical abstractions instead."
What a grand, presumptuous generalization.
One might think that you actually know how everyone other than yourself 'sees' the world.