Why Religion Cannot Be Measured by Modern Rationality - A Critique of Rationalism, Scientism and Post-Modern Metaphysics

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Anti-Western feeling is well and alive in the global leftwing, including the most extreme sects. And no, just ask the youth of the Arab Spring: they don't believe in the West or Democracy. Ask the same question in Serbia or Russia, and you'll get the same answer. Anti-Western feeling is real, and it gets stronger every day even in the West.

[Prodromos]

In most cases anti-Western sentiment is motivated by envy. People look at the West and see the greatest civilization in human history. It's where everything happens; the world's scientific inventions, music, movies, ideas are all born in the West. There's freedom and you can do anything you want, free to chart your own destiny, like a man, instead of having your whole life planned out and forced on you like a medieval woman. The West has the most cultural, diplomatic, economic and military influence in the world. Many people understandably rage at the fact that they aren't as successful as Westerners are. They can talk all day about how the West sucks anyway, but offer them a Green Card and you'll see their eyes light up. Again, talk is one thing, but watch what people do, not what they say. How many non-Westerners are trying to immigrate to the West? Now, how many Westerners are trying to immigrate to Russia, China, and other non-Western countries? What percentage of Germans would give up their citizenship and move to Iran if given the chance? What percentage of Iraqis would give up their citizenship and move to England? There's an old story about a fox and some grapes. I think you'll like it. I'd be perfectly happy if all non-Westerners stayed as far away from the West as possible. Unfortunately, reality is different from Kremlin propaganda. The reality is that the West is pretty darn attractive in the eyes of most of the world. And who can blame them? The West is the best.

[basics]

There can be no doubt that there is a great shift happening in the West as values change, perhaps the largest being the great falling away from the word of God. Most great nations and empires decline from within and so it appears to be happening in the West. Our problem begins with the misunderstanding that we used to be largely Christian but that itself is a bit of a myth. The church that Jesus is building was never meant to be huge in any generation for in His own words, the path to heaven being so narrow that few get in, He describes in the parables of the wheat and tares as well as the sheep and goats, the tares and goats being merely religious without the Spirituality that comes with Him.

So the churches across the West were outweighed by religion and now religions of every colour as well as gods which have and can only lead to one end. This is all written of in God's word and has to be before Jesus returns. The world believes it's all for the good but in fact yet is precisely the opposite.

[Common Soldier]

And let me add to this...

What you call reason is actually like a big fat guy on steroids. That's because it's a direct function of the Western metaphysics of subjectivity. Human intelligence is not primarily focused on objects, but rather on metaphysical judgments derived primarily from sensible intuition.

Fat guys are typically not on steroids, muscular guys are, a different thing.from fat. Human intuition is often wrong, the world doesn't always conform to human intuition and to human expectations, take quantum physics. It is human argument and conceited that world will always conform to our expectations, and it the lack of humility and arrogance of Greek and other non Western philosopher which why their science failed to correctly understand the real natural world.

Aristotle's rationality is still the best model of rationality that can be applied to humanity, with all its limitations.

Disagree, the numerous failures of Aristotle's rationality disproves it to be the best model of rationality. His scientific howlers set back progress for a 1000 years. His ideas were very useful, but not the greatest.

The Post-Cartesian model, however, was essentially a magical and voodoo-like subjectivism that was propped up by secret societies such as Freemansonry that split apart from its roots.

This gobbledygook language is rather meaningless Nd wrong. Post Catlrtesian is not subjective, it is Aristotle that is subject, assuming that the universe works according to limited human reason and rationality, and it doesn't, as quantum physics shows. The Aristotle systems breed a hubris that is unwarranted by actual results. Aristotle could of performed the same experiments as Galileo to confirm whether he was right, but Aristotle didn't because he was overly estimated the achievements.of his own rationality, and so failed to come up with the proper laws of motion.l

And as for "voodism", there is nothing in post Cateesian system that has anything to do with zombies or secret rites to bring the dead back to a type of half life.

"Reason" in the Cartesian-Newtonian frame presupposes a strict separation between subject and object. It pressupposes that about 50% or more of the reality that we witness is actually a creation of our minds. It believes earnestly that reality is a creation of ideas located in the individual subject.

Totally wrong. It does say that many of our suppositions and experiences are subjective, but it is based on the premise there is an objective, real universe that does not have to conform to our expectations. It is Eastern philosophies that assume the world is subjective.

In sum, it's totally nihilistic and perverted. It's concerned mainly with obtaining quantitative relations in matter, and it's not genuinely concerned with obtaining genuine intellectual judgments. Reason in the modern frame is actually an abstract, empty, disconnected speculation, concerned primarily and chiefly ONLY with disconnected mental abstractions and a denial of objective reality. It is an idealism gone mad in the deification of the mere individual subject, and you can also thank German idealism for that.

Since it rests alone upon a spurious ontological foundation, it has no validity and consistency. It purely consists in an abstract framework, that helps us create a tool to better identify some physical realities, and that's it.

All the rest is merely a subjective projection, and pure unbrindled solipsism that leads to nihilism and relativism about external reality.

Let me finish this with the words of Rene Guenon:

M Modern western science, operates on the premise of an objective reality, it is Vedic religions that you admire so much that have a subjective universe. Newtonian physics works in the way that Islamic science did not. Some of Western philosophy mIght be annihilistic, but not all, there is a feat variety Western philosophy, and Newtonian is certainly not nihilistic. The tools it has created to understand the natural world are very powerful tool, and should not be lightly dismissed as you do, they are not trivial as you imply.


However, the currently predominate post religion Western materialistic philosophy is rather nihilistic, and I agree with your.assessment that it is incomplete. But many in the West do not adhere to that outlook, and a strict materialistic view by people like Dawkins was not the traditionally dominate view in the West.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Fat guys are typically not on steroids, muscular guys are, a different thing.from fat. Human intuition is often wrong, the world doesn't always conform to human intuition and to human expectations, take quantum physics. It is human argument and conceited that world will always conform to our expectations, and it the lack of humility and arrogance of Greek and other non Western philosopher which why their science failed to correctly understand the real natural world.

I meant precisely that. A fat guy on steroids, is totally, fake don't you agree?

As for the rest of your post, it's plainly and simply gobbledigook.

This gobbledygook language is rather meaningless Nd wrong. Post Catlrtesian is not subjective, it is Aristotle that is subject, assuming that the universe works according to limited human reason and rationality, and it doesn't, as quantum physics shows. The Aristotle systems breed a hubris that is unwarranted by actual results. Aristotle could of performed the same experiments as Galileo to confirm whether he was right, but Aristotle didn't because he was overly estimated the achievements.of his own rationality, and so failed to come up with the proper laws of motion.l

And as for "voodism", there is nothing in post Cateesian system that has anything to do with zombies or secret rites to bring the dead back to a type of half life.

You seem to be very poorly aware of Aristotle's ontology, it's intrinsic moderate realism, versus Cartesian subjectivism and skepticism about external reality. You should probably read the basics of philosophy.

From the wiki:

Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth. The success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his methodic doubt.

Yes, the modern rationality is intrinsically tied to voodoo-like magic. It means that the idea of reality, the thought of reality inside your mind, overpowers and starts to dictate reality as it is (idealism), instead of the opposite, the realism that consisted in the Aristotelian and Platonic dianoetic.

Totally wrong. It does say that many of our suppositions and experiences are subjective, but it is based on the premise there is an objective, real universe that does not have to conform to our expectations. It is Eastern philosophies that assume the world is subjective.

No, first and foremost, because it tells us that ALL aspects of the universe bar matter and mind are subjective, and that matter is extended, graspable in essence only by arithmetic and quantity while mind is something else entirely.

Eastern philosophy never attributed the primacy of reality to thought, as modern subjectivism does. Rather, what Eastern philosophy *says* is fundamentally, this: it is impossible to ascribe essence, substance or any category to reality, because reality does not possess an innate substance or reality, but arises solely from an indefinite chain of codependent origination. As such, it is present, but lacks substance, form or inate "beingness", as ontotheology would try to attribute it.

M Modern western science, operates on the premise of an objective reality

Only insofar as this reality is drastically reduced to matter, particles in movement, and everything else that fits Cartesian space and can be expressed in quantities. As Goethe, the first and foremost critic of the Cartesian method, argued rather concisely, it consists in a grotesque reduction of reality to a purely abstract paradigm, that fails to account for things such as qualia, substance, existence, and indeed the very meaning of meaning.

This broadly means that the Cartesian-Newtonian methodology works primarily as a tool for the physical measurement of objects. It cannot tell us about the generating principle, the natura naturans, that was the subject matter of all metaphysics in the first place.

The fact that Western science is technologically superior tells us nothing, stricto sensu, about the qualitative, ontological superiority of other approaches to natural science.

[basics]

The so-called Christian West began to thrive only after the two forms of Christianity began to co-exist and looking back at Islam we find the same as both forms of Islam began to co-exist. In the case of the latter the intense hatred lingers greater than the hatred within Christianity but nonetheless it doesn't deter either from pushing out into different lands where possible. Christianity sends out missionaries whilst Islam sends out immigrants which rather than being integrated set up their own little dominians within the countries that let them come. So, today rather than invasion we have immigration on a scale worthy of the name invasion yet done in a more spophisticated way. What's amazing about this is that the so-called intellectual educated men and women in the West turn a blind eye to this whilst ordinary Joe Bloggs can see it a mile off. If there's any trouble they call it home grown rather than what it actually is, takeover by stealth plus a willingness to die for the same ends. There is not one country in the West impervious to the true aim of Islam.

Irrationally the most hated religion in the world is Christianity in its true form as laid down by both Old and New Testaments in the Bible, why? Because it lays bare the total depravity of man yet in love gives a way out of that and not by violence, that having been done at a cross some two thousand odd years ago by Jesus Christ. Believing that in the West has become a dirty word but believing that elsewhere is leading to death as we can read of or see on our tv's. Where's the rationality that the most passive message ever given to man is the one most hated across the globe?

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

I have nothing against Christianity, so long as it is genuine High Church Christianity anyway. This Christianity existed in the West under the semblance of Catholic Papism ("tu es Petrus et super hanc petram ecclesiam meam aedificabo..."), but was lost with Protestantism, Vatican Council 2, and the spirit of the liberal age that sucked dry the West.

Anyway, even the Catholic High Church of the West had drifted apart from the East and became, solely, its own different religious doctrine. That said, it's the Eastern Orthodox Church that represents the most well preserved and integral form of Christianity there is and ever was.

[basics]

I have nothing against Christianity, so long as it is genuine High Church Christianity anyway. This Christianity existed in the West under the semblance of Catholic Papism ("tu es Petrus et super hanc petram ecclesiam meam aedificabo..."), but was lost with Protestantism, Vatican Council 2, and the spirit of the liberal age that sucked dry the West.

Anyway, even the Catholic High Church of the West had drifted apart from the East and became, solely, its own different religious doctrine. That said, it's the Eastern Orthodox Church that represents the most well preserved and integral form of Christianity there is and ever was.

Marie Louise von Preussen,

And yet the new Eastern Orthodox Bible is to be built on the Authorised King James Bible because it is the one with the surest and clearest word of God outselling any other combined books of any sort, never mind bibles. The Old Covenant second commandment states, " Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images....." One might ask why? Because God knows how the imagination of man works and so forbids any imaginary or hand built images of Himself because in every case they would be wrong. Or as Paul writes they would be conjuring up another Jesus, another God and another Spirit of God which are false. It's called idolatry because it replaces faith as being the only justification for sin, that itself being a gift of God to all them that He saves. The effect is that lawbreakers already condemned remain lawbreakers inside what are supposed to be Christian churches. The result being that Jesus on that great day will cast them all into hell because He never knew them, why?

Well, on the day He died on that cross He became the sinners for whom He would die and them Him. He became sin on their behalf taking into His own body every jot of sin that they had done and would ever do and so the Father's wrath fell on Him for our sins. Such was the power of God on that day that the father could say with confidence that He had never remembered them as having been sinners at all, once regeneration had taken place in each of their lives. That's what the word of God teaches. There is no purgatory nor is their praying to anything other than The father in the Son's name, no Maryolatry or idolism, relics or anything else thought up by man by which he thinks will appease God. So, any system that invokes such action is not the Gospel saving church that Jesus is building for only God saves, each Person in the Godhead playing His part to bring that about. The only thing a Christian, born again as there is no other, is to wrap him or herself in the word of God and seek fellowship with people of the same ilk. It's that simple.



























































.

[Common Soldier]

I meant precisely that. A fat guy on steroids, is totally, fake don't you agree?

As for the rest of your post, it's plainly and simply gobbledigook.

I have never seen these fat guys taking steroids, can you given an actual example?

And you have still have not given concrete examples supporting your claims , but have just thrown out a bunch of terminology, instead of facts.

You seem to be very poorly aware of Aristotle's ontology, it's intrinsic moderate realism, versus Cartesian subjectivism and skepticism about external reality. You should probably read the basics of philosophy.

From the wiki:

Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth. The success of this position is historically attributed to Descartes and his methodic doubt.

Yes, the modern rationality is intrinsically tied to voodoo-like magic. It means that the idea of reality, the thought of reality inside your mind, overpowers and starts to dictate reality as it is (idealism), instead of the opposite, the realism that consisted in the Aristotelian and Platonic dianoetic.

You have yet to support the claims you have made. For one thing, if you had an understanding of modern science, it operates on the premise is that there is on objective universe that exist without us. The problem with Aristotle is that he made claims that do not correspond with the objective reality as it is and that we can measure. Unlike the assumption of Aristotle that the world should conform to human logic and thinking. Modern science does not insist that the world should conform to human thinking, and some of the principles in physics don't correspond to human preconceptions, such as in Quantum Physics. The idea that that an object can just appear on the other side of a barrier without going through it is counter to human reason, but just is. Aristotle could never have come up with quantum physics in a million years.

You keep repeating the same words over and over without showing how they are applicable to your claims, despite having been asked several times now to do so. You haven't given specific examples to to show how western thought is subjective, modern science certainly isn't, far from.it. so what Western thought do you have in mind? Exactly what do you mean by "Cartesian"? Unlike you, I have given specific exsmples to show to show why you are wrong, all you have done is thrown out terms that I am not even sure you really understand them. Exactly what element of Cartesian thought support your claim of voodoo magic as you repeatedly have made.

of
No, first and foremost, because it tells us that ALL aspects of the universe bar matter and mind are subjective, and that matter is extended, graspable in essence only by arithmetic and quantity while mind is something else entirely.

Exactly who made those claims? Asnd please provide the quotes to back.up what you say. You say a lot without providing any proof it

Eastern philosophy never attributed the primacy of reality to thought, as modern subjectivism does. Rather, what Eastern philosophy *says* is fundamentally, this: it is impossible to ascribe essence, substance or any category to reality, because reality does not possess an innate substance or reality, but arises solely from an indefinite chain of codependent origination. As such, it is present, but lacks substance, form or inate "beingness", as ontotheology would try to attribute it.

Thanks
Again, provide the quotes from Eastern philosophy to support your claims. Also. What Western scientist attributed the primacy of reality to thought as you claim. Also, what Western philospher other than Berkley says that either? Quotes, please, facts not more gobbledygook terms thrown out.

Only insofar as this reality is drastically reduced to matter, particles in movement, and everything else that fits Cartesian space and can be expressed in quantities. As Goethe, the first and foremost critic of the Cartesian method, argued rather concisely, it consists in a grotesque reduction of reality to a purely abstract paradigm, that fails to account for things such as qualia, substance, existence, and indeed the very meaning of meaning.

This broadly means that the Cartesian-Newtonian methodology works primarily as a tool for the physical measurement of objects. It cannot tell us about the generating principle, the natura naturans, that was the subject matter of all metaphysics in the first place.

The fact that Western science is technologically superior tells us nothing, stricto sensu, about the qualitative, ontological superiority of other approaches to natural science.

Newtonian physics works , and leads real results. There is nothing to show that the philosophy you admire so much isn't just a delusion of ones mind, and has no reality at all. You object to the emphasis placed on objective reality because your philosophies fail in that area, and and you would prefer "truth" to be whatever fits you fancy, not what really is.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

You have yet to support the claims you have made. For one thing, if you had an understanding of modern science, it operates on the premise is that there is on objective universe that exist without us.

No, wrong, it says quite simply that the objective universe is only materia signata quantitate, or pure number, and that the rest of the elements are subjective projections. Totally fallacious.

The problem with Aristotle is that he made claims that do not correspond with the objective reality as it is and that we can measure.

Fallacious. That's only your assumption. Your assumption, which is actually based on Cartesian premises, has actually no reality in itself. It's just a projection and nothing else.

Unlike the assumption of Aristotle that the world should conform to human logic and thinking. Modern science does not insist that the world should conform to human thinking, and some of the principles in physics don't correspond to human preconceptions, such as in Quantum Physics.

That's totally off the mark, and I mean, just plainly wrong about Aristotle.

Aristotle tells us there's an objective reality, that conforms to itself, and humans are part of it. Aristotle furthermore takes the problem of Being, of existence, in itself.

Descartes obliterates this. All of the questions of Being and Beingness become moot and irrelevant. We cannot say that anything outside our mind exists in reality. Reality becomes a projection of the mind that perceives it, and the subjective ideas in the human intellect.

If you knew this, by reading eg. Maritain, Melendo, Heidegger, and other critics of Western epistemology, you should have known better. Your perception is actually conditioned by this: what you see, is not a direct intuition of reality, BUT, rather, reality always conceived straight from the lens of your mind.

In other words, you're self-consciously dreaming with your current mode of perception. Post-Cartesian cognition self-consciously exchanges reality, the I, and all other stuff, for the thought of these things in your own head.

he idea that that an object can just appear on the other side of a barrier without going through it is counter to human reason, but just is. Aristotle could never have come up with quantum physics in a million years

Quantum Physics is a different dimension. As is Aristotle's work, which is divided on Physics and Metaphysics. But I'm not really Aristotelian, I'm just going to argue this: I'm using it as a sort of parameter. Of course, Quantum Physics also means - in the purely physical plane - a breakdown of the Newtonian-Cartesian model. But Quantum Physics cannot tell us anything about the nature of reality, only about the nature of objects in space.

Ahmad Fardid tells us this, very succintly:

Mysticism's one eye has been blinded by wahdat al-vojud ("the Unity of Being'), and the other one has been blinded by Bergson. According to Bergson, there is turbulence in the world. Where is presence ? Where is God ? I hope the human dies of the unrest. This intrinsic (natural) wisdom [esnokherad], which is like darkness, appears like lightness for Bergson. Bergson's gnosis one of the examples of Westoxification. In fact, there is no gnosis in the West. During the last four hundred years, philosophy in the West has focused on the actually existing reality (mowjud). In fact, you can not find any question about "existence" [vojud] in the nineteenth century, and all discussion were centered on mowjud.

You keep repeating the same words over and over without showing how they are applicable to your claims, despite having been asked several times now to do so. You haven't given specific examples to to show how western thought is subjective, modern science certainly isn't, far from.it.

What I'm giving is a summary. Read Heidegger, Maritain, Corbin, Marion, Guenon, Melendo and others if you want to do a concise destruktion and critique of Western subjective rationalism.

It is. Simply putting it, according to Heidegger: WESTERN ONTOTHEOLOGY IS NIHILISTIC, BECAUSE IT CONFUSES BEING, EXISTENCE, WITH AN ABSTRACT MENTAL REPRESENTATION, AN OBJECT, AN ENTITY, CALLED "A BEING". WHAT IS THE BEING OF THESE OBJECTS? This sort of questioning can be very enlightening, and in my case it gave me a clear epiphany.

so what Western thought do you have in mind? Exactly what do you mean by "Cartesian"? Unlike you, I have given specific exsmples to show to show why you are wrong, all you have done is thrown out terms that I am not even sure you really understand them. Exactly what element of Cartesian thought support your claim of voodoo magic as you repeatedly have made.

Descartes makes a total inversion. In this inversion, Being and objective reality become a function of one's thought and one's own consciousness, instead of the opposite.

In fact, Descartes, by his subjective idealism, denies the value of ontology and metaphysics and questions about Being because it effectively subsums all of reality under the mere thought and projection of it. That is the essence of nihilism, and the Western modernistic technological hybris in the first place.

Exactly who made those claims? Asnd please provide the quotes to back.up what you say. You say a lot without providing any proof it

Again, I'm writing this on a game forum, but if you want a concise critique, you better read the authors, esp. their critique of the modern mentality and subjective idealism. Etc... Etc...

Thanks
Again, provide the quotes from Eastern philosophy to support your claims. Also. What Western scientist attributed the primacy of reality to thought as you claim. Also, what Western philospher other than Berkley says that either? Quotes, please, facts not more gobbledygook terms thrown out.

All Western Scientists unconsciously follow Descartes and even Hegel in this regard, because that's the real paradigm that laid the foundations for modern rationalism, scientism and positivism.

As for the nature of Eastern perception of reality, if you want a source, read the Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakarika), by Nagarjuna. It's the only way to grasp it.

You keep asking for sources, as if this was a subtle, clever way to try to discredit me. Actually, I know my sources and my study very well, thanks.

Newtonian physics works , and leads real results.

Technology IS NOT wisdom. It is not truth. It is not reality. It is technique, and nothing else. Technology cannot answer the fundamental questions that pose our existence as human beings. Technology is merely means, and utility, to an end. You cannot exchange the true for the useful, as nihilistic postmodern episteme often does.

Newtonian-Cartesian mechanism only works insofar as a technical device, and nothing else. An instrument. It cannot give us anything deeper than that.

There is nothing to show that the philosophy you admire so much isn't just a delusion of ones mind, and has no reality at all.

Again, Cartesian-grounded fallacies and self-refuting logical positivism at work again.

You object to the emphasis placed on objective reality because your philosophies fail in that area, and and you would prefer "truth" to be whatever fits you fancy, not what really is.

No, it's modern understanding in fact that fails in this regard. Modern understanding is nihilistic, relativistic and cannot give us truth. It is tied to the same assumptions that grounded it in the dawn of the modern age. My role would be what Heidegger calls the DESTRUKTION, of the fallacious, anti-intellectual and solipstic ground of Western subjectivism and its inherent utilitarian nihilism.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

I'll finish this by quoting a prominent 19th century critic of the Enlightenment, who foreshadowed its demise and its rotten results:

The Western Enlightenment did not turn unsatisfactory because the sciences had lost their vitality; on the contrary, they were apparently flourishing more than ever before; not because one or another form of outward life weighed upon people’s relationships or hindered the development of their prevailing tendency; on the contrary, wrestling with an outward hindrance could have only strengthened their predilection for the beloved tendency, and never, it seems, did outward life arrange itself more obediently and concordantly with their intellectual demands. But a feeling of discontent and cheerless emptiness fell upon the hearts of people whose thoughts were not limited to a narrow circle of transitory interests, precisely because the triumph of the European mind displayed the narrowness of its basic aspirations: because in spite of all the wealth, in spite of all the, shall we say, greatness of particular discoveries and successes in science, the general conclusion drawn from the totality of knowledge offered only a negative significance for the internal consciousness of man; because despite the splendor, despite all the comforts of life’s external improvements, life itself was deprived of its essential meaning, for, not permeated with any general strong conviction, it could neither be adorned with high hope nor warmed with deep sympathy.

A century’s worth of cold analysis destroyed all the foundation upon which the European Enlightenment stood from the very beginning of its development, so that the basic principles out of which it grew became strange and foreign to it, contradicting its latest results, while its direct property turned out to be the very same analysis that had destroyed its roots, that self-propelling knife of reason, that abstract syllogism that recognized nothing but itself and its personal experience, that autocratic intellect—or how else can we call that logical activity, removed from all of man’s other cognitive abilities except for the crudest and most primordial sensual qualities, building on these alone their airy dialectical constructions?

However, it is important to recall that the feeling of dissatisfaction and hopelessness were not suddenly found in Western man at the first clear triumph of his destructive rationality. Overturning his centuries-old convictions, he trusted all the more in the omnipotence of his abstract mind, the larger, firmer and more comprehensive those convictions were. During the initial success, his happiness was not only unmixed with regret, but on the contrary the rapture of his self-sufficiency would reach some kind of poetic exaltation. He believed that with his own abstract mind he could at once create for himself a new rational life and establish heavenly bliss on Earth, as reeducated by him.

[...]

- Ivan Kireyevsky

[chriscase]

Descartes makes a total inversion. In this inversion, Being and objective reality become a function of one's thought and one's own consciousness, instead of the opposite.

In fact, Descartes, by his subjective idealism, denies the value of ontology and metaphysics and questions about Being because it effectively subsums all of reality under the mere thought and projection of it. That is the essence of nihilism, and the Western modernistic technological hybris in the first place.
...
All Western Scientists unconsciously follow Descartes and even Hegel in this regard, because that's the real paradigm that laid the foundations for modern rationalism, scientism and positivism.
...
Technology IS NOT wisdom. It is not truth. It is not reality. It is technique, and nothing else. Technology cannot answer the fundamental questions that pose our existence as human beings. Technology is merely means, and utility, to an end. You cannot exchange the true for the useful, as nihilistic postmodern episteme often does.

Newtonian-Cartesian mechanism only works insofar as a technical device, and nothing else. An instrument. It cannot give us anything deeper than that.

... Modern understanding is nihilistic, relativistic and cannot give us truth. It is tied to the same assumptions that grounded it in the dawn of the modern age. My role would be what Heidegger calls the DESTRUKTION, of the fallacious, anti-intellectual and solipstic ground of Western subjectivism and its inherent utilitarian nihilism.

So when you post like this, I have to step back and wonder why you would be so confident in your assertions. Are you not, yourself, like the rest of us, a product of the "modern" worldview? If the terrible and nihilistic worldview that modernity takes for granted is insidiously embedded in our consciousness, what makes you certain that you are special enough to see it for what (you claim) it truly is? Couldn't this perspective of yours be some kind of malignant expression of self-hatred rooted in the very worldview you are exhorting us to abandon? Or perhaps it's simply rhetorical flair gone hyperbolic.

Suppose you're talking to someone who isn't going to read any of your references. Let's also pretend you might want to persuade this person and they aren't entirely convinced by your arguments. Do you have a simple, concrete example of what you are talking about? You know, something specific and illustrative we could sink our teeth into, here and now?

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

So when you post like this, I have to step back and wonder why you would be so confident in your assertions. Are you not, yourself, like the rest of us, a product of the "modern" worldview? If the terrible and nihilistic worldview that modernity takes for granted is insidiously embedded in our consciousness, what makes you certain that you are special enough to see it for what (you claim) it truly is? Couldn't this perspective of yours be some kind of malignant expression of self-hatred rooted in the very worldview you are exhorting us to abandon? Or perhaps it's simply rhetorical flair gone hyperbolic.

Suppose you're talking to someone who isn't going to read any of your references. Let's also pretend you might want to persuade this person and they aren't entirely convinced by your arguments. Do you have a simple, concrete example of what you are talking about? You know, something specific and illustrative we could sink our teeth into, here and now?

It's genuine disdain for subjectivism borne out of a nihilistic experience and readings of Heidegger and Nietzsche.

As for one clear, concise sentence that can summarize scientism and logical positivism, let's turn back to Plato himself and one of his exact statements. It was kinda like a prior prediction, and breaking, of the crude verifiability principle posited by some adepts of Scientism.

Plato expresses this distrust in experience with his own admirable courage. “The things of this world which our senses perceive have no real existence: they are always becoming, they never are. Theirs is only a relative existence; taken together, they exist only in and by virtue of their relation to each other; hence we can with equal truth say of their whole existence that it is Non-Existence. Hence they are not objects of a real knowledge. There can only be real knowledge of something that exists in and for itself, and ever the same way, whereas these sense-phenomena are only the objects of conjecture evoked by sensation. So long as we are restricted to the perception of these things we are like men in a dark cave, bound so rigidly that they cannot even turn the head, seeing nothing except when the light of a fire burning behind them throws on the wall in front the shadows of real objects which pass between them and the fire; each man sees only the shadows of the other, only the shadow of himself on that wall. But the wisdom of such men would consist in predicting the sequence of those shadows as taught them by experience.”

This is exactly what empiricism entails. And it's exactly within this cave that the modern metaphysics of subjectivity has entrapped man, to have him glance at shadows in sequence by experience.

Nagarjuna, and in fact, the worldview of Buddhism, Vedanta and the Far Eastern Taoists, was one and the same in this regard also. There are a lot of parallels between Plato and Vedanta, and also Pythagoras and Vedanta, and vice versa.

[Common Soldier]

No, wrong, it says quite simply that the objective universe is only materia signata quantitate, or pure number, and that the rest of the elements are subjective projections. Totally fallacious.




Fallacious. That's only your assumption. Your assumption, which is actually based on Cartesian premises, has actually no reality in itself. It's just a projection and nothing else.



That's totally off the mark, and I mean, just plainly wrong about Aristotle.

Aristotle tells us there's an objective reality, that conforms to itself, and humans are part of it. Aristotle furthermore takes the problem of Being, of existence, in itself.

Descartes obliterates this. All of the questions of Being and Beingness become moot and irrelevant. We cannot say that anything outside our mind exists in reality. Reality becomes a projection of the mind that perceives it, and the subjective ideas in the human intellect.

If you knew this, by reading eg. Maritain, Melendo, Heidegger, and other critics of Western epistemology, you should have known better. Your perception is actually conditioned by this: what you see, is not a direct intuition of reality, BUT, rather, reality always conceived straight from the lens of your mind.

In other words, you're self-consciously dreaming with your current mode of perception. Post-Cartesian cognition self-consciously exchanges reality, the I, and all other stuff, for the thought of these things in your own head.



Quantum Physics is a different dimension. As is Aristotle's work, which is divided on Physics and Metaphysics. But I'm not really Aristotelian, I'm just going to argue this: I'm using it as a sort of parameter. Of course, Quantum Physics also means - in the purely physical plane - a breakdown of the Newtonian-Cartesian model. But Quantum Physics cannot tell us anything about the nature of reality, only about the nature of objects in space.

Ahmad Fardid tells us this, very succintly:






What I'm giving is a summary. Read Heidegger, Maritain, Corbin, Marion, Guenon, Melendo and others if you want to do a concise destruktion and critique of Western subjective rationalism.

It is. Simply putting it, according to Heidegger: WESTERN ONTOTHEOLOGY IS NIHILISTIC, BECAUSE IT CONFUSES BEING, EXISTENCE, WITH AN ABSTRACT MENTAL REPRESENTATION, AN OBJECT, AN ENTITY, CALLED "A BEING". WHAT IS THE BEING OF THESE OBJECTS? This sort of questioning can be very enlightening, and in my case it gave me a clear epiphany.



Descartes makes a total inversion. In this inversion, Being and objective reality become a function of one's thought and one's own consciousness, instead of the opposite.

In fact, Descartes, by his subjective idealism, denies the value of ontology and metaphysics and questions about Being because it effectively subsums all of reality under the mere thought and projection of it. That is the essence of nihilism, and the Western modernistic technological hybris in the first place.



Again, I'm writing this on a game forum, but if you want a concise critique, you better read the authors, esp. their critique of the modern mentality and subjective idealism. Etc... Etc...



All Western Scientists unconsciously follow Descartes and even Hegel in this regard, because that's the real paradigm that laid the foundations for modern rationalism, scientism and positivism.

As for the nature of Eastern perception of reality, if you want a source, read the Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakarika), by Nagarjuna. It's the only way to grasp it.

You keep asking for sources, as if this was a subtle, clever way to try to discredit me. Actually, I know my sources and my study very well, thanks.



Technology IS NOT wisdom. It is not truth. It is not reality. It is technique, and nothing else. Technology cannot answer the fundamental questions that pose our existence as human beings. Technology is merely means, and utility, to an end. You cannot exchange the true for the useful, as nihilistic postmodern episteme often does.

Newtonian-Cartesian mechanism only works insofar as a technical device, and nothing else. An instrument. It cannot give us anything deeper than that.



Again, Cartesian-grounded fallacies and self-refuting logical positivism at work again.



No, it's modern understanding in fact that fails in this regard. Modern understanding is nihilistic, relativistic and cannot give us truth. It is tied to the same assumptions that grounded it in the dawn of the modern age. My role would be what Heidegger calls the DESTRUKTION, of the fallacious, anti-intellectual and solipstic ground of Western subjectivism and its inherent utilitarian nihilism.

Again, you haven't provided actual specific examples to.support your claims. Quoting the opions of others is still just quoting opiuma


Aristotle science was inferior, since it does not correctly describe the objective reality we live in. For example, heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter objects, something Aristotle could have easily discovered for himself if he wasn't a typical arrogant pagan Greek. Frankly, modern science did not really advance until the wrong ideas.of Aristotle were rejected. Aristotle.was useful, but we have long since gone beyond him.

And you are incorrect in saying Western science says the objective universe is.just numbers, that is simply not true. While Western science says that the objective universe can be described by numbers and mathematics, it is not saying that is all it is. Numbers and math are simply tools, nothing more, but powerful tools.in describing the objective universe.

You also misunderstand what Descartes is saying - Descartes is describing what we can know, not necessarily all that is. Modern Western thought wrestles with a fundamental problem that did not even occur to Aristotle and Eastern thinking - "how do we know what we know?". Eastern.thinking takes what really are opinions as facts, when they are not "facts" at all, just the opinions of the Eastern thinkers that could easily be and often are wrong. By starting with what we really can't and do know, instead of what we think we know, leads to true wisdom.and advance of knowledge. Descartes ask fundamental questions that didn't even occur to Eastern thinkers and Aristtole to ask. Descartes starts with "I think, therefore I am" becausethr mere fact that we think establishes some.soett of existence, even if it isn't necessarily what we think it is.

Anyways, you have had plenty of changes to provide concrete examples to support your argument, instead of just repeating the same old terms and parroting the words and opinions of others. I will point out the old saying "Wisdom is know by her children" - it is Western thought that has transformed the world. You can assert that a world where infant mortality rate is 25% , where most people are illiterate is better, but but I disagree - the advanced in science that have greatly increased human life span, that has reduced infant mortality to a thousanth of what it was, that has created the internet and a a world where most people.are literate is a better world and proof.of the success and superiority of western thinking. You might think high infant mortality, short average life span, and a world without computers and the Internet, where most people can't read a better world and a superior system, but I don't. I just by real achievements and real success, and the ancient Greek and Eastern thinking you admire are lacking in both.

[basics]

Common Soldier,

Yet despite all the advances in technology the nations of this world, perhaps the peoples of this world, are no better off in many ways as to what they were before the technological era set in. The countries with the most advanced qualities in most fields still have much to do to satisfy everyone. Oh, we can put a man on the moon but we cannae for some reason put clean drinking water into the hands of people that have none. At the moment technology is the biggest danger to our planet according to the doom-mongers and their answers appear to be beyond crazy. The thing is though that there are certain truths in the tale that man, yes man, is killing the planet, killing the seas, killing the insects that polinate the planet's resources and are killing the air that we breathe, so what is the answer?

[Common Soldier]

Common Soldier,

Yet despite all the advances in technology the nations of this world, perhaps the peoples of this world, are no better off in many ways as to what they were before the technological era set in. The countries with the most advanced qualities in most fields still have much to do to satisfy everyone. Oh, we can put a man on the moon but we cannae for some reason put clean drinking water into the hands of people that have none. At the moment technology is the biggest danger to our planet according to the doom-mongers and their answers appear to be beyond crazy. The thing is though that there are certain truths in the tale that man, yes man, is killing the planet, killing the seas, killing the insects that polinate the planet's resources and are killing the air that we breathe, so what is the answer?

People didn't have clean drinking water before the mdoern age either. But there is not a single.country in the modern world, no matter how poor, that doesn't have an infant mortality rate far better than than of.thr pre modern era. Even the richest, most advanced societies of the past had a infant mortality of 25% - that includes the ancient Greeks, Chinese, India, etc. The worst modern country has an infant mortality rate of 11% (Afghsnistan), still better than the best of the most advanced civilization of the ancient world. Sierra Leone has a life expectancy of 50 years is the worst fo.modern countries that I can find, still significantly is better than the life expectancy of he Roman Empire, where it was only around 30 years.

So for.all.he problems that plague the modern world, we are, even the poorest countries, sgnificantly better off than in the he past in some very important ways. These are not subjective criteria, but very real and important objective ones.

Yes, not everything is better. But instead of fighting climate change of glaciers covering up your village and sheets of ice a mile thick covering up where London and New York are with no ability to control matters, the warming we we are experiencing is something we can do something about, and unlike the past, there are international agencies that can provide aid to help people affected. When Doggerland in the North Sea was flooded when the last ice age ended, there wasn't anyone to help the people whose homes were flooded out and are now under the North Sea.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

As an answer for everything you have been senselessly repeating here, I'll just let this guy speak up for me here. Watch from start to finish:

[chriscase]

As for one clear, concise sentence that can summarize scientism and logical positivism, let's turn back to Plato himself and one of his exact statements. It was kinda like a prior prediction, and breaking, of the crude verifiability principle posited by some adepts of Scientism.

<Quote>

This is exactly what empiricism entails. And it's exactly within this cave that the modern metaphysics of subjectivity has entrapped man, to have him glance at shadows in sequence by experience.

So a question about your quote:

Plato expresses this distrust in experience with his own admirable courage. “The things of this world which our senses perceive have no real existence: they are always becoming, they never are. Theirs is only a relative existence; taken together, they exist only in and by virtue of their relation to each other; hence we can with equal truth say of their whole existence that it is Non-Existence. Hence they are not objects of a real knowledge. There can only be real knowledge of something that exists in and for itself, and ever the same way, whereas these sense-phenomena are only the objects of conjecture evoked by sensation. So long as we are restricted to the perception of these things we are like men in a dark cave, bound so rigidly that they cannot even turn the head, seeing nothing except when the light of a fire burning behind them throws on the wall in front the shadows of real objects which pass between them and the fire; each man sees only the shadows of the other, only the shadow of himself on that wall. But the wisdom of such men would consist in predicting the sequence of those shadows as taught them by experience.”

I find this in the second chapter of Goethe's Conception of the World by Rudolf Steiner. So the quote is actually Rudolf Steiner, right? Are we discussing Steiner or Plato? (I hope it's the latter). Would you say your perspective here is aligned with theosophy? Goethe? Or some variant along the lines of Gurdjieff? Not really trying to pin you down, just curious where you are coming from.

I'm game to look at The Republic. My copy is the translation by Shorey, but it's not freely available. I've read Bloom's translation is really good but sadly all that's free on the Internet is Jowett:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html

Socrates - GLAUCON

Excerpt from Book VII of Plato's Republic tr. Jowett

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow it' the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?

True, he now
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Certainly.
Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?

Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.

And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,

Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?

Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.

Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?

To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.

Yes, very natural.
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?

Anything but surprising, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

That, he said, is a very just distinction.
But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.

They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.

Very true.
And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?

Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue --how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness.

Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below --if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.

Very likely.
Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.

Very true, he replied.
Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.

What do you mean?
I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth having or not.

But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?

You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.

So are you truly taking the part of Plato here, that the world of Forms is the primary reality, and the sensible world of objects is derivative of it?

[basics]

Common Soldier,

You'll forgive me for saying that I prefer the Biblical version where all the habitations under water now were as a result of Noah's flood plus the movement of plates around the world.

[Sar1n]

Now I have time and mood for a proper reply here.

Ego cogito, ergo sum. One's own mind is the beginning of knowledge. Even though formal logic wasn't, at his time, advanced enough to formulate coherently the underlying concepts, Desartes vaguely understood the problems of completeness and axioms. Axioms, assertions that are unprovable within the logical system that sems from them, are necessary for any reasoning system. But from their unprovable nature stem issues. Asserting superfluous axioms leads to errors and can lead to invalidating the entire system, if some axioms prove to be contradictory. Therefore it is desirable to reduce axioms to minimum. The principle, often paraphrased as cogito ergo sum, is reduction to a single axiom.

From there, it's deduction. Contents of one's mind-memories, sensory experiences, etc..., are data points. They are not axioms, they are considered neither unprovable, complete or inherently true. This has one, incredibly important implication, one that few philosophers truly understand, and one that gives science unique position that lifts it over philosophy.

Whenever extrapolating from incomplete and/or possibly inaccurate data, it's inherent that there are multiple possible conclusions, or that the entire reasoning was invalid from the beginning. The only possiblity how to decide which one is correct, or at least more correct than other possibillities presented, is through testing and application. The domain of science. Revelationist philosophies, the ones relying on authority and/or extrasensory, and therefore inherently unverifiable, experience, cannot provide, due to their nature, such feedback.

So the scientific advancements are very relevant to philosophy. Not just due to improvements to quality of life, but due to feedback they provide that reinforces the relevance of deductive, "cartesian" philosophy that Marie Louise von Preussen discards here as irrelevant. In fact, I find it hypocritical from both you and basics how you use scientific advancements to preach their irrelevance.

Without feedback, philosophies fall into what I call "philosopher's trap". They pursue one line of thinking, without heeding the fact that from their incomplete data and often superfluous axioms, multiple conclusions could be drawn, and their deductions, fenced by their own prconceptions, hopes and beliefs, are thus mere leaps of faith, and thus, without a reliable feedback, they merely present only one out of infinite number of possibilities. I mentioned at least one such instance when, in another thread, I picked apart one chapter from oft-referenced Feser.

It can be noted that, as of yet, science cannot explain everything. While that is true, it must be also noted that science grows. Questions that, centuries ago, seemed beyond reach or were not even thought of are now explained. It is not inconcievable that even things that now seem out of its scope, like qualia, will eventually be explained. So whenever contemplating any such question, be aware that you can either wait for science to catch up with it, or reach for some answer that might bring you solace, but will be inherently unverifiable. But know that such answer, be it platonistic, aristotelian, divine revelation or any other non-scientific pathos, is merely one of infinite number of possibilities. It might be worth contemplating as possibility, but it's definitely not worth preaching, being treated as truth or killing for.