Philosophy Made Simple: No Tears, No Nonsense

hiddenpuma75 said:...BEING 🤔

Honestly, what on earth is this concept of BEING?
How does an American even wrap their head around the distinction between "being" as a verb and "Being" as an actual entity or state of existence?
I’m asking for a breakdown so simple that even one of Einstein's most vocal assistants could grasp it—complete with visuals and examples, and hopefully without anyone needing to grit their teeth or shed tears of frustration.

=====
SPIRIT 🙂

For instance, I’ve noticed that our friend Sigmund uses the term "spirit" with such sovereign confidence and intimacy—it’s almost as effortless as you all reading these lines and tapping away at your keyboards.

And yet, Cave and Wand always seem to stumble over that very word— SPIRIT 🙂 because whenever they hear it, they immediately jump to some invisible entity that exists outside our 3D world, like some kind of gaseous, formless phantom...

My hope is that in this thread, we can finally clarify both the things we know and the things we don't regarding these fundamental concepts. We tend to toss them around so casually and recklessly, often with an unearned sense of certainty. ...

Joseph Bailey41 said:Isn't it just a mess over at Microsoft?

hiddenpuma75 said:...BEING 🤔

Honestly, what on earth is this concept of BEING?
How does an American even wrap their head around the distinction between "being" as a verb and "Being" as an actual entity or state of existence?
I’m asking for a breakdown so simple that even one of Einstein's most vocal assistants could grasp it—complete with visuals and examples, and hopefully without anyone needing to grit their teeth or shed tears of frustration.

=====
SPIRIT 🙂

For instance, I’ve noticed that our friend Sigmund uses the term "spirit" with such sovereign confidence and intimacy—it’s almost as effortless as you all reading these lines and tapping away at your keyboards.

And yet, Cave and Wand always seem to stumble over that very word— SPIRIT 🙂 because whenever they hear it, they immediately jump to some invisible entity that exists outside our 3D world, like some kind of gaseous, formless phantom...

My hope is that in this thread, we can finally clarify both the things we know and the things we don't regarding these fundamental concepts. We tend to toss them around so casually and recklessly, often with an unearned sense of certainty. ...

darkbadger8 said:The issue with the word spirit is that it’s a total polysemy.
Take English, for example: ghost, spook, apparition, genie... they can all be translated through the lens of "spirit," so it’s no wonder there's so much confusion.
We used to have better, more distinct terms back in the day... well, things change...
When you look at the word in context, it gets even messier:
The Holy Spirit, acting in the spirit of an agreement, or that creature with a chain around its head, a spirit in a bottle... you could go on forever.

Then, of course, we have the philosophical concept of spirit as some kind of immaterial essence that doesn't physically exist but is still "there"—not just present, but somehow performing a magical function that enables brain activity, interacting with neurons to occasionally produce intelligence, though more often just stupidity.

I suspect this specific description of "spirit" is a frequent subject for philosophical posturing.

So, I humbly suggest that in the 😁spirit of 😁quality discussion, we consider attaching a different word to that definition.

Specifically, I propose replacing the word "spirit" in philosophical discourse with Manitou.
Let me explain.
First, imagine that next year Jeep releases two different models of the Grand Cherokee.
They are identical in every way, except for one thing:
One has the title "Grand Cherokee Manitou" on the door, while the other says "Grand Cherokee Spirit."
Which one would you buy?
The answer is neither, because you can't afford them anyway.

Manitou is defined as follows: A spiritual and fundamental life force. It is omnipresent and manifests in everything: living beings, inanimate objects, the environment, events, and so on.

Furthermore, Manitou has two aspects that aren't mutually exclusive:
Aashaa Manitou—the Good Manitou, and Otshee Manitou—the Evil Manitou.
When a child pets a bunny, that's Aashaa Manitou acting on their neurons.
When a kid breaks a window with a baseball bat, the kid isn't necessarily evil; rather, Otshee Manitou is manifesting through their brain activity.

In certain traditions of the Algonquin Native Americans, Aashaa and Otshee are unified under the Great Spirit, who is the supreme being—God.
I suggest we keep calling Him God, though, because according to His own explicit Old Testament declarations, He is "jealous," and it's well-documented that He can be quite difficult when He's angry.
CLICK

Amanda Jackson5 said:It’s a clever little thought experiment, but experience usually tells us that swapping out labels for the sake of appearances doesn't actually change the substance of what's being discussed—nor does it change how people actually perceive it. We could go around embracing the spirit of political correctness by calling Black people African Americans, or referring to the Rom community as Rom, or even rebranding gay people as gay (or maybe just invoking the spirit of Manitu), but at the end of the day, it carries zero weight. In fact, when you make these changes purely on a surface level without touching the underlying reality, those new terms eventually become just as loaded and offensive as the old ones. It just starts this endless cycle where you have to invent new euphemisms to replace the old ones, *ad infinitum*. If my memory serves me right, I think Pinker touched on this exact phenomenon in Blank Slate.

Joseph Bailey41 said:Well, that's just the way the world works these days. ☕

hiddenpuma75 said:1. Let's keep this conversation flowing and stay connected.

2. I'm assuming everyone caught the drift of my first point here.👍

3. I enjoy reading your posts—not just for the raw thoughts, but for the deeper reasoning behind them...

4. But let me ask you: do you actually see the distinction between the "mind" and "reason" (and even the brain)?

5. Honestly, I don't! 🤔

(And if I could ask you all to help me clear this up, 🤔
(Okay, look, I know I’m being a bit of a dreamer here and I might be the only one asking, but I’m genuinely curious: how many of you are willing to take on the challenge? I'd love for you to explain, perhaps even using some colorful imagery, what "mind" versus "reason" means to you personally.)

If I'm being blunt, I suspect most of you don't really grasp the nuance between the two, and frankly, you probably don't care much to dive deep. 🙂

6.
Can anyone actually break down the similarities and differences between concepts like

consciousness and awareness,

spirit, soul, and psyche,

the mind and reason,

objective versus subjective,....

psychology, philosophy, spirituality, theology, and logic,

or even universal, particular, and individual?

darkbadger8 said:The issue with the word spirit is that it’s a total polysemy.
Take English, for example: ghost, spook, apparition, genie... they can all be translated through the lens of "spirit," so it’s no wonder there's so much confusion.
We used to have better, more distinct terms back in the day... well, things change...
When you look at the word in context, it gets even messier:
The Holy Spirit, acting in the spirit of an agreement, or that creature with a chain around its head, a spirit in a bottle... you could go on forever.

Then, of course, we have the philosophical concept of spirit as some kind of immaterial essence that doesn't physically exist but is still "there"—not just present, but somehow performing a magical function that enables brain activity, interacting with neurons to occasionally produce intelligence, though more often just stupidity.

I suspect this specific description of "spirit" is a frequent subject for philosophical posturing.

So, I humbly suggest that in the 😁spirit of 😁quality discussion, we consider attaching a different word to that definition.

Specifically, I propose replacing the word "spirit" in philosophical discourse with Manitou.
Let me explain.
First, imagine that next year Jeep releases two different models of the Grand Cherokee.
They are identical in every way, except for one thing:
One has the title "Grand Cherokee Manitou" on the door, while the other says "Grand Cherokee Spirit."
Which one would you buy?
The answer is neither, because you can't afford them anyway.

Manitou is defined as follows: A spiritual and fundamental life force. It is omnipresent and manifests in everything: living beings, inanimate objects, the environment, events, and so on.

Furthermore, Manitou has two aspects that aren't mutually exclusive:
Aashaa Manitou—the Good Manitou, and Otshee Manitou—the Evil Manitou.
When a child pets a bunny, that's Aashaa Manitou acting on their neurons.
When a kid breaks a window with a baseball bat, the kid isn't necessarily evil; rather, Otshee Manitou is manifesting through their brain activity.

In certain traditions of the Algonquin Native Americans, Aashaa and Otshee are unified under the Great Spirit, who is the supreme being—God.
I suggest we keep calling Him God, though, because according to His own explicit Old Testament declarations, He is "jealous," and it's well-documented that He can be quite difficult when He's angry.
CLICK

darkbadger8 said:The issue with the word spirit is that it’s a total polysemy.
Take English, for example: ghost, spook, apparition, genie... they can all be translated through the lens of "spirit," so it’s no wonder there's so much confusion.
We used to have better, more distinct terms back in the day... well, things change...
When you look at the word in context, it gets even messier:
The Holy Spirit, acting in the spirit of an agreement, or that creature with a chain around its head, a spirit in a bottle... you could go on forever.

Then, of course, we have the philosophical concept of spirit as some kind of immaterial essence that doesn't physically exist but is still "there"—not just present, but somehow performing a magical function that enables brain activity, interacting with neurons to occasionally produce intelligence, though more often just stupidity.

I suspect this specific description of "spirit" is a frequent subject for philosophical posturing.

So, I humbly suggest that in the 😁spirit of 😁quality discussion, we consider attaching a different word to that definition.

Specifically, I propose replacing the word "spirit" in philosophical discourse with Manitou.
Let me explain.
First, imagine that next year Jeep releases two different models of the Grand Cherokee.
They are identical in every way, except for one thing:
One has the title "Grand Cherokee Manitou" on the door, while the other says "Grand Cherokee Spirit."
Which one would you buy?
The answer is neither, because you can't afford them anyway.

Manitou is defined as follows: A spiritual and fundamental life force. It is omnipresent and manifests in everything: living beings, inanimate objects, the environment, events, and so on.

Furthermore, Manitou has two aspects that aren't mutually exclusive:
Aashaa Manitou—the Good Manitou, and Otshee Manitou—the Evil Manitou.
When a child pets a bunny, that's Aashaa Manitou acting on their neurons.
When a kid breaks a window with a baseball bat, the kid isn't necessarily evil; rather, Otshee Manitou is manifesting through their brain activity.

In certain traditions of the Algonquin Native Americans, Aashaa and Otshee are unified under the Great Spirit, who is the supreme being—God.
I suggest we keep calling Him God, though, because according to His own explicit Old Testament declarations, He is "jealous," and it's well-documented that He can be quite difficult when He's angry.
CLICK

Amanda Jackson5 said:To be honest, it’s not really. I meant to get back to you on this a while ago, but it slipped my mind. I suspect the confusion stems from some old-school scholasticism and the messy ways Aristotle's work was translated, especially regarding his distinction between passive and active intellect. If we look at the Latin term *intellectus*, which basically means the intellect, the Greek equivalent would be *nous pathetikos* versus *nous poietikos*. You could think of it as a rough parallel to the divide between empiricism and rationalism—or, if you prefer the heavy hitters, what Kant (and later Hegel) categorized as *Verstand* versus *Vernunft*.

Amanda Jackson5 said:To be honest, it’s not really. I meant to get back to you on this a while ago, but it slipped my mind. I suspect the confusion stems from some old-school scholasticism and the messy ways Aristotle's work was translated, especially regarding his distinction between passive and active intellect. If we look at the Latin term *intellectus*, which basically means the intellect, the Greek equivalent would be *nous pathetikos* versus *nous poietikos*. You could think of it as a rough parallel to the divide between empiricism and rationalism—or, if you prefer the heavy hitters, what Kant (and later Hegel) categorized as *Verstand* versus *Vernunft*.

Amanda Jackson5 said:To be honest, it’s not really. I meant to get back to you on this a while ago, but it slipped my mind. I suspect the confusion stems from some old-school scholasticism and the messy ways Aristotle's work was translated, especially regarding his distinction between passive and active intellect. If we look at the Latin term *intellectus*, which basically means the intellect, the Greek equivalent would be *nous pathetikos* versus *nous poietikos*. You could think of it as a rough parallel to the divide between empiricism and rationalism—or, if you prefer the heavy hitters, what Kant (and later Hegel) categorized as *Verstand* versus *Vernunft*.

James Lee77 said:The biggest debate on Philosophy for like 15 years now:

hiddenpuma75 said:Not quite!

1. This is exactly why we all needed this dictionary in the first place.

2. Traditionalists have taught me that Intellect isn't just "the mind," and we shouldn't be so careless about blurring the lines like people do in everyday conversation.

They write things a certain way, so I’m going to make sure I clarify this for myself, for you, and for "all of us" alike.😁

3. Spiritus (Intellectus) is the Latin term; in Greek, it’s Pneuma, and in Jewish and Arabic traditions, it's Ruh.

4. The soul is Anima; in Greek, that's Psyche, and in Jewish and Arabic, it's Nefs.

5. Intellect and Spirit are essentially two sides of the same coin.

Now, I think there's a rather beautiful mathematical analogy for this:

There is no impenetrable barrier between the Intellect and the mind.
The relationship of the former to the latter is much like the relationship between the apex of a cone and its circular base. Metaphorically speaking, since the days of Descartes, most philosophers have focused exclusively on the base while completely ignoring the apex (the transcendental), which ultimately condemned them to superstition. That's the philosophical decline that began with Descartes and Kant and has continued right up to the present day—it's what we call the history of philosophy.
The only strange exception to this downward spiral was the Cambridge Platonists of the 17th century.

Virgilian words couldn't express it better:
''Descending into Avernus is easy, but remembering the steps to return is hard! !

*
(Avernus is a crater near Rome, symbolizing the underworld, or rather, decay.)

hollowpuma762 said:Look, Spiritus and Intellectus aren't the same thing, and saying they are is just a massive oversimplification.
It’s not even about being "two sides of a coin"—it's more like a trinity than that.