RW Philosophy and subjective or objective Gloranthan Gods.

From: DanJKahn_at_aol.com
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 18:50:07 -0400 (EDT)


I have been interested to see the re-playing of the great 18th century philosophical debate between the subjective and objective theories of the way we, as humans relate to the world contrasted to the way mortals interact with gods in Glorantha.

In order to save bandwidth (and the irate mouse fingers of God-learners who know all this anyway) I shall briefly cover the positions and the players and leave any interested party to go to their local Lhankor Mhy temple for further investigations.

There were two main players in this. The first was a Scottish (Sartarite?) philosopher by the name of David Hume, who wrote the work "A Treatise of Human Nature". This chap argued firmly for the subjectivist point of view.  In a nutshell Hume said "we cannot found any knowledge of the external world upon our sensory experience, we can only examine the psychology of our beliefs about that world".... and that we can only be immediately aware of the appearances of objects in our own minds rather than the objects themselves in the external world.

In this sense, knowledge is entirely subjective and we cannot presume that there is anything verifiably objective to the human condition. For gods, they are only ever appearances in our minds, and we cannot prove to each other that they are real (or even one's other associates are real...ouch...that appearance of a troll really was quite subjective).

The champion to ride against such a mind-set was a German (Dara Happan?) philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant. He was horrified at the position taken by Hume (and in part against Descartes, Berkeley and Locke), and the seeming polarisation between subjectivism and objectivism necessitated by Hume's philosophy. In response Kant produce the awesome "Critique of Pure Reason". This attempted and acheived, IMHO, a fusion between subjective and objective views. (Kant talks about transcendant knowledge, could he have been on a HQ?)

Kant set forth a series of rules (categories ) which would enable the experience of an objective world possible. These rules would necessarily and universally apply to both human and angel. They are the necessary preconditions for an entity to be aware of "I".

He also posited a two world metaphysics, the "noumenal" and the "phenomenal". The phenomenal world is the world of experience as we know it, but is really an experiential construct of "our-selves" interacting with the "noumenal" world. The noumenal object, is objective "reality" whilst "phenomenal" objects are subjective, however they are in an intimate relationship. (keeping this "simple" is more difficult than I thought, apologies to Storm Bullies everywhere).

Gods, would then be noumenal entities (as well as you and I), but we would interact with them in the "inter-subjective, spatio-temporal realm of experience" (yee-har drop that little phrase at a Lunar cocktail party). In plain speak... you and I both experience the same objects subjectively through the medium of space and time. Whilst it can be said to be the same noumenal object, the phenomenal objects differ for each observer slightly.

There is a _lot_ more to this, but I would say that gods exist as noumenal objects, bound by the categories (the great compromise?) in their phenomenal interactions as much as mere mortals. Yet these noumenal objects are unbound by causality in themselves and may have a range of qualities/interactions beyond mortal ken. This makes them gods.

Pure subjectivism makes each mortal a god, so why are there limits to yourself?

In the end I agree with Nietsczhe on what is truth. "Truth is what works" ....in this context, the truth is what is playable.


Another thing,

I'm just about to run a campaign with Lunar Characters, is there a good source anywhere for the Lunar Empire?


Furthermore,

Does anyone have or know of a copy of the "Borderlands" pack they are willing to part with? My Lunar chappies are nobles off to carve fiefs for themselves in the Pavis region. I have the Pavis, Big Rubble and Troll Packs, and can use my fertile imagination a fair amount to fill in the gaps, but it would be nice to be coherent.


By the way, what is it that most of you Gloranthans play by? I'm a firm traditionalist, and lovingly caress and use only RQ2 stuff. Am I alone in this? Have I missed out in shelling out huge amounts of dosh for RQ3 when I have a great rule base (and DM-like ability to fudge and make up rules when necessary) in RQ2?

1968 was a good year....

p.s. Does anyone ever do a list of what all the acronyms stand for? (hint hint...grin grin)


End of Glorantha Digest V4 #545


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