"Skeptics," Science, Spirituality and Religion
According to the logic of the so-called “skeptics,” spirituality and religion is craziness.
By that definition, the bulk of humanity is mentally ill, as the bulk of humanity has one or another form of spirituality. This leaves these people thinking that they are the only sane people out there.
If there is such a thing as narcissism, I can think of no more glaring narcissism than that.
Most “skeptics” are not even scientists. Real scientists are curious, and many are as curious about spirituality as they are about everything else. I am good friends with a distinguished scientist who openly talks about having had very real spiritual experiences. He has a vast body of academic knowledge, is very well-reasoned and uses scientific method to excellent standard. That has not prevented him from having a spiritual life.
Spiritual experiences happen all the time, at least they do in my life. I've had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening; and I am nowhere close to being the only one. Many people either forget the experiences that they have or deny them; but if you dig enough you will find in many cases that they have in fact had very real spiritual experiences. The problem is that they do not know how to make them parse with what they know about the world from science and mathematics. This results in many of them denying these experiences; and toward that effect any number of people have come up with any number of tricks.
Some want to say that experience is “anecdotal” and does not count as valid evidence. Others want to ascribe it to being on drugs, or being depressed or anorexic, or being otherwise non compos mentis during the time of the experience. Others still start going into beliefs such as that truth itself is relative. In all cases we find dishonesty. It is dishonesty that comes from dischordance between the logical implications of the experience and the worldview.
Is science wrong? No, it isn't. Materialist fundamentalism however is completely wrong. I seek an explanation that will be consistent with both scientific fact and the facts of my and other people's spiritual experiences; and I am continuing to look for this explanation in any number of paths.
By that definition, the bulk of humanity is mentally ill, as the bulk of humanity has one or another form of spirituality. This leaves these people thinking that they are the only sane people out there.
If there is such a thing as narcissism, I can think of no more glaring narcissism than that.
Most “skeptics” are not even scientists. Real scientists are curious, and many are as curious about spirituality as they are about everything else. I am good friends with a distinguished scientist who openly talks about having had very real spiritual experiences. He has a vast body of academic knowledge, is very well-reasoned and uses scientific method to excellent standard. That has not prevented him from having a spiritual life.
Spiritual experiences happen all the time, at least they do in my life. I've had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening; and I am nowhere close to being the only one. Many people either forget the experiences that they have or deny them; but if you dig enough you will find in many cases that they have in fact had very real spiritual experiences. The problem is that they do not know how to make them parse with what they know about the world from science and mathematics. This results in many of them denying these experiences; and toward that effect any number of people have come up with any number of tricks.
Some want to say that experience is “anecdotal” and does not count as valid evidence. Others want to ascribe it to being on drugs, or being depressed or anorexic, or being otherwise non compos mentis during the time of the experience. Others still start going into beliefs such as that truth itself is relative. In all cases we find dishonesty. It is dishonesty that comes from dischordance between the logical implications of the experience and the worldview.
Is science wrong? No, it isn't. Materialist fundamentalism however is completely wrong. I seek an explanation that will be consistent with both scientific fact and the facts of my and other people's spiritual experiences; and I am continuing to look for this explanation in any number of paths.
Comments (255)
They don't have to give up their illogical belief, but I think that they should be intellectually honest about what it isn't, and it isn't logical or credible.
Knowing you’re insane instantly makes you sane. Eventually you;re left understanding that these terms are not merely relative constructions of language, but a phenomenon brought forth to be viewed NOT phenomena - the idea of a plurality of “phenomenon” is rather silly!
No. You're not. You believe in the infinite power of human reason with the same blind faith with which many religious people believe in their holy books. In fact, your faith is stronger, because you don't even understand that it's faith.
You're not interested in reason, but in ideology, and don't actually understand the difference between the two.
But, you're probably 23, and that's a good excuse. Seriously, it is.
@S is 30 I think.
Crazy in what sense? That's such a loaded term.
Crazy from an empirical standpoint? Sure, most religions are downright nuts (though "spirituality" in some respects may one day find a scientific home), but religion hasn't evolved to scratch the same set of itches that science has, and vice versa.
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Actually, being factually mistaken is far flung from being "mentally ill", under any sensible definition... People who believed or even yet believe that the earth is flat are woefully mistaken and often under-educated, but they aren't "mentally-ill".
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
I'm quite skeptical of this...
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Your scientist friend might also remind you that if you want to make generalized statements about a certain segment of the population, you need more than a single data point.
In truth most scientists are not religious type folk, though having "spiritual" experiences is not at all exclusive to religion. Some scientists believe some really empirically questionable stuff, but they tend toward believing what can be demonstrated or measured rather than making unnecessary assumptions about the immeasurable. For some scientists, the intrinsic feelings they have upon acquiring new knowledge could be construable as spiritual, for other scientists it could be experimenting with LSD.
If you care to define "spiritual" in a specific context, perhaps I could give a more caricatured rebuke,
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Can you give an example?
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Maybe you've just prematurely discounted materialist fundamentalism?
Ilya, some people guess that the REALITY of existence has a "god" (or gods) at its core. Some people guess that the REALITY of existence has no "gods" involved at all.
They are merely guesses.
For some, their guess makes them want to classify people who guess otherwise to be insane or stupid.
Sorta that same thing happens in politics these days. People on one side of the political spectrum often classify people on the other side as "nuts" or stupid.
So be it.
No need to get excited about it. It just happens.
This process is true, eg I have noticed that when I meet someone and say they have a car of a certain make and colour, I then start to see lots of the same make of car with the same colour, going down the roads...I assume this is some kind of recognition bias, and not an increase in the presence of those makes of car.
But when it involves certain things like thinking of someone, and then a few minutes later they ring you up, I think this can only happen so many times before it becomes quite improbable that this is down to coincidence, or conformation bias....
Like the OP said, there comes a time when someone would have to go into denial about the personal evidence in order to dismiss it...this is a shame....especially if it happens to a scientist..the whole point of science is to be open and curious about how the universe works, and not to try to make the evidence fit their preconceived view of how it works.
I partly think science has been infested with financial considerations. It is perhaps easier to apply for research funding, if you have a mainstream research application, which leads to more materialistic research and mindset.......this cycle just promotes materialistic thinking in the scientific community...it's hard I would think for scientists to even break out of this mould in even materialistic research if the reseatch goes at all against the mainstream views......shame really.
Speaking of likelihood in the absence of frequency data . . . (I just brought up the problem with this in another thread)
There's a name for this, by the way. It's called "Catch 22." Great book. Ok movie.
I've always hated this type of statement, what Stephen Jay Gould called "Non-Overlapping Magisteria," NOMA. Even though he is one of my favorite writers, the idea is bullshit. There is only one world. We are all trying to describe it in our own ways.
Then they are let out of the room and are amazed by a sunset. The experience of color is different than the knowledge of color. And they are both real.
So we are left with 2 rather opposing views on why that is. At one end we have Camus' absurdity. There is no meaning and it is just some absurd quirk of human nature that we seek it. Or on the other end, Karl Rahner's pre apprehension, that all human beings are inherently aware of something greater than themselves- they do not know what this is, but there is some inherent knowledge that it is there.
So to me, before you can make some judgment about theism or atheism you have to address that fundamental question. And be comfortable in your judgment on why we human beings have such a need for meaning.
Very true.
Yes. I am very aware of what Qualia are. Also the Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Explanatory Gap.
Well, you are... You're one in a billion. Otherwise how did anyone calculate there was less than a billionth chance of what happened to you happening?
Well I never said there is no overlap, but aren't you missing Gould's point? There's a world of facts and there's also a world of emotions; science approximates the former while religion comforts the latter; different itches.
What's objectionable about that? Do you want me to treat religious ideas as I would treat scientific hypotheses?
I do not know what this means. Some describe sex as a spiritual experience or music or any number of other things as a spiritual experience. The problem. as I see it, is when one is moved to make ontological claims based on the experience. As if there were a spiritual realm or reality that is in some way distinct from everyday reality that one has become familiar with via the experience. I do not know whether or not such a thing exists, but I am skeptical of the idea that the experience is of something other than one's interpretation of a subjective state.
This is not my understanding of it. Not all physicalists deny conscious experience, they simply go by the assumption that there is a physical explanation of consciousness even though we have not yet and may never figure it out.
Your experience with the Physicalists might be right but my experience with them has been that they believe Consciousness is just an Illusion and is not even worth studying any further. They say the Hard Problem is solved and there is no Explanatory Gap and that is that. They will not listen to any other arguments. Ok so because of what your experience is I will have to say almost all Physicalists instead of all Physicalists.
I disagree. There are no facts independent of values. Values tell us how to split up the world in a way that makes sense to humans. Values are related to feelings, emotions. As has been said many times on the forum, perhaps even in this thread, humans with certain kinds of neurological damage that make it difficult to feel emotions also have trouble making decisions.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I would like you to recognize that what you call "scientific hypotheses" do not represent some sort of special phenomena which are independent of the entity doing the hypothesizing.
Yes, I have read such things and even had conversations with such people. Perhaps first and foremost of those who claim that consciousness is an illusion is Daniel Dennett.
What I am suggesting is that it is not an either/or issue. The choice is not between physicalism and consciousness. Physicalism is the rejection of supernatural explanations, but this leaves open questions of the effect of culture on consciousness; whether, so to speak, one can understand consciousness by looking at the hardware or if the software plays an essential part.
[Edited]
In another thread, you and I were discussing Rahner's pre-apprehension as something similar to what I was calling an awareness of god. To me, that is something that comes before meaning. When we start focusing on meaning, we have already lost that direct experience.
I don't want to play word games and I'm not trying to be tricky. One of the definitions of "apprehension" is "understanding." So, pre-apprehension would be something that comes before understanding. Before labeling. To me, identifying meaning is a kind of labeling. That's what I thought you were talking about.
To me, the experience of god is something that comes before understanding. Before words.
Which is consistent with Rahner as I understand him. I would say his definition of pre apprehension is an awareness before an understanding
You're missing the distinction. Science presumes an external objective universe of noumena (ostensibly), and seeks to model/approximate it. Science is a more narrow field of knowledge-making which happens to focus on extricating subjective feeling and values-bias from the way we measure and quantify phenomena.
Science doesn't "make decisions", it's purely informative in that regard. Ultimately we make decisions based on values. Religion can be at its core a presumption about what kinds of decisions we should make (or how we should make them), which science cannot. Science can help us make effective decisions per our values (which is something some religious tenets can also do), but else-wise it's an overly strained comparison.
Quoting T Clark
What are you trying to get at? That the assertion "god exists" is just as scientific as the assertion "force is equivalent to mass times acceleration"?
I can assure you there's a difference: one is actually testable, specifically measurable, and semantically consistent. The other is not falsifiable whatsoever, vague, immeasurable, and semantically incoherent (on its own).
If you want to juxtapose religious fruit alongside scientific fruit, then you've got to apply the same selection criteria; I would like you to recognize that what I call "scientific hypotheses" are only an epistemological affront to your possible religious beliefs in so far as you think your beliefs represent or approximate some kind of consistent external world of noumena.
That is to say, if you must insist that Jesus is real and is in Heaven, then I'll dutifully question it as not base in real-ity.
Properly stated, yes.
Claims about a theistic god existing involve an empirical claim, they suppose the presence of a existing existing entity with empirical manifestations in its presence and actions. That's why we can falsify such theistic claims. When we look out in the world and find the claim events of this god did not occur, we can conclude said god doesn't exist. Why? This god is an empirical entity subject to scientific investigation.
Bingo. I almost made this point myself. It's not that such beliefs are meaningless. They may offer comfort to their purveyors. But they are suspiciously vague. It's hard to imagine a Deism otherwise empty of content offering much comfort. A retreat to such contentless divinity is likely an insincere rhetorical move. A god with no worldly manifestation doesn't seem to offer much. If he doesn't answer prayers, reward the good, punish the wicked, then what's the appeal? Only a philosophical itch is scratched, which is perhaps why I am not aware of such a deism having many adherents.
You turn it back on them, what exactly would such a deistic god even be? How can one clam there is an existing being, yet ascribe no sort of existence to it?
It's like saying: "Well, there on my shelf, there is is existing thing, but its not actually anything for sure, it could tae up the whole shelf or it might not present anything on the half at all." This is not a coherent claim about an existing being. Said being could actually be anything or even nothing, the exact opposite of an existing entity (which is itself precisely in that it is actually nothing else and never will be).
If the being does not intervene in the physical world, that is, does not form some kind of reaction of one material being to another (mere existence is an intervention because it means a relation in space-time), how can it be said to exist at all?
In the case of such a deistic God, we actually have a stronger falsification than the empirical one: we know it is a logical contradiction for it to be an existing being. Unlike the empirical one, there is not even a possibility we might be mistaken.
Yes but then they'll just start questioning whatever axioms of logic are within reach. The point is that we should not always argue (empirically) against god claims, because we don't always need to. Deist claims depart from the observable universe, which is limit of our ability to conduct scientific inquiry on the matter. If someone does happen to cling to such a claim (rare though they may be as @old suggests), unless they're using it in a way which interferes with others why should we necessarily disabuse them? Some people believe things for purely emotional reasons, and if the harm is negligible and the emotional reward great, why not allow blissful ignorance to exist?
I understand the distinction, and I don't even have an argument with it as far as it goes. As you say, "Science presumes an external objective universe..." I think that is often a useful presumption, but it is not a universal truth. There is a good metaphysical argument to be made that the concept of "objective reality" is an illusion, a human invention.
You say science doesn't make decisions. Ok, but a so-called scientific world view represents an almost endless series of decisions about what to pay attention to and what questions to ask.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You're right. Whether or not god exists is not a question that can be answered by science. I never said it was and I never said I think god exists. What I have said elsewhere is that the experience of god represents a way of experiencing the world that is more complete than the scientific view by itself. Science is incomplete and misleading in a very practical and down-to-earth way.
Hi. I hope you don't mind me jumping in. What do you make of this old problem? How is 'there is no objective reality' meant to be understood if not as a statement about objective reality? Is it a fact that there are no facts but only interpretations? I understand the appeal of the denial in terms of its openmindedness, but I'm not aware of any strong retorts to the issue above.
That doesn't help them because the contradiction is in their own "axiom"-- they claim an existing being while also saying that being is nothing at all.
Scientific inquiry isn't relevant at this point because this a problem with logic of posing an existing being that is nothing in existence.
We should disabuse them, if we are going to, for the same reason we do it to theists (plenty of them do not interfere with other either). It's important for speaking truths and reasoning. In terms of reasoning about deities, it's quite important because people will use deistic arguments to support theistic one (i.e. "god is unfalsifiable" ).
No, of course I don't mind you "jumping in." "There is no objective reality" is a statement about objective reality in the same sense that "There is no god" is a statement about god. I don't see that as a problem.
I don't think this is the place to take up as big a subject as that. I started a discussion a couple of years ago called "Objective Reality vs. the Tao," that covered the subject. It's also been discussed in numerous threads on the forum by myself and others. The idea that objective reality is an illusion is a mainstream idea in philosophy, which isn't to say it is not hotly contested.
Science makes presumptions about how to do science itself, not about what kind of values-decisions we should make. The "values" of science are just tools we use to help serve our primary values.
Quoting T Clark
Science was never meant to be an existential world-view, it is strictly about the physically measurable.
The problem you're getting at is that science has had a knack for dismantling the more spiritual frameworks that once (and still) dominate our interpretations of our existential place in the world/the value of our lives.
For many people, prolonged exposure to science creates a god-shaped wound, and if "god" was previously held close to their heart, the damage to their happiness can be catastrophic. But we can still learn to mend it with other things, and we don't all weave our religious beliefs and experiences into and around our vital arteries to begin with.
It is ultimately for individuals to decide how they want to experience and interpret the world. We need not all follow the well-traveled path.
Imagine if you could snap your fingers and change someone's belief in god. Are you prepared to impart to them your entire existential and moral framework, given that their current one is likely founded in god-belief? What if your framework fails them? Wouldn't they be left in nihilism or absurdism?
Would you tell a 90 year-old, who on their death bed is only comforted by the belief they will see their loved ones in heaven, that heaven probably doesn't exist?
I don't think that's true. I think most scientists, and many others, believe that science provides a privileged viewpoint of the true nature of reality. They believe it is not just the best, but the only valid way of understanding the world.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
The problem I'm getting at is science has a knack for ignoring its own, fundamentally human, value system.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I'm an engineer. When I was a kid, rigid materialism seemed obvious to me. Although that's faded, I'm still comfortable with the assumptions that are built into the scientific world view, but I do recognize they are human assumptions and not universal truths.
No god-shaped wound here.
I think your claim that science "presumes an external objective universe of noumena" is questionable. Science concerns itself with phenomena, not with noumena. I think "measuring and quantifying phenomena" is right, but that it has nothing to do with "subjective feeling and values-bias", so there is no need for extrication. On the other hand, hypothesizing, which involves abductive reasoning has much to do with imagination and metaphor, if not with "subjective feeling and values-bias". It is certainly possible for individual scientists to become emotionally attached to their hypotheses, though.
I just haven't really encountered this kind of "scientism". I'm aware there are a few zealots in every camp, but they hardly define the set. "The only way of understanding the world" is a bit strong for such a broad claim. I think on average it would go something like "the best way we have of understanding the external world". It's certainly not the only way, and "world" can be divided into many niches, some of which don't lend well to measurement and methodological inquiry.
Quoting T Clark
What human values has science founded itself upon? Induction itself somehow?
Quoting T Clark
Rigid materialism, if true, doesn't pose a threat to my happiness. I still inherently value positive emotional experiences (I just don't associate them with god or creation) and when I have "spiritual experiences" (which are basically very profound emotional/cognitive experiences) I try to saver them for how they make me feel, not for what I think they mean in the grand scheme of things. I'm not convinced that the universe is as we perceive it, but so long as our perceptions of an external world are consistent enough, it's something that pragmatically I might as well plan for.
Ostensibly man! Ostensibly!
"Ostensibly": adverb: apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.
Quoting Janus
My point here was that some kinds of measurement are inherently bias-laden (emotional appraisal included). Perhaps I should have said "empirical measurements, which are inherently bias free").
Quoting Janus
There's no guide to abduction. It really doesn't matter where a hypothesis comes from, science can only harden once something is identified and put to a test. Sometimes we use whim, sometimes we take inspiration from nature, sometimes we just get lucky; but I would hardly focus on generating new hypotheses as the locus of the scientific method.
Thanks for your condescension, but I know what "ostensibly" means, and I don't believe science even ostensibly "presumes an external objective universe of noumena".
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Analogy is the guide to abduction. I agree that science is not really science until its abductive conjectures are put to the test. Generating hypotheses, along with inducing predictions and testing those predictions by observing phenonema are all essential to the so-called scientific method, so I'm not too sure what you're trying to say here.
Conscious Sensory Experience seems to be in a Category of Phenomena that is not part of any known Category of Scientific Phenomena. It is not Super Natural but it is Super Scientific, and I fully expect that Science will get it's thinking together and figure this out someday.
What about "ostensibly ostensibly presumes an external objective universe of noumena"?
Quoting Janus
I'm saying we need to use bias-free measurement for the hardened science. I'm rebuking your assessment that subjective values and personal bias play a significant positive role in the underpinnings of "scientific facts".
Makes no sense to me, so what about it?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
And I'm saying that any measurement is bias-free or it is not an accurate measurement. When I am building, my "subjective values and personal bias" don't play any part in the measurements, and the same goes for measurements in science. So it seems you are not rebuking, but merely ostensibly (and ostensibly only to yourself), rebuking anything I have said, since I certainly did not say anything along the lines that "subjective values and personal bias play a significant role in the underpinning of 'scientific facts'. I don't have much of an idea what that could even mean.
On topics of such scale 30 is an ok excuse too. Nobody is born knowing such things, it takes time for some of this to sink in.
Let me try using different language:
Our ability to do science, to some extent, rests on there being consistent relationships between observable phenomenon in the first place. Though our perceptions and perspectives can disagree, the more we use actual measurement as opposed to subjective feeling to assess the state of things, and relationships between things, the more we find consistency and agreement. The "external world of noumena" per my usage can be as simple as the assumption that despite variance in individual perceptions of the world, it is measurably consistent (or consistent enough) such that a practice that seeks to model consistent relationships actually works.
I was trying to characterize scientific knowledge as relatively free from subjective bias. Perhaps that's so obvious that it's trivial, but it seems to be under contention in this thread.
I know that I'm not supposed to post links, but your question is answered as follows:
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/logic-religion-and-spiritual-experience
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/logic-religion-and-spiritual-experience
Boy, your experience is different from mine. I think maybe your term "external world" is the give away. For most of the scientifically inclined, the external world is the only real world. The internal world is just an artifact of the material world and is given a dismissive wave of the hand. As the prime example, in their way of thinking, the mind is the brain.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Well, most obviously, the scientific approach emphasizes the physical world to the exclusion of anything else. That's a decision based on a particular set of human values. It's not based on some sort of objective necessity. That emphasis is a reflection of a belief in the encompassing importance of the control of nature for the benefit of humankind.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I've never been talking about the existence of god. I've always talked about the experience of a phenomenon we, some of us, call god. Human experience vs. so called objective truth. It's ridiculous to say "Based on my system of values and methods, which denies anything which is not included in the external world, I deny the existence of something which is not included in the external world."
Of course one may cite many personal experiences of the divine but what is not physically detectable falls into mere speculation - imagination runs wild and a world of fantastical entities and events are born. The point to note is where evidence is lacking, especially physical evidence, my theory is as good as yours or anyone else's for that matter. How the hell are you going to find the truth.
I'm not a hardcore physicalist but for the reasons mentioned above I prefer to be skeptical. Physicalists could be wrong but it isn't about getting it right; it's about proper method to acquiring truths. Wouldn't a spiritualist need proof to convince him/herself?
Cognitive science studies sensory experience. There is some ambiguity in your terminology. There can be no sensory experience that is not a conscious experience. A category of phenomena would be a category of things known via experience.
That is a very peculiar notion of a subjective state.
https://www.aiprinc.org/mystical/
It makes some sense that when a religious person has a mystical experience, they link that experience to their religion. I think what the sentence is supposed to stipulate is that sometimes people link their mystical experience(s) to (a) God.
I can prove to you that the brain is the mind; there's no escaping that conclusion, but that's another discussion.
But just take a look at how @Janus reacted to my suggestion that science ostensibly presumes an external world of noumena. IIRC, he is a defender of science, but he won't bite the materialist hook even a little.
Quoting T Clark
It's not the physical world per se (though ostensibly it appears to be), it's the observable world. Science focuses on the observable and the measurable. "Physical" normally means "of the body, as opposed to the mind", but in this case it actually means everything we can perceive through our senses, which includes other minds. (we may only be at a stage of understanding where we say "philosophy of mind" rather than "science of mind", but we seem to be getting there).
Quoting T Clark
You've misstated the typical atheist/scientist position a little bit.
Science is not in the business of denying the existence of immeasurable phenomenon, nor are most atheists in the business of denying the existence of god. Like science, atheists typically reject the affirmation of god's existence (rejecting a positive claim), rather than asserting a positive claim of their own (that zero gods exist).
Science simply cannot comment on the immeasurable and the unobservable. It's not that science presumes we should focus on controlling nature as morally important, it's that science is the practice of modelling the observable to begin with.
These experiences are often called profound, or even life-changing.
Quoting S
It's not a choice, because you seem to have made up your mind in advance. I understand that before one believes something, they demand some explanation, but statements like this:
Quoting S
And the one I quoted earlier, indicate to me that you have no intention of taking people who share their experiences seriously, so why would they?
I'm not sure what you mean by "defender of science". If you tell me what materialism consists in according to you, I'll tell you whether I am a materialist or not. Also, I think you are incorrect or at least exaggerating if you mean to suggest that my "reaction" was emotionally motivated.
I was merely pointing out that science as such has no need of noumena, and therefore that, in itself considered as a methodology, it does not "presume an external world of noumena". It may be said to presume an external world of independent phenomena, but that is not the same thing. Whether individual scientists presume such a thing would be different in each case I imagine.
I'm sure you can prove it to your own satisfaction, but I'm even surer that you won't be able to prove it to mine. I'd be happy to give you a shot. We'll have to take that up at a later time.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Isn't this just a restatement of what I said:
Quoting T Clark
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I don't think I've misstated it at all. It all goes back to something I said earlier - many (most?) scientists think that science provides the only valid path to understanding reality. If something is not allowed for within the boundaries of science, it doesn't exist. It's the same circular argument.
Spiritual simply because it deals with matters of the spirit, rather than physical, practical, social, or even religious matters. Religious matters involve other people, beliefs, rituals, and some assortment of goofy trinkets.
It's just a particular brain state, and nothing besides.
If it's just a particular brain state, then, okay, I guess. Personally I still find it all rather odd and unnecessary.
Science doesn't deny the existence of minds though, nor does it deny the existence of god. It actually makes no statement about the existence or non-existence of gods whatsoever. You're confusing "is observable" with "exists". No respectable scientist goes around saying that X, Y, and Z unobserved phenomenon don't exist purely because we have not yet observed them.
Quoting Janus
Do you think that the "phenomena" you perceive are consistent, or otherwise correlate, with "things" that are external from your own mind?. In other words, do you believe that your perceptions relate to a certain way of things that holds true regardless of whether or not you happen to perceive them?
It's basically the assumption that there's some kind of "real" component to the things our senses perceive.
P.S. I was pointing to you as an example to show T-Clark that those who embrace science do not necessarily deny everything else in order to do so. It would not be rational to be offended by this.
Is that a neurochemical state?
The extreme materialist philosophy or point of view is quite naive and simply silly.
The issue isn't at all that if you would consider something else than material to exist, you are a proponent of the supernatural. Nonsense: you can make quite valid points about for example mathematical entities and surely those entities don't exist in the material form. Yet they can be absolutely important to solve 'real world' problems. And so is the thing with questions of spirituality, morality and aesthetics. There is a pragmatic need for these kind of questions, hence you do need them to understand and operate in the material world around you.
Agree - science is very much in the business of looking for stuff that does not exist, and very much not in the business of denying anything with out evidence.
Quoting praxis
Or without any evidence to refute them other than a different world view, we could just believe otherwise honest and unmotivated to misinform people that they believe what they believe to be true. Does your qualia of a sunset equal my qualia of a sunset. Does your attempt to inform me of the refraction of light waves through the atmosphere and the way my optic nerve relays that to my brain in any way effect my unique exeriance?
Not argument, just explanation. A tenet of Ignatian spirituality is to see God in all things. When one goes through the Spiritual Exercises, a large part of that process is the ability to become more aware of the presence of God in our every day lives. To those with a predisposition to feel so, this will sound very hokey. But to hundreds of thousands of jesuits that have done the exercises it is very real. They would say all of life is a spiritual experience if you train yourself to be aware of it. Who is to say that they are wrong, or deluded, or anything else, simply because though a different frame a reference one can not understand how such a thing could be.
Perhaps you could expand on this aspect of Catholic philosophy? It's interesting to me that Catholic doctrine (if i understand it) claims that God is ever present in everything everywhere and that "God is in all things" but God is still seen as something separate. I'm not arguing the point so much as I am interested in exploring that last step to... God IS everything.
From my perspective there is a single unified reality. Some people call this God, some call it nature or reality, and from my perspective this competitive naming process is of little importance. Space serves as a good example of a single unified reality for those who are allergic to religious language.
From my perspective what some call God is not something separate from us, and it only appears that way because we are observing reality through a mechanism which operates by a process of conceptual division. It's not that we are separate from (enter your preferred term here) it's that we FEEL separate. That feeling is an illusion generated by thought, by the way it works.
And so when we create names, labels, ideologies, religions, philosophies, explanations, and my posts too, what we're actually doing is fueling the mechanism which is the source of the illusion.
Philosophy is like a bunch of hungry people standing around a table full of food arguing over what to name the food instead of sitting down to eat the food. On the surface the competing arguments may sound rational, but the process itself is not.
Firstly, there is an inherent problem in any discussion like this. In some way we need to anthropomorphize God to try to understand. This is necessary to some degree but always in error.
In my view all of your options are true. Catholicism allows for many interpretations of this, and many are needed to accommodate the various receivers of the message. A 12 year old boy, an un educated working man in Nigeria, a poor woman in South America a high school graduate in Vermont, a phd physicist, me, a bishop, the pope, and a Jesuit theologian. All have a different level of how to interpret abstraction. Some may need a more anthropomorphic God than others. And there is often some disagreement among factions. I think Karl Rahner was a brilliant man, and I relate well to his theology, some in the church thought he was near heretical. He didn't even like the word God very much, he like Mystery better.
In Ignatian spirituality God is in all things, He is active in our lives and in His creation. And if one pays attention one can develop a greater awareness of His presence. We develop this through discernment, where we pay attention to our feelings and emotions and discern if our choices are ordered or not. If we are authentically ourselves, and honest in our evaluations we can feel God's presents in this process. Also daily we pray the examen, this is a process of reviewing your day with the specific goal of in hindsight looking for where we felt Gods presence. When we do this we try to stay quiet in our mind and allow it to go where it wants, and focus on those things it lands on.
This is not correct. Science and scientists try to discredit the idea of the mind in a number of ways:
This is fun. I may start a new thread so I can think of more examples. All of these are signs of the same disorder - those who think of themselves as so-called "hard" scientists and their intellectual cohort believe that the only important aspects of our world are what they call "external reality." Here's a great example:
Quoting VagabondSpectre
"What is made intelligible is grounded ultimately in the one thing that is self-evident, in mystery. Mystery is something with which we are always familiar, something which we love, even when we are terrified by it or perhaps even annoyed or angered, and want to be done with it.
For the person who has touched his [or her] own spiritual depths, what is more familiar, thematically or unthematically, and what is more self-evident than the silent question which goes beyond everything which has already been mastered and controlled, than the unanswered question accepted in humble love, which along brings wisdom?
In the ultimate depths of his [or her] being, [the human person] knows nothing more surely than that his [or her] knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it.
Hence the existentiell question for the knower is this: Which does he [or she] love more, the small island of his[/her] so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery? "
We could just as well train ourselves to see aesthetically, for instance, and then we could say that all of life is an aesthetic experience. Not sure what your point is.
It's certainly not necessary, but I believe that it's beneficial in a couple of important ways, namely that it relieves existential anxiety and also has a depatterning effect on the mind.
Behaviorism seeks to gain predictive power about human behavior, not to comment on the existence or non-existence of minds. It's an approach to predicting behavior based on inputs and outputs. You're mistaking the point and implications of behaviorism as some kind of definitive statement about the underlying nature of minds, but it's just the opposite.
Quoting T Clark
Cognitive science is broadly "the study of minds", so you must be conceiving of "mind" as something other than the thing cognitive science seeks to study. Are you talking about the hard problem of consciousness?
Quoting T Clark
The processes of the mind reflect the processes of the brain. There's so much evidence for this that I can't fathom what you're trying to say.
Quoting T Clark
If the study of mind or behavior cannot be scientific, why are you trying to say that science denies the existence of minds?
Quoting T Clark
Insisting that science is like religion isn't accurate or useful.
Quoting T Clark
My belief that an external world exists should not imply that I think science is "the only important thing".
How and why do you make this irrational leap on my behalf?
Speaking for myself, I'm not at all concerned about getting pretty religious or evangelizing. Everybody on the forum is evangelizing all the time, me included.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Ok, agreed.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Yes, more agreement. And may I say, very well put. I like this vision of Catholicism, a "radio station" transmitting on many different frequencies at once.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Yes, this is what happens within all ideologies and philosophies, the inevitable emergence of competing internal subdivisions. To me, this is a huge clue that the divisions and resulting conflicts are not a property of any particular philosophy, but rather a property of that which all philosophies are made of. I will admit however that I appear to be utterly inept at interesting anyone else in such an idea.
Quoting Rank Amateur
I seem to be on an agreement rampage this morning, cuz here I go again. :smile:
I'm very much interested in this sentence...
Quoting Rank Amateur
Paying attention and developing a greater awareness seems very important. What interests me as a wanna be writer and imitation theologian is developing this concept outside of the context of religion. Not because religion is wrong or bad etc, but because as you said above in regards to Catholic descriptions of God, different folks can hear on different channels. For some religion can be a great aid, for others it triggers a distracting allergy.
What many people have learned, myself included, is that one can deliberately develop an ever deeper relationship with nature/reality outside of any religious context. It's just like developing a relationship with a person, one has to put in the time and open oneself emotionally to the relationship.
To me, it seem far less important what one labels WHATEVER IT IS than whether one is developing that relationship. It's not the explanations that matter, but the experience.
If we can stop focusing so much on the explanations and shift some focus to the experience itself we create a more universal conversation because then everybody can define WHATEVER IT IS in whatever manner one can relate to, just as you described above in regards to a range of Catholic explanations of God.
So if one simply can't bear the idea of labeling WHATEVER IT IS with religious terminology, fine, great, let that go, get over it, move on to....
The experience.
However it must be admitted that such a way of looking at these things has never had wide acceptance so this too is a narrow channel capable of serving a limited number of people.
I do, I do! Thanks for that.
Quoting Rank Amateur
For one thing, it's interesting to me to find myself channeling Catholicism theologians I've never heard of and know nothing about from the perspective of not having been to Mass in 50 years. Genetics?
In any case, let's translate this out of religious language for the benefit of those who don't operate on those channels.
The vast overwhelming majority of reality at every scale is space, a "sea of infinite mystery" which is all pervasive. So for an atheist whose methodology revolves around observation of reality, that is what reality really is, space, nothing, the void. Space is a really big deal.
The truly rational act for the atheist is not so much how one might define reality, but rather what one's relationship with reality is. Emotional relationship. That's where human beings primarily live. As example, philosophy forums are supposed to be about razor sharp reason etc, but as we all know they are actually primarily about the male ego, ie. emotions.
What the God debate should have taught us is that we are fundamentally ignorant, and all our opinions on such matters are basically a thin wallpaper veneer attempting to hide that ignorance, mostly from ourselves. This vast sea of our ignorance aligns with the nature of reality. Our internal knowings are mostly nothing, a void, just as the external reality is.
A serious hard nosed realist will squarely face that both internally and externally reality is primarily nothing. A practical hard nosed realist will then move on to developing their relationship with the nothing, because that's basically all we can control.
Philosophy can talk about all this at a safe distance. But we can't really explore the nothing with philosophy because philosophy, like thought itself, is all about the creation of conceptual somethings.
this is very much in line with what Rahner would call - "Anonymous Christianity"
worth looking into if you are interested.
Quoting Jake
what Rahner would say is we are incapable of knowing such a thing as God, other than what He reveals. Yet we all have an inherent knowledge, a pre apprehension that something is there - even if we do not recognize it, or even if we deny it.
I think Rahner would say the reason for the continual God debate, and the part of the human condition that seems to make us seek meaning - both stem from this pre apprehension. Without being to identify or even understand what it is, we are all aware something is there.
There are many ways in which the DMN can be disrupted. Are all of them spiritual? If not then you still have not explained what it means for it to be a particular brain state, and nothing besides.
In addition there is the question of whether you are merely replacing one default mode with another. Are you emptying the room or just refurnishing it?
A disjunction is often positied between the physical and the spiritual. I think that this is a mistake. It is not the deactivation of one's default mode, is becomes one's default mode, a bifurcated mode. One that conceals ourselves from ourselves.
Deactivation of the DMN is a particular brain state, and as you say there are many ways in which the DMN can be disrupted. It could be deactivated unintentionally and quite naturally, or it could be deactivated intentionally and quite unnaturally in a laboratory setting. Whatever the case, the base experience is the same, though different people will undoubtedly respond to the state in varying ways.
If we both visited the Eiffel tower would our experience be the same? No. One of us might be upset at the time or the tower might remind us of a traumatic experience from the past and this would color our experience. One of us might think the tower was the most beautiful and magnificent thing they had ever seen and imbued it with all sorts of meaning. Metaphorically speaking, what I mean is that the tower is just the tower and nothing besides. It's not depressing. It's not beautiful. It's not boring or magnificent.
I'm not a big fan of dualisms either, but they are useful. I think the world might be a better place if people focused more on the spiritual than the material.
So if we didn't FEEL separate it wouldn't matter if we perceived a separation, right? Or are you suggesting that there is something inherently wrong with being separate from (enter your preferred term here)?
[quote]From the 1930's through the 1960's, American psychology was dominated by behaviorism, whose more extreme proponents held that the mind is but a convenient fiction.... Dr. [B.F.] Skinner....argued that many of the words we use to describe what the mind does are simply metaphors whose origins reveal that they really refer to physical, not mental, phenomena.[\quote]
As I indicated, behaviorism has fallen into disfavor these days.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I was using the term "cognitive science" as it is often used, to denote the study of human behavior through the lens of new technologies such as CAT, MNR, and PET scans. When I was a psychology major in the 1970s, we called it "cognitive psychology." "Psychology" became "science" as more hard science techniques joined the team. On this forum, many posters are not willing to recognize that CS is psychology at all. There is no "hard problem of consciousness." But that's another discussion.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Tell me how pain "reflects" electrical current running through living conductors. What does that mean? They have no traits in common that I can see. If you and I are watching basketball on TV, would you say that the television equipment is the same as the presentation of the game?
Quoting VagabondSpectre
This is not a new argument. It's been around for hundreds of years. It is discussed often on the forum. For you to claim that you cannot fathom it is... well, I'm not sure what it is.
As I've said elsewhere, I think I may open another discussion on the general subject of the underlying assumptions and values of science without focusing on god. Maybe that will make it easier.
If a person is willing "to see Zeus in all things"...Zeus will start to have meaning and become more and more a part of the individuals perceptions of the REALITY.
That is, in essence, aiding and abetting what may well be deception of self.
I was a practicing Catholic during earlier years...and I "saw" this god in all things. But I was kidding myself. A god may well exist, but I was putting my thumb on the scale big time.
Nothing wrong with guessing at least one god exists...and nothing wrong with guessing that you know the nature of that god because of "revelation" you deem accurate...
...but the bottom line is that it is all guessing. You are guessing the the "revelation" is accurate...and you are guessing that at least one god exists.
Behaviorism is not the assertion that the mind is a fiction, it is that we can understand behavior by treating people as black-boxes with inputs and outputs. (by "black-box" I mean that behaviorists were not concerned with how the brain actually works, but were instead concerned with how the mind behaved; they never looked inside the skull). Behaviorists referring to the "mind" as a convenient fiction needs this context to make sense; he wasn't saying that thoughts don't exist, he was saying that thinking machines can be understood by deducing things about the relationships between inputs and outputs. Even in the case where Skinner was really trying to make "mind" incoherent, it doesn't matter. His controversial contention is not an established product of science (as science in general is a mix of different fields, some of which are at odds with each-other, where overtime the more explanatory and predictive models are eventually identified and selected). Looking only at behavior as a means to predict it has its uses, but it quickly gave way to more comprehensive approaches.
Quoting T Clark
I've lost the context of your point then. Cognitive psychology/science doesn't asserting that "minds" don't exist. There may be some scientists making claims that vaguely amount to this, but I'm lauding the established fruits of science, not the beliefs and failures of any and every proponent of science. Some scientists contradict each other, especially when they're speaking about less proven models near the cutting-edge of scientific progress.
Quoting T Clark Are you really suggesting that the brain is not the seat of the mind? That if i damage your brain I won't also damage your mind?
Tell me what the hidden variable is. Where do you get the idea that "minds" come from anywhere other than nervous systems and neural networks? If I didn't know better I would say you're trying to get at "souls" or something.
Quoting T Clark
I think you are indeed getting at the hard problem, why else would you want me to explain how subjective feeling can be produced by a physical system? Pain "reflects" what's happening in our brain because our brain has figured out that something has gone very wrong in the external world that demands immediate correction (our "intelligence" is meant to "reflect" things in the external world). We can prove this with elementary induction: every-time we injure our bodies, we feel pain, and when we consume pain-killers (which act on the mechanisms within our brain which play a role in the creation of "pain") we feel pain less.
If I surreptitiously dose you with a drug, your body and brain (and hence your mind) will react to it regardless of whether or not your mind is consciously aware that it has been drugged.
Quoting T Clark
I'm not focusing on god either though, we're talking about the merits of cognitive science. I'm saying that it approaches "minds" as if they are a thing that is produced by brains (not that "minds" are incoherent or non-existent), and you're saying that it somehow makes an empirical error by assuming that minds do not exist. (isn't the statement "minds do not exist" self refuting? A true logical "ouroboros"? (Considering cogito ergo sum and all).
It seems there is more than one tangential thread we could make. There's the values of science thread (whether or not, epistemologically, the philosophy of science is malformed), and there's also the "Is the mind the seat of the brain; do minds exist?" thread.
Let's earnestly try and eek out an agreement before we do so. Where do we disagree exactly: we differ on the nature of scientific inquiry in some meaningful way, or else we disagree about the epistemological implications of the results of our scientific inquiries; we also have an apparent disagreement about the relationship between minds and brains, and I'm hard-pressed to imagine how we must necessarily differ:
Do you remember learning about Phineas Gage? (the dude with the pipe through his frontal cortex). Do you believe that the alterations to his "mind" apparently caused by the physical damage to his brain were superficial or coincidental? We both agree that minds exist, and I point to the brain as the thing that generates it (and to changes in the brain correlating with changes in the mind as evidence), but what do you point to as the thing that generates it? Are you holding out judgement in case of some development that shows we're more than the contents of our flesh-sacks?
I don't understand where you're coming from, truly. I know that you perceive cognitive science (or science as a whole) as a profligate possibility-denier, but which possibility is it denying that you hold to be plausible (other than that minds exist in the first place, which I contend science does not deny)?
I have been. I don't doubt that you have also. We've both been repeating the same arguments, going around in circles. In my experience, if posters haven't found common ground this far into a discussion, they won't. Then it's time to start over.
I think my understanding of reality falls somewhere between yours and those that focus on internal life, spirituality. Since my way of seeing things is probably less developed than yours, I guess it's my responsibility to explain myself better.
But we do feel separate, so I'm not sure of the point of this question.
Quoting praxis
From my point of view, we aren't separate, a fact which anyone can confirm for themselves with this experiment. Hold your breath for 2 minutes. At the psychological level, almost everything we're thinking, feeling and saying is just content that is absorbed from our cultural surroundings and then regurgitated with our names attached.
As I understand it, the illusion that we are separate is part of the life/death cycle, giving us the will to live etc. It's not a matter of right or wrong, good or bad, it's just the nature of reality, like it or not.
The illusion that we are separate does lead to a great deal of suffering however, so it might be wise for us to try to learn how to manage that illusion to some degree.
Bolding #1: Good wording.
Bolding #2: Good wording.
Bolding #3: Oh, my.
Are you saying that "the illusion" is for certain...or are you acknowledging that it is a supposition...an untestable hypothesis...a guess, if you will, about the REALITY?
Religion in practice covers intellectual territory that science can never tread upon, such as determining the starting moral values that individual humans should choose. Science is inherently more narrow minded because it has intentionally blinded itself to the immeasurable and unobservable; not to deny their existence, but instead to place focus on the measurable as the specific puzzle it seeks to solve.
Science has yet to generate any accepted moral oughts from a physical is, while religion has basically generated all of them from meta-physical is's. The very ontological nature of the "knowledge" that religion and spiritual interpretation seek to provide can be fundamentally different from the nature of the "knowledge" that science seeks to create/discover. Science wants physically descriptive and predictive power over the world of physically measurable observations (so if we can't measure it, we can't do science on it both by definition and in practice). Religious knowledge, under forced comparison, seeks to do a myriad of things. Sometimes it's meant to control or guide human objectives (as well as their decision making methods), and sometimes it's meant to describe eternal meta-physical (immeasurable) truth.
Consider what would happen to science and religion respectively if the laws of physics suddenly changed. We might have to throw most of our scientific models out the window and completely restart the process of scientific inquiry from the ground up, but how much religious "knowledge" would actually be affected?
P.S We can always be more earnest in our attempt to understand one another, and I'm legitimately trying harder to understand your position. I want to do more than just restate my position; I'm trying to restate it in a way that better exposes its arteries, both so that it might be easier to understand, and so that you have a better opportunity to attack them with arguments and evidence of your own. If my tentative materialist convictions really are as naive as you say, I want to know why.
Do you mean:
Bolding #1: From my point of view good wording.
Bolding #2: As I understand it, good wording.
Bolding #3: In my personal opinion, oh, my.
I am looking in to it already, through my mentor Father RankAmateur. He's doing a good job.
Quoting Rank Amateur
If God is in all things etc, then the "something" that is there is right in front of our faces in every moment of our lives, and not something hidden. And not something separate.
If we don't see this real thing it's probably because we aren't really observing reality at all, but instead our thoughts about reality. We seek meaning, to identify and understand. These things are abstractions, symbols, inventions of the human mind. The symbols aren't wrong or evil etc, they're just a very small affair. And because they are products of thought they impose a pattern of fantasy division on everything they touch, no matter which collection of symbols we prefer.
To the limited degree there is a solution it may be in "dying to be reborn". That is, setting aside an obsession with the little cardboard symbols of our own invention to focus instead on the infinitely larger reality/god/nature, whatever word one prefers.
As I think you will grasp, this is an essentially a-philosophical way of looking at this because it proposes that thought is not the path to direct experience of reality/god/nature, but rather a primary obstacle to that experience. Thinking about these things is much like spending one's time looking at the photos of one's friends on Facebook, instead of hanging out with those friends in real life. That is, choosing the symbolic over the real.
Fake Father Jake suggests that if WHATEVER IT IS is indeed real, we'd be wise to look for it in the real world instead of the symbolic realm. The practical question would seem to be, how to look?
If you can translate any of this in to Rahner-ism, please do.
As I said, I think it's my responsibility as a turd in the swimming pool to express myself more clearly. I think I've gone as far as I can in this thread.
Clearly, you are conceiving a separation. In addition to that, you're holding on to the idea that you aren't separate.
Holding... Okay, I just held it for 2 minutes and seventeen seconds. What did I confirm???
Including the notion that you're not separate from God or whatever.
How is the concept of this illusion not also an illusion?
Holding the intellection that the separation is an illusion effectively manages the illusion to some degree?
The point is to try coaxing you into explain what this feeling is. What does it mean to say that we feel separate? Why/how do we feel separate?
I am not a god, if that is what you're asking. :smile: Seriously, of course this is a hopefully engaging theory and not a perfect proven truth.
I wouldn't call it an untestable hypothesis as anyone who is serious enough can test it for themselves by experimenting with managing the volume of thought.
This has already been done many times by many people over many centuries leading to many different flavored explanations. I'm not claiming the wording I choose is somehow superior to anyone else's explanations, it's just the best I can personally do at the moment. My hope is that my choice of words might occasionally succeed at engaging some number of readers who can't connect with other explanations of these phenomena, such as for example, those of a religious flavor. Whether that ever works is debatable, but this is what I know how to do, so I do it.
Getting back on point, I wouldn't suggest anyone simply accept what I'm saying. Even if one did agree completely, that would just be another pile of thought. Instead, if one is interested in any of this conduct your investigation, have your own experience, and if like me you simply have to explain what you find, explain it however you can.
In my view, the rational approach to this is to focus mostly on the experience itself. As example, if one is hungry the rational approach is to eat the food on the table. Explaining the food might come later, if ever.
Very well. But for the record I'm still optimistic that we can both get something useful out of this exchange. Despite the mutual rib-shots (I do enjoy them), I think overall we've been sufficiently intellectually charitable and honest, and though I'm not that much closer to understanding the roots of your position, I'm still quite interested in it.
If you do happen to make a new thread on the subject, count me in.
There are scientific theories about moral development and what constitutes moral intuition and reasoning. Also, the results of moral choices can be measured. Suffering can be measured.
As for religion being the arbiter of moral values, it proves to be remarkably moldable by those in the position to use it.
Yes, good point. It's impossible to really discuss unity in language, because language is built of thought, and thought is built of division. Thus, any collection of words we might use pushes us immediately back in to the illusion of separation. This is a key weakness of this medium, and I don't have a solution for it other than to recognize this weakness and try to take vacations from it as needed.
Quoting praxis
You are intimately connected to everything around you. The boundary line between "you" and "everything else" is nowhere near as neat and tidy as we typically assume.
Quoting praxis
Yes, of course. However, one can develop one's own personal experience which is not dependent on the culture. But explanations of that experience will be incurably linked to that culture. Luckily, explanations can be discarded if desired.
Quoting praxis
I would put it this way. The intellectual understanding is kind of like a highway sign that points to the next town. The sign can serve a practical purpose, but it is not that which it is pointing to. The traveler wishes to get to the town, not stand there staring at the sign.
Descriptive theories, not normative theories. They may have indirect normative implications, but they cannot arbitrate human values. (we can describe moral reasoning with a scientific approach, but we cannot derive normative implications about what our starting moral suppositions or moral conclusions ought to be). To do that we need a starting value that is ultimately subjective to individual human minds.
Quoting praxis
Absolutely, but I'm seeking to frame the boundaries of religious knowledge, not to broadly qualify it. That said, corrupt as most of all religions seem to be, some religious moral tenets are actually quite truthy from any reasonable perspective. We don't need Jesus for "treat others as they want to be treated" to make sense, but "Jesus" wasn't wrong...
Yes.
My question holds.
They are "truthy" (great word invention :smile: ) to the degree they comment usefully on the reality of the human condition.
Imho, advice like "treat others as they want to be treated' is not advice about what we should do for somebody else, but instead advice regarding what we can do for ourselves.
As example, we are made of thought, and thought operates by a process of division, thus we feel separate, alone, and isolated, which generates fear and all the rest that flows from fear.
When Jesus advises us to love I hear him suggesting we try to surrender the walls of the fantasy prison cell thought has erected. Die to the illusion of separation, and be reborn in the reality of unity with all things, including other people in this case.
This is revolutionary advice which can be quite difficult to implement because from our place inside the little fantasy prison cell we are afraid to surrender "me" and instead are typically instead attempting to make "me" as big as possible in reaction to the perception that we are very small, separate and vulnerable etc.
Many people come to religion in crisis when they've spent their lives earnestly trying to make "me" as big as possible and then discovered much to their horror that it doesn't accomplish the desired goal.
I engage in lots of introspection...have for a very long time.
I noticed the qualified wording, Jake, and then the tack change. Just was wondering.
Frankly, I am not sure I understand your thesis. I'll keep listening in and see if I catch on.
And we're very greedy bastards indeed! We might not realize it, but cooperating instead of competing can lead individual success that is many orders of magnitude beyond what we could get if we were in strict competition and conflict.
Quoting Jake
It might be fair to say that everything we do is in the pursuit of pleasure and happiness (and in flight of pain or despair). For some people, religion is really an ultra convenient way for them to realize stable happiness. Whether or not they are empirically justified is of secondary concern to me. Religion is definitely not for me (and it doesn't seem to for you either) but we ought remember that our worldview might not be beneficial to everyone (in theory and in practice). Some people just don't work without what we perceive as grand superstitions.
We are made of thought. Thought operates by a process of division. All else flows from that.
Yes. And the source of these pursuits is the perception that reality is divided between "me" and "everything else".
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes, agreed. In my experience this worldview is not accessible to most people, and thus not useful.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
It's a complex picture. God claims may be superstitions, but love is not, and the two are often woven tightly together.
But, but, but if Rahner is going to keep agreeing with me, how will I write my glorious sermons???? :smile:
Happiness and suffering are subjective but highly intuitive, as well as measurable by various means. Any reason these can’t these be held as base values and science given the authority to develop normative ethics? Maybe our moral intuitions are not based in suffering/happiness or human flourishing. Maybe they’re based in something much more primitive and irrational, and no amount of reason, training, or discipline can override them. Maybe all we can do is tell stories to each other and watch as we ruin the world for ourselves.
Relative to our agreement on those starting values, we can and should use science to assist our decision making, but it will only hold "true" relative to those agreed upon values.
The realm of debate regarding normative starting points is much more lousy with variation than mere human happiness. We are able to carry on in practice because there are nearly universally agreeable values, but exceptions and objections stick out like sore thumbs in philosophical debate.
No, you’ve gotten yourself mixed-up somehow. We can only discuss the concept of unity in language. Unity/separation is a dualism. ‘Unity’ in the absence of any referent has no meaning.
Mere human happiness? Of course there’s a wide range of moral intuitions and disagreements about their relative value, but wouldn’t it be rational to hold that the highest happiness for the greatest amount of people be a primary principle? Science could work with a principal like this because it is measurable.
Right. And all language is thought. And all thought operates by division. Thus, all discussions are polluted by a built-in bias for division.
You realize that this reasoning is self-invalidating.
Assuming you’re not kidding around, you appear to be suggesting that unity or non-duality is for some reason inherently virtuous or *pure*. Can you explain how/why that may be?
Holding my breath resulted in no such confirmation. If anything, after about two minutes the boundary between breathing and not breathing became quite distinct.
I'm suggesting that 1) unity is the fact of reality, and 2) aligning ourselves with reality to the degree that is possible is inherently rational.
Quoting praxis
You're arguing just to be arguing. If I'm wrong about that and you do really wish to investigate such topics the best move would likely be to conduct your own investigation. Instead of waiting for me to type something so you can tell me why it's wrong, dig in to it yourself. Or not, as you prefer.
Imagine I have a heart attack today and never return to the forum. Will you still be digging in to this topic on your own? If not, then digging in to it with me is unlikely to accomplish much.
This seems true, but that doesn't automatically equal it being wise. Instead of debating competing meanings we might look more closely at what meaning is.
Meaning, any meaning, is a story, an abstraction, a collection of symbols in our heads. Symbols of any kind are like a street sign which points to something, but is not that something. The word "Jake" is just a word, and not the person it points to.
Symbols, any symbols, are human inventions. They are something very small created by a very small creature. Reality is something very very large, created by perhaps a god, or perhaps billions of years of randomly colliding mechanical forces, or something else. In any case, whatever the source, reality is a phenomena far larger, more complex, and incredible than anything human beings can create. Human symbols are very small potatoes in comparison to the reality they point to.
So while it is true that we often seek meaning and explanations, perhaps we choose poorly.
I'm sitting on a beach watching a sunset. Where should my focus be? On the sunset? Or on my ideas about sunsets? Should I choose to focus on reality, or symbols which point to reality? Should I choose direct experience of that which is real, or settle for a 2nd hand extremely watered down and highly imperfect experience of what is real?
If we were friends, where should my focus be? On your photo on Facebook? Or on you the living breathing person? Should I choose the real, or the symbolic?
Do you want to have sex with a photo on the Internet, or with the person depicted in the photo? Which will you choose, the real, or the symbolic?
I would contend that there is no story about reality that anyone will ever create that is a fraction as interesting as reality itself. So why settle for second best?
Meaning does have a strong appeal, that's true. For one thing, meaning is very easily hijacked by our egos, as we see daily here on the forum. Meaning provides a comforting illusion of knowing which some of us find irresistible.
Focusing on reality requires a process of surrender. Focusing intently on observation of reality requires a surrender of me, me, me and all my little thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. We typically don't really want to surrender, and even if we do a lifetime habit of chronic overthinking requires work, patience, and good luck to overcome.
So yes, we very often seek meaning. That doesn't necessarily mean that seeking meaning is the best choice we can make.
Or maybe they are based on something more primitive and irrational, but it’s not about overriding them - rather seeking to understand them (not to know, define or control them). Maybe we need to put aside our colonialist ways and stop trying to oppress and diminish the ‘primitive and irrational’, instead valuing the diversity with which we can interact and understand the universe through the full experience of life.
In my experience, there is much about happiness and suffering that cannot be measured by any means. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t attempt to measure happiness - there is a lot to be gained towards understanding and increasing overall happiness through measurement. I’m saying that in attributing a value scientists cannot expect to know, define or control happiness in any way.
No real issue with all that - may argue some there is some balance point between experience, refection, and attempts at understanding. But of course one must experience life. As we are all aware knowledge of something and the experience of that thing are very different things.
All that aside - was not where I was going with the apparent human need for meaning. Here is the point I was trying to make, in relation to Rahner's preapprehension. That the reason or source of this desire is the inherent feeling there is something there in all of us.
1) Unity is a concept.
2) “Aligning” with your concept of reality is normally considered trans-rational.
The thing about holding the breath makes no sense. If you don’t want to explain that’s your choice.
You’ve made some claims on a public forum that is dedicated to truth seeking, Jake. If you’re unable substantiating these claims you can just be honest and admit it. That would be the honorable thing to do.
Clearly “Reality” has irresistible deep meaning and purpose for you. Lol
Why not? Maybe it’s our primitive egos that believe our emotional lives can’t be quantified.
You're not the kind of poster who has much interest in investigations. You wish to play the male ego competition gotcha Great Debunker game. Ok, play it, go for it. With someone else, as I'm not here to jerk you off.
Yes, I do believe that perceived phenomena "are consistent, or otherwise correlate, with "things" that are external from...(my)...own mind". I would say those things just are the phenomena. We are capable of asking the question as to what those phenomena are "in themselves" independent of our perceptions, but opinions vary widely on the question of whether our scientific understanding (obviously based as it must be on perceptual relations) tells us anything about the independent nature of those phenomena.
That said, I do think it is most plausible to "think that there's some kind of "real" component to the things our senses perceive".
Judging from what I have read written by @T Clark I would not have thought that he needed convincing "that those who embrace science do not necessarily deny everything else in order to do so", but I could be mistaken about that.
I hope you didn't think I was at all offended by anything you said. Apparently there may have been some misunderstanding of what you wanted to say on my part, but it is still not clear to me where precisely that misunderstanding could lie.
Quoting Jake
You're also not here to explain your goofy notions, apparently.
Ok, sure. I'm just trying to adjust that balance a bit, and likely overstating the case in the process.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Yes, I hear you. I'm not sure I'd go as far as "all of us" but then there are many levels of such things, and not everybody is going to hear and recognize within themselves the preapprehension you're referring to.
It seems possible to get at least part of the way there using only reason.
It seems every level of existence is largely unaware of the levels above it. As example, a rock knows nothing about plants, plants know little to nothing about animals, and most animals know nothing about humans. Within the animal kingdom most animals are expert within their niche but largely ignorant of anything outside of that limited sphere.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to speculate that humans too are in this position in regards to some level above us. Examples to illustrate might be the microscopic, atomic and quantum realms which have always been there right in front of our face but not perceived until quite recently.
To speculate further, there are always rare people way out at the end of the talent bell curve in every field. Einstein in science, Mozart in music etc. It seems reasonable to me that there may be rare individuals that are able to get some glimpse of some higher level of existence. And then they try to share what they've seen, but it's so far out of the average person's experience that the explanation turns in to a circus.
So perhaps a few of us have intense preapprehension, while for the rest of us it's pretty dull or entirely hidden from our conscious mind.
As you know, what tends to interest me is exploring such topics in a manner which transcends the religious and secular categories. To my biased read anyway, the above could be either religious or secular, as preferred by each reader.
I'm here to explain my goofy notions with folks who are actually interested in the topics being discussed.
To debunk this, start your own thread where you explore such topics in some depth without reference to me or anybody else. If we remove me and all other male egos are you still interested? Probably not, but prove me wrong if you can.
The DMT documentary I mentioned earlier was fascinating to me because the participants in the study reported compelling experience of another level of reality, or so it seemed to them. According to them this other level of reality they experienced felt more real than our everyday lives.
And while I wouldn't want to push the comparison too far, much of what they described seemed to sync with Catholic teachings, at least in a general manner. As example, some participants reported experience of an overpowering presence of love that saturated this realm they were exploring. Also a good deal of discussion of ego death.
Most people probably feel that this is just a drug induced hallucination and thus should be dismissed, and that may indeed be an appropriate conclusion. I don't claim to know.
However, we might consider this. You get up in the morning, have that first cup of coffee, sit down at the computer, and your ideas begin flowing effortlessly on to the forum. Are your ideas automatically wrong or fantasy because they are being fueled by caffeine?
It seems at least possible to me that such drugs open channels in the human brain that aren't typically accessible to us, and that to some degree these channels are perceiving something that is actually there.
Meaning that you're only interested in an unquestioning audience and you don't want anyone to debunk your goofy ideas. I think we all get that.
I've chosen to explain your meaning above rather than debunking the claim.
How would my writing a monolog debunk your claim about only explaining your thoughts to interested parties?
No Praxis, you don't get anything. I DO NOT want an unquestioning audience. I thrive on challenge, I really do. I just don't find it interesting to be challenged by folks who aren't actually interested in the topic.
Ok, enough about this.
You are proving this to be false.
Quoting Jake
Rather, you don’t find it comfortable to be, as you say, debunked.
Say something interesting, without making any reference to anybody else.
Or shut the fuck up.
Quantified does not equal control.
Sam Harris talks about a similar experience on MDMA in his book ‘Waking Up’.
I think attempts to transcend the religious/secular divide without judgement enable physics and metaphysics to engage in civil, inclusive discussion and share ideas. There is much to be gained from this.
There is a tendency in science and law to dismiss data or evidence that is gathered without adherence to logical processes. The idea is that these logical processes ensure the reliability of the data/evidence (and therefore its ‘objectivity’), when at best they only increase the probability that this data/evidence points to the notion of an objective reality or truth. While I recognise how satisfying it feels to declare ‘close enough is good enough’, one can never be 100% certain.
This gap between logic and certainty is faith in an objective reality or truth. Quantum theory, among other things, has recently eroded faith in that notion, just as evolutionary theory eroded faith in the same notion from a religious perspective 200 years ago. And now it seems we’re all adrift in the same ocean of uncertainty. We can keep pretending that our particular ship is not sinking while shooting holes in the other, or we can try to salvage whatever still floats and work together on building a seaworthy vessel out of what we have left.
Personally, I’m intrigued by quantum theory inadvertently uncovering ‘potentiality’ as an underlying metaphysical concept, and how this relates to Aristotle’s concept of potency/matter and to the concept of Love: both as an act of actualising potential and as God. But perhaps that’s another discussion.
The idea is to generally increase happiness and decrease suffering.
I’m not saying don’t attempt to measure elements of happiness. Just don’t forget that everything you’re not measuring is just as informative and valid, if not more so. And there is so much you’re not measuring.
You must admit that the terms are themselves rather broad. We can experience happiness or suffering in a variety of ways. I was thinking of it as a general barometer, but it can also be broken down into various aspects, such as stress level, general health and fitness, socialization, self actualization, etc etc.
Ethical utilitarianism supported or authorized by science, basically, rather than traditional moral codes given by religious authority.
There’s no reason that the full spectrum of moral intuitions couldn’t be taken into account.
Ironically, unless you can name someone here who is denying anything simply on the basis that there's no evidence, rather than on the basis that this absence of evidence [i]is evidence of absence[/I], than that is itself evidence of the absence of any relevant position to attack, which is evidence that you're attacking a straw man.
Science does indeed make claims of the latter type. A pristine bedroom with no evidence of mud, fur, paw prints, and disorder, is scientific evidence of the absence of a filthy and excited dog having been in there.
You give the impression that you're uninformed about things like "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" and the burden of proof. Being informed and obliging of how these things work is vital in debates like this. You should know the rules and play by them.
As for my view on this, whether the absence of evidence is or isn't evidence of absence, it is nevertheless the case that there is [i]insufficient[/I] evidence to [i]reasonably[/I] justify the conclusion of theism or strong atheism.
Quoting Rank Amateur
This is basically another straw man. I do believe otherwise, and I do believe that they believe what they believe to be true. That's true of every atheist here, I think. But my absence of belief is not on equal footing with their belief, because I'm being reasonable and they're not. They're going by a blind leap of faith, and that's obviously not being reasonable. One can get to space teapots and the like through blind leaps of faith. Blind leaps of faith open the epistemological floodgates and mean you lose epistemological credibility. It screams, "I care less about philosophy, and I care more about being irrational!".
You should prove that the rules you're referencing are binding upon the very largest and most fundamental of questions. There's simply no good reason for any reader to accept such an assumption on faith as you are doing.
If someone were to quote some holy book it would be reasonable to ask that they first prove that the holy book is qualified to speak to the issue at hand.
If someone were to apply logic calculations to a topic it would be reasonable to ask that they first prove that human reason is qualified to speak to the issue at hand.
Exact same challenge, applied equally to all proposed authorities in an even handed manner with no dog in the fight.
Like a Jehovah's Witness, you expect everyone to first blindly accept the qualifications of your chosen authority as a matter of unexamined faith just as you do, and then you proceed from there with your arguments.
As with a Jehovah's Witness, there's simply no point in listening to anything you have to say until you first prove that your chosen authority is qualified to make credible comments on the issues under discussion.
All the clever little arguments you clog thread after thread with, all entirely meaningless waste of space, until you first prove that the authority those arguments is built upon is qualified to speak to the questions you are addressing.
Meaningless waste of space, just as it would be if a Jehovah's Witness entered the thread and began chanting memorized slogans based upon an unproven authority.
Meaningless waste of space.
99% ego, 1% useful content.
You realise you have just presented two conditionals and a set relation argument. Two arguments in logic.
Did you first prove that logic was qualified to speak to the issue at hand? Because if you did, I missed it.
I get that you want to drag me along on this merry-go-round, Groundhog Day experience, but I would rather not go through that.
Quoting Isaac
Exactamundo.
Scientifically - your example is evidence. The evidence is the observation that we 1. knew what we were looking for, 2. Knew what it would look like if we saw it, and 3. Had a specific and limited place to look. Not an absence of. Here is the science.
Hypothesis:
There was a filthy muddy dog in this bedroom.
Assumptions:
1. In general terms I know what a dog is, if I saw a dog I would be aware of it and recognize it as such.
2. In general terms I know the nature of dogs, i know how they move, their general biology
3. In general terms I know what mud is, if I saw mud, I would be aware of it and recognize it as such.
4. Assume no other mud filled animals entered the room
5. Assume no other possible ways mud could have entered the room
6. Assume that if mud was in the room at one time, it would not have been removed prior to observation.
7. In general terms we know what a room is, and in specific we now the exact room that is in question in the hypothesis.
8. That if a muddy dog was in the room at one point it would have to leave some mud or other observable evidence in the specific search area.
Observation:
We have done an extensive search of the room in questions, with the instruments at our disposal.
We have seen no mud, and no other signs that a dog was in the room.
Conclusion:
Based on our assumptions and with the tools at our disposal we find there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that a dog was in the room.
None of that is anything at all like all the noseeum arguments you try to make. And I stand by my point
that - Lack of evidence only proves a lack of evidence.
My belief is, as always, that my theism is a matter of faith, and that faith is not inconsistent with fact or reason.
If you belief that my theism is inconsistent with fact, I await your argument that shows God is not, is a fact.
If you believe that my theism in inconsistent with reason, I await your argument that shows it is unreasonable to have faith in theism.
And what arguments would those be? You tend not to address my arguments, but different ones. You tend to take aim at easier targets.
Quoting Rank Amateur
Standing by it is not the same as justifying it. What's your counter to the claim that a sufficient lack of evidence in support of a proposition constitutes reasonable grounds for not believing it?
I have no need to support it, I am not trying to change your POV. I have no issue at all with what you believe. I can't prove to you that God is, is a fact. So I don't try. I can't prove to you that atheism is not reasonable, so I don't. Your beliefs do not bother me, and I have never challenged you on them.
It seems rather apparent that mine bothers you, you are the one making the repeated claim that my faith based theism is in error. It is you making the claim - and you who should make the argument to support it.
Analysis can come later, if you're that way inclined, but will analysis change the experience? In any way at all? No, it won't. Is a spiritual experience different if the estimated statistical probability of it happening is very high, or very low? No, it isn't. Is a spiritual experience less meaningful because someone here says that only scientifically-justified things are worthy of your attention? No. And so on....
See, most of that doesn't actually address the points I make. It's not about challenging my stance, it is about supporting yours, and you can do so in relation to my stance, which is why I bring up my stance. I am not requesting "proof". I don't use that term because it is ambiguous and might lead to misunderstanding. I'm requesting whatever support you judge to be sufficient, and then once that's out in the open, I can assess it. But I can't assess it if you keep it to yourself, can I? Philosophy is about making these assessments, and this is a philosophy forum for that purpose. Why don't you want to do philosophy?
Do you accept that your faith based theism is in error if you want to distinguish your faith based theism epistemologically from faith based teapotism? The equivalence is in terms of the lack of evidence, not in any other sense you can come up with, like what we generally know about teapots or what attributes they have. Do you think that there's more evidence for God than a space teapot? Do you think that there's sufficient evidence for God, but not for a space teapot? What do you think? Philosophy is about investigating and testing these things. Sometimes yourself and others give me the impression that you're chastising me for being philosophical, on a philosophy forum of all places.
This is the bit we argue over, as you well know. Faith is inconsistent with reason. They are two fundamentally different things, and they lead to fundamentally different places for the two of us. Reason leads me to reject what you have faith in.
And you aren't justified in claiming that it's not inconsistent with fact, because you don't know what the factual situation is regarding the existence of God, and if you don't know that, then how can you say whether it is or isn't inconsistent with fact? In a previous lengthy discussion on this, you eventually withdrew that claim for a differently worded claim where you qualified that you only meant something like scientific or empirical fact, but that lengthy discussion apparently achieved nothing of lasting value, as you quickly revert back as though we never even had that lengthy discussion.
We make an argument to influence others that their view is in error, or to convince them that our view is correct/better/ more reasonable.
If one has no interest in either of these objectives - he has no need to argue.
I have no interest in changing your mind, I have no need to argue anything to you.
If you wish to change mine, make a complete and coherent argument with clear propositions and conclusions and I will answer them as honestly as I can.
That's what I've been aiming at all along, but you seem unwilling.
Quoting Rank Amateur
My goodness. Do you want to do philosophy or not? Because the above is just excuse and red herring. If you want to do philosophy, please go back to my post and properly engage my philosophical enquiry. You avoided all of my questions.
because........., and support please - or it is just opinion
Quoting S
agree
Quoting S
because......., and support please - or it is just opinion
Quoting S
and neither do you.
it is not, but you calling every call for you to make and support your positions a red herring is one.
No support! Provide an argument!
Quoting Rank Amateur
No support! Provide an argument!
Quoting Rank Amateur
No support! Provide an argument!
Quoting Rank Amateur
No support! Provide an argument!
Quoting Rank Amateur
No support! Provide an argument!
Go troll someone else.
and we are back to twitter.
what you really want to do is just argue, it in some way feeds your ego, or feeds some need that validates you. From the outside it appears to me your self worth is based on some view that you are an intellectual and these banters back and forth are your validation.
You are in no way really interested in an exchange of ideas - you just want to fight.
You are insane. I gave you a very reasonable response, which attempted to pursue a philosophical enquiry. It contained no insults or personal attacks or rhetoric or pettiness. It wasn't an egotistical challenge or looking for a fight or anything like that. These are just ad hominem characterisations from you, not reasonable philosophy. You decided against the reasonable philosophical approach when presented to you.
Here it is: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/269900
Yes, this way of thinking leads to such sayings as "if God is good, how come she allows tuberculosis into the world?" And the answer, of course, is that God is the God of everything, not just humanity. If She is the God of tuberculosis too, should She not care for the tuberculosis bacteria just as much as She cares for donkeys or humans? So yes, I agree with you: there's no reason to suppose that, if there is a Creator, that She created the universe for humans to use as their plaything.
Is there good reason to suppose that there is a Creator? I can't think of one, other than comfort. I do not find questionable interpretations of things we do not understand, such as the origins of the universe, the quantum world, and consciousness, persuasive.
There is a general sense in which I think this may be true but it is not clear how this relates to the stories we tell ourselves about man and God and the whole. What is the more definite thing? I can see how it may affect human behavior but this leaves open the questions of God and the whole.
I can't quite see what the "questions" are, that you refer to? :chin:
There's a massive difference between medieval-style speculation and modern-style speculation. A heck of a lot of people still think about certain things like someone from medieval times, but the number of people who think like that has been declining since the Enlightenment. But credit where credit is due. Some of the ancient Greek philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Aristotle, thought in the latter way, but then, sadly, Christianity and the Dark Ages came along.
Me either. And what I strongly object to is:
"I go by blind faith, which is obviously in stark contrast to thinking reasonably, but I still want to associate my blind faith with reason and fact, and even though I take a very unphilosophical approach to this, I still want to pretend that I'm being philosophical about it".
Maybe no reason as such, but I have a feeling we’ll need more than reason for the full spectrum to be taken into account at the same time.
In the meantime, unless utilitarianism can reach anything close to a consensus (which I highly doubt), I’m not going to put my faith in science as a moral authority, any more than I would traditional religious doctrine.
In my opinion, morality is not an external authority, but an internal understanding of our interconnectedness. It’s not a code we impose on others or punish them by, but one we inspire them to realise and honour in themselves by our example. I recognise that historically this has not been the case, and I put that down to a combination of fear and logic, mainly. But that’s probably another discussion.
For essentially the same reason I assume: the potential for corruption by those in control of the science or doctrine.
I guess it's impossible to speculate about the corruptibility of an ethical utilitarianism supported or authorized by science because it has never existed, as far as I'm aware. You might think that it would be the most difficult for those with traditional values to adopt something like this but if it were true to the cause, progressives might have the hardest time meeting in the middle.
A realization of interconnectedness is clearly a good rationalization for cooperation, and a justification that can be validated by science, I might add.
I don't think it's a useful characterization to suggest that the culture (and its moral norms) we are raised in is an imposition. For one thing, it's largely unconscious and not deliberately taught. Also, some moral intuitions are more nature than nurture.
We should recognize the role that authority plays in value systems that respect hierarchy, loyalty, and sanctity, even if we find it irrational.
Why are you referring to these experiences as "spiritual"? It seems to me that they would more accurately be described as psychic or metaphysically inexplicable. It would be a hard sell to build a religion around "master number" viewing, ex-husband telepathy or Argentinian clairvoyance, for instance.
Perhaps you might be inclined to if your experiences offered some kind of spiritual insight that you felt could benefit others. Again, I’m just curious why you describe these experiences as spiritual, rather than psychic or whatever.
Agreed.
Quoting praxis
I’m not suggesting that science isn’t useful, but I am in agreeance with Ilya that logic is not an overarching process - I see it as one of at least four main contributors to understanding experience. Science has a tendency to filter all experience through logic as a priority. Define, quantify, measure, evaluate. Among other effects, this process diminishes the validity of feeling except when objectively defined and controlled ‘emotions’ are acknowledged through sense data. What science has dismissed is often referred to as ‘spiritual’ experience - this term makes more sense and has more validity than ‘metaphysically inexplicable’, in my opinion.
Quoting praxis
That doesn’t mean culture is not imposed. The majority of what we learn is not deliberately taught - like bigotry, for example - but we can certainly become conscious of how they are learned, and then choose how we raise our children, including how they interpret and internalise cultural ‘norms’.
Also, I don’t see nature/nurture as a useful dichotomy, particularly for moral intuitions. My view of morality is that nurture interacts with nature - to either encourage an internal awareness and understanding of interconnectedness through which ‘moral intuitions’ become apparent, or to impose a moral code or set of norms that may or may not fully align with what awareness/understanding one may have of interconnectedness.
Quoting praxis
But do you agree that this authority is essentially a construct? It’s a scaffolding that serves as a ‘temporary’ sense of security, while we develop sufficient awareness and understanding of interconnectedness (not to mention courage) to act morally without reliance on a sense of authority, let alone hierarchy, loyalty or sanctity.
I'm thinking that the concept of interconnectedness may lead to moral intuition when it becomes apparent that it can serve our self-interest. Like a farmer who hates bees and would like to eradicate them, because she was stung as a child or whatever, but does everything she can to help them flourish because she knows that her crops will fail without them.
I don’t know if she can simultaneously wish to eradicate bees and also do everything she can to help them flourish. In any case, it’s still a very narrow awareness of interconnectedness, but it’s a start.
The problem with self-interest is that it is limited - if everyone only sought self-interest, then the environment’s ultimately fucked for one thing, and we’re likely to destroy ourselves before then. But we do have the capacity to broaden awareness of interconnectedness beyond our physical existence, so if we have any interest in realising our full potential, then I think this metaphysical awareness, and the reasoning behind, should be explored more.
Thank you for your insight, I definitely do hope that what I write benefits others.
Psychic comes across to me as being very similar to spiritual.
I'm not sure what the ambiguity is. When I say Conscious Sensory Experience I am talking about things like the Redness of Red, or the Toneness of Standard A. For the Redness of Red I am trying to make the distinction between the external Electromagnetic 670nm Phenomenon versus the internal Redness Phenomenon in the Mind. The Electromagnetic 670nm Phenomenon is definitely in a Category of known Scientific Phenomena. The Redness of Red is a Conscious Phenomenon that exists only in the Mind and is not a Property of the Electromagnetic 670nm Phenomenon. The Redness Phenomenon is only correlated with 670nm Electromagnetic Phenomenon. The Redness Phenomenon is a separate Surrogate Phenomenon of the Mind. There is no known Scientific Category for it. You can See Red objects when Dreaming at night. There is no Electromagnetic Phenomenon of any wavelength present but yet you can See the Redness of an object. That Redness is an internal Conscious Mind Phenomenon and is not even Correlated with any external 670nm Electromagnetic Phenomenon. The Redness is a thing in itself that must be Explained.
Except the electromagnetic phenomena detectable in the brain.
Quoting SteveKlinko
I think that is a questionable assumption. How is it that we can agree that a particular color is or is not red? How are we able to tune a string to 440 Hz?
Specifically what metaphysics are you referring to?
Interconnectedness is, in itself, morally benign. It doesn’t inform or imply what we ought to do in any particular situation or moral dilemma. It implies that our actions can have far reaching effects but says nothing about the virtue or vice of any action. Ruining the environment for other species and ourselves doesn’t violate the concept of interconnectedness, at least not unless the term has special meaning not expressed in the name itself. If if did, the core of that meaning would be based in self-interest.
We can act responsibly and cooperatively for mutual benefit, and that seems to be the best strategy to flourish or maintain order, but it’s ultimately based in self-interest.
Viewing them as synonymous seems to imply that psychic phenomenon indicate something about the nature of our spirit, like dualism or that mind is not dependent on matter.
It seems like you actually think there is 670nm Electromagnetic Waves banging around in your Brain when you have a Dream about something Red. Any Electromagnetic Phenomena in your Brain has nothing to do with the 670nm Phenomena in the external World.
Quoting Fooloso4
The Colors that we See in our Mind are Correlated to the different Wavelengths of Light in the external World. So 670nm external Light will produce a Red Experience in the Mind. Nobody knows how that Red Experience gets generated from the original 670nm external Light. It's like any Data Acquisition system. The kinds of Computer hardware and Cameras that exist can turn the external 670nm Light into something the Computer can work with, which is usually a hex number something like 0x00ff0000. Analogously the Human Brain hardware turns the 670nm external Light into something the Conscious Mind can work with, which is the Conscious experience of Redness that we have.
So the Computer does not work with the external 670nm Electromagnetic stuff but rather works with a number that is correlated with the stuff. The number is a Surrogate for the Electromagnetic stuff. Likewise the Human Brain does not work with the external 670nm Electromagnetic stuff but rather works with a Conscious Redness thing that is Correlated with the stuff. The Conscious Redness thing is a Surrogate for the Electromagnetic stuff. The Conscious Redness thing is a Phenomenon that exists in the Mind.
We know exactly how the Camera/Computer converts external 670nm Electromagnetic stuff to the number 0x00ff0000. There is however an Explanatory Gap with how the Brain converts the external 670nm Electromagnetic stuff into the Redness in the Mind. How this happens in the Brain is the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
I agree that it's going too far to say that any person who acknowledges spiritual experience, or claims to engage in spiritual practices, or is a member of a religious organization, must be "crazy".
I disagree that anyone who calls himself or is called by others a "skeptic" must affirm a claim like this unreasonable charge you've ascribed to the so-called skeptics here. I count myself as a sort of skeptic, and I certainly don't think it's insane to have spiritual experiences or to adopt spiritual practices. And I know many sane people who belong to religious organizations. (As far as sanity goes, I mean. We're all just human, and mad enough on that basis alone.)
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Perhaps most skeptics are not scientists. But it may yet be that most scientists are skeptics. You may want to check the way the logic of these claims pans out into your argument.
In any case, I would argue that there is a skeptical tendency built-in to scientific method. So even if every scientist is not a "skeptic", every competent scientist has a skeptical tendency.
Being skeptical does not entail being antireligious, any more than being religious entails being antiscience. It seems your views on skepticism have been biased by a narrow range of encounters. Some of the early skeptics in the West were Christians who used skeptical arguments derived from Sextus Empiricus to defend their faith.
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Do such anecdotes help our conversation here? We all know all sorts of people.
I notice you say the scientist is "spiritual" but not that he is "religious". Is there some reason you have selected one term here and not the other?
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
To say nothing of the tricks performed by charlatans who pretend to have spiritual powers they don't have. Or even the tricks performed by well-meaning dupes who don't understand the ordinary powers they have, and assume that something supernatural must be the source of their skill. Shall we set about listing the devices of deceivers and fools on both sides of this controversy, to see who has more?
I think it preferable to address the real philosophical issues here in a spirit of goodwill.
I agree that there is something we may call spiritual experience, and something we may call spiritual practice. I agree that such experiences and practices can be a valuable feature of human life, and that to some extent they are an inevitable feature of human life. I agree that there are some advocates of scientific materialism who go too far in denying or neglecting the utility of such phenomena.
I don't think the reason they go too far is that they can't make sense of these experiences and practices. I think they make sense of these experiences and practices in their own terms, and members of fundamentalist religious sects make sense of the same experiences and practices in rather different terms.
What the materialist may deny is that the theist, for instance, has a correct understanding of a particular event. Just as the theist denies that the materialist has a correct understanding of the same event. The theist says, a god came to me in a dream.... The materialist doesn't deny that the theist had a dream, that is was powerful, that it changed his life... But he does deny that any god came to him.
That's not a denial that the experience occurred; and not even a denial that it was something we may rightly call a spiritual experience.
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
I'm not sure I get your meaning here: Whose dishonesty and whose discordance? Do you mean the critic is dishonest to make his charge the way he does? Or do you mean the critic charges the believer with some form of dishonesty?
It seems here you may perhaps conflate dishonesty and error. It is not a lie to utter falsehood one mistakes for truth.
Each side in this controversy charges the other with error, with error in judgment concerning the interpretation of a particular sort of experience.
As I've said, I agree it's incorrect to attribute spiritual experience in general to the sort of factors you've indicated.
You may be aware, moreover, that some of the critics you take with issue here also argue that anyone who draws supernatural conclusions on the basis of this or that "spiritual experience" is necessarily "irrational". I reject that line of argument as well. I think sane, rational, reasonable people can and do draw very different conclusions on the basis of similar evidence, especially in such matters as politics, religion, and art.
The critics' attempt to characterize the believer's belief as grounded in various forms of mental instability is just another example of this very tactic, aimed at establishing that the believers are irrational, or have "lost their reason".
Quoting Ilya B Shambat
Some of the critics you have argued against here would say the same of themselves: they also seek an explanation that does justice to facts of the experience without running afoul of scientific method.
But what are the facts of these experiences? How do we distinguish the facts from the interpretations? It seems to me that once you boil it all down, this is the crux of most such disagreements.
I had a moment of euphoria and lucidity on the mountaintop. About this we are all in agreement. Now explain how the moment came to be, and what was "really" happening at the time.... Disagreements will arise. On what basis shall they be resolved?
To be clear: I call myself a sort of skeptic and also a sort of naturalist. I do not call myself a materialist, for materialism, as I understand it, is a sort of metaphysical position, and my skepticism has led me to treat all metaphysics as a sort of fantasy, concerning which it seems unreasonable to expect any standard, any evidence or reasoning, by which we may definitively answer questions, test hypotheses, and resolve disputes.
The same skeptical discipline prevents me from counting myself an atheist. Faced with the question, does god exist, I declare myself agnostic. I confess I still possess residual atheist tendencies, though as a wholehearted skeptic I aspire to expunge those tendencies in the fullness of time. Of course, even when I used to call myself an atheist I still had residual religious tendencies, and I suppose those are still with me too!
Nowhere along the course of my philosophical transformations have I ever denied the existence or value of spiritual experiences and practices.
No, I do not think that there are 670nm Electromagnetic Waves banging around any more than I think there is a little house and a little dog banging around in my brain when I have a dream about a house or a dog. What I actually think is that there are brain states and that we are learning more and more about how to identify and measure them. The brain is able to detect something red and the resulting brain state will differ from the detection of something blue. It would be theoretically possible to conclude from the brain state that someone is seeing something red. Since the state of the brain is different when we dream, seeing something red in a dream may differ from seeing something red in the external world, but in both cases there are corresponding brain states.
Quoting SteveKlinko
It is actually not simply an electromagnetic phenomena in your brain. There is, however, a physical brain state that corresponds to the 670nm phenomena in the external world.. It is a far more complex physical state, but that brain state is a physical phenomenon. One that can, at least theoretically, be detected and measured. There must be some change in brain state when we see something red that differs from the brain state of seeing something blue.
The source of our disagreement starts here:
Quoting SteveKlinko
I took this to be a distinction between scientific phenomena and some other kind of phenomena, mental phenomena, that is outside the bounds of science.
Looking back I see you said:
Quoting SteveKlinko
I do not know what you mean by "Super Scientific", but we are in agreement that it is something that science can figure it out. We are still at the beginning stages of such an understanding.
There are separate groups of Neurons that fire for Red and separate groups of Neurons that fire for Blue. Measuring the firing of these Neurons will indicate that there is Red and or Blue in the field of view. But this has been known for many decades. Measuring that these Neurons fire does not Explain anything about how the Mind experiences Redness or Blueness. These are the Neural Correlates of Red and Blue Conscious Experience. There is an Explanatory Gap when it comes to Explaining how the Mind experiences Redness or Blueness.
I actually am trying to make a distinction between Scientific Phenomena and Mental Phenomena. I was doing an analogy between Super Natural, which I thought meant outside the bounds of what we think is Natural, and Super Scientific which I thought would mean outside the bounds of what we think is Scientific. I fully expect that Science will figure out a good Explanation for Conscious Experience someday and then Conscious Phenomena will not be Super Scientific anymore.
If you’re asking me to define a specific metaphysics so that it can be quantified, measured and evaluated, then I’m afraid you may have the wrong idea of what I understand metaphysics to be. For example, what we define as ‘energy’ is essentially metaphysical in nature, but what we quantify, measure and evaluate is the way our sense data interacts with the way this ‘energy’ interacts with what we define as ‘matter’. Yet we refer to both ‘energy’ and ‘matter’ as if they are physical entities that we can define, control and manipulate. Metaphysics as I understand it is about interactions and relationships between the underlying events we strive to understand subjectively, not the entities we can define and ‘know’ objectively.
Interconnectedness is intertwined with both awareness and love (as actualising potentiality) in my experience - and in that relationship on a metaphysical level, it informs morality as a guide to the virtue and vice of any action. When we consider interconnectedness beyond our physical existence, we can develop awareness of a fundamental connection not just with family and ‘loved ones’, but with all of humanity, life in general and the universe itself, stretching across space and time - not in the sense of a hierarchy of evaluated connections in reference to the physical existence of ‘self’, but all with the same potential strength and value. Our environmental actions in this sense have far reaching effects that limit potentiality, and so are considered at least as important as immediate and personal benefits, if not more important. In a metaphysical context, the ‘self’ in question has the potential to be the infinite and eternal universe, limited only by our awareness.
But I get that the self-determined priority of rationality and logic (which in turn prioritises self-interest in terms of physical existence) gets in the way of this kind of thinking. The only way past it, I think, is to enable experience to question logic - like quantum physics, for instance - and not be afraid of the result...
So this is why I said there was an ambiguity with the term phenomena. In one sense all phenomena are mental -the way something appears or shows itself to us. But the term is also used to mean what is experienced in the sense of the object that is experienced. In the latter sense some distinguish phenomena from noumena.
As to whether there is a difference between scientific phenomena and mental phenomena, since, as you say, there is an explanatory gap, the distinction is questionable. If there will eventually be an adequate explanation I think it is likely to be a physical explanation, although others do not think consciousness can be reduced to the physical.
I was inquiring about any metaphysical claims or theories you might have that would clarify or help to substantiate "interconnectedness beyond our physical existence," I suppose. It's not clear what you mean by that. Are you claiming, for instance, that there are two types of 'connections', one physical and one non-physical?
It's identity and reason that allows us to imagine that we're an individual human being or the entire universe.
Wouldn't our values shift with this broadened awareness? For instance, if we valued all life equally how would that affect our actions? Because of our species, the extinction rate on earth is 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate. If we loved all life equally, quantity and diversity should matter. And if that were the case, the best solution to resolve the loss of life would be to eliminate our species. Quite literally a self-defeating philosophy.
I guess what I’m saying is that across subjective experience there appears to be a metaphysical connection that underlies, promotes and transcends all instances of observable or ‘reasonable’ connections: physical, biological/genetic, ideological, etc. Many have referred to it as a ‘spiritual connection’ for want of a better term, but I think that invites some people to abandon reason, rather than just get it to step back a little and reserve judgement.
Quoting praxis
Not in all instances - There are plenty of ‘spiritual’ practices that don’t so much ‘imagine’ as ‘feel’ this experience, and in most cases the resulting experience is more profound than simply imagining, because it engages the whole body in the experience, not just the mind. But for those of us who prefer to keep reason in the picture at all times, imagining is as close as we will probably get.
Quoting praxis
Yes, our values do shift with our sense of awareness. They always have.
Quoting praxis
This seems like quite a leap - reason is so quick to judge, isn’t it? This judgement of the ‘best solution’ is based on actuality, rather than potentiality. Reason must fix all observations in time and space before it can evaluate, but if we can reserve judgement and explore the potential of human beings to work together, to show compassion, to find solutions and put them in place, then the best solution is not to eliminate, but to strive to realise our potential. That probably sounds overly optimistic, but I think it’s actually more ‘reasonable’ and broad-minded than your suggestion.
Psychic phenomena basically, right? Like Ilya B Shambat mentions in his linked blog post.
Imagining and/or feeling that we're the entire universe is still trading one identity for the another.
What are the intents and purposes of the entire universe? All intents and purposes, I imagine, which means no intents and purposes. In the view from nowhere everything is perfect just as it is.
Actually, it's not actually the best solution, but it's potentially the best solution.
The solution I mentioned is not reasonable at all. It was meant to demonstrate the inescapability of our human values. We will explore our potential no matter what the cost to other species.
Not necessarily that spooky, though. We may also notice it in the little unexplained things that we tentatively accept as part of the human experience. Like falling in love, kindred spirits, the ‘presence’ or disembodied ‘voice’ of a deceased loved one, a connection to ancestral lands, gut instinct, intuition, vibes and other ‘weird feelings’ people get about situations or interactions that they can’t quite explain and often dismiss until other more ‘objective’ evidence vindicates their initial response.
All of this points to a way of interacting with and deriving information from the universe that we keep trying to ignore because we can’t prove to others that we really experienced it. It also includes the capacity and desire to relate on a personal level with ancient expressions of human experience, with animals, with distant planets, etc - not just intellectually with the facts or evidence.
Quoting praxis
I disagree. Identity is either understood as socially constructed or simply the condition of being oneself and not another. When the ‘self’ expands in awareness, I would think that ‘identity’ is irrelevant either way.
Quoting praxis
Not quite. We tend to conceive of intents and purposes as individual and fundamentally distinct from each other - like we tend to see everything else in the universe. But as we develop awareness of that underlying interconnectedness with the universe, we also develop awareness of the awesome potential that interconnectedness brings, and of our collective capacity to develop, achieve and succeed at almost anything. It’s not a matter of fixing what’s ‘wrong’ with the world now (as you say, everything is perfect just as it is), but about realistically understanding what the universe could be, and then doing what we can in each brief but potentially universally interconnected life to develop that.
Quoting praxis
Perhaps in your opinion, but what I said was that your judgement, not the solution itself, was based on actuality: on what is or was, rather than what could be. The tricky thing about rational thought is that one must first imagine or define an actual future solution in order to evaluate it. You cannot evaluate potentiality, because you cannot define or measure it without collapsing it into an actuality. That doesn’t make it nothing - it only makes it fuzzy at best.
Quoting praxis
I don’t think our human values are inescapable. We are not bound by our physical form or existence in terms of interacting with the universe. By ‘our potential’, I refer to our capacity to develop, achieve and succeed - not as individuals, but collectively, and not for the benefit of our species, but in order to develop life and the universe itself to its fullest potential. I think that this is why we have these metaphysical experiences.
With the exception of 'disembodied voices' and 'relating on a personal level to distant planets', you basically appear to be talking about in intuition and our modern devaluation of it.
And ghosts aren't spooky?
Quoting Possibility
When identity expands to encompass the universe or whatever, there seems to be a tendency for the ego to correspondingly expand, and that's never a good thing.
Quoting Possibility
I'm theorizing that with 'a view from nowhere' there's nothing to do, no potential, nothing that the universe could be, and nothing to develop.
Quoting Possibility
Granted our species might have the potential to not ruin the world for ourselves and other life, but it's not looking good at the moment.
Quoting Possibility
Mind/matter is bound by order. If that order loses integrity then a being ceases to be what it was, so there is no escaping order or form. If a human being came to possess inhuman values then it would no longer be human.
Quoting Possibility
What do you mean by developing life and the universe itself to its fullest potential? Life and the universe doesn't need us to develop, and as I mentioned, life on this planet will without a doubt flourish far better without us. 1k - 10k times the baseline extinction rate with us on the planet. Yikes!
Quoting Possibility
We have intuition, hear disembodied voices, and relate on a personal level to distant planets in order to develop life and the universe to its fullest potential?
What is the fullest potential of life and the universe anyway?
For example, I think there is a Huge difference between the 670nm Electromagnetic Scientific Phenomenon and the Redness Mind Phenomenon that we experience. These two Phenomena are related somehow because they can occur at the same time. But yet these two Phenomena are Categorically different things. The Electromagnetic thing is explained by Science but the Redness thing has no Scientific explanation.
Since we cannot explain the "Redness thing" we cannot determine whether mental phenomena are categorically different, except in the sense that one can be explained and the other cannot. If the mental can eventually be explained in physical terms then whether they are categorically different would depend on how one categorizes things.
Basically. These examples are mainly to demonstrate that ‘psychic phenomena’ is not as ‘out there’ as some people think. It’s a broad spectrum of experiences that starts with intuition and extends to more ‘spooky’ experiences such as ghosts and those examples that Ilya mentioned, which I tend to reserve judgement on because I have no direct experience that comes close enough to what he’s describing.
Quoting praxis
If I’d meant ghosts, I would have said ghosts. I wasn’t talking about moving objects or apparitions. I meant those interactions in an experience that cannot be reliably attributed to any specific physical entity, despite our attempts to do so. We may find ourselves experiencing a moment where we suddenly ‘feel’ reconnected with a dearly departed in a very real way, and then we search for a reason that fits with our understanding of the universe. By then the moment has passed, and we have nothing to show for it except a memory of that feeling.
Quoting praxis
Yeah, you gotta watch that ego. This is why Buddhism is so difficult for many of us to grasp. I’m not talking about identity, though, but about self awareness. Part of that is the recognition of pain, loss and humiliation experiences as the process of life - not as suffering. This is where most reasonable people struggle, because ego gets in the way.
Quoting praxis
What is this ‘view from nowhere’ you refer to? Can you theorise this viewpoint even in a limited position such as a single human being? Is one able to reach a point in their life where there’s nothing to do, no potential, nothing that they could be, and nothing to develop? What leads you to think any perspective of the universe could ever reach this point?
Quoting praxis
I guess that depends on what you’re looking at, and how you make your evaluation.
Quoting praxis
A living being ceases to be precisely what it was with every passing moment. The integrity of a living form interacting with the universe is not as ordered as we would like it to be, and we really aren’t certain what mind or matter is, if we’re honest - let alone whether either is bound by anything except our own awareness.
How do we decide which values are ‘inhuman’? Can you name some? Where does one draw the line, and is that based on knowledge or judgement?
I think the Redness thing will always be in a different Category than the Electromagnetic thing even if Science can find an Explanation for the Redness thing. When Science finds an Explanation for the Redness thing then the Redness Category will be come a Scientific Category.
While I understand your reasoning behind it, I disagree that this is without a doubt. My understanding of evolution suggests that if we took humanity out of the gene pool, another species would eventually evolve in our place and begin to develop self awareness and intelligence. Many popular theories suggest the ecosystem will flourish in our absence - in the crisis we find ourselves facing, this could be interpreted as humility, but also as an excuse to continue on our path to self destruction. In my view, that seems a waste of the awareness we’ve been gradually developing.
I don’t have a rose-coloured view of humanity. I’m well aware of our capacity to destroy at an alarming rate for our little slice of ‘heaven’, but I’m also aware of our capacity to create very real, global solutions when we have the courage to think beyond our physical existence. If our potentiality is between these two extremes, then I’m personally inclined to focus on encouraging inclusive solutions rather than resigning to our worst fears.
What if life and the universe really did need our species - we just haven’t yet developed the collective awareness to fulfill our potential. What if all this colossal messing up, all this pain and loss, is the most effective way to develop that awareness? After all, isn’t awareness of failure the first step to learning? And it’s not like we’re listening to the advice of anyone with a broader awareness of the universe - the way we would with, say, a parent - are we?
Quoting praxis
I know - it sounds far fetched. But I think it’s mainly about awareness. We have intuition because we need to stop ignoring feeling as a valid way of gaining awareness of the universe. We hear disembodied voices because we need to stop focusing on our physical existence as if it were the only way for us to interact with the universe. And we imagine beings from distant planets with whom to relate on a personal level because we need to develop a broader awareness of the universe....
Quoting praxis
On reflection, I think it’s inaccurate for me to suggest that there is a ‘fullest potential’ as the best or most complete actuality that the universe or life should strive to achieve. I will say that I think our current tendency to strive for maximum independence, autonomy and esteem is an ultimately self-defeating task. Likewise, I think we’ve worked out that our evolutionary drives (to dominate, procreate and maximise genetic benefit) are equally self-destructive and fear-driven - especially once we reach the top tier and differentiate within the species.
I think the most valuable, non-destructive achievements of life and the universe so far have come from facing fear, broadening awareness, building relationships, valuing diversity, maximising interconnectedness and recognising potential - without judgement or concern for limitations. I think as humans and despite our many failings, we represent the highest evolution of this capacity in the universe. That doesn’t make us better - but, to butcher a popular quote: ‘with great capacity comes great responsibility’...
It's from Thomas Nagel.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, I did.
Quoting Possibility
I don't know, but Buddhists call this the realization of emptiness.
Quoting Possibility
The point was basically that values and goals would shift with, I will say mind for the sake of brevity, expansion. I think you agreed with that.
Quoting Possibility
Not valuing life would be inhuman. Not valuing pleasure or happiness would be inhuman.
Quoting Possibility
To quote myself, "where order loses integrity," and based on knowledge and judgment.
Quoting Possibility
The late comedian George Carlin had a bit where he speculated about the role humanity plays in the evolution of earth. We're here to produce plastic.
Thanks for the reference - I’m already intrigued by his approach to the objectivity-subjectivity tension. Bear with me, as I withdraw for further study...
Everything in the OP is ad hominem, conjecture, speculation, assumption, nonsense. Experiencing an event or sensation and fervently attributing it to something imaginary that you don't understand is called "delusion".
It is delusion if it exists in your mind and nowhere else but your mind. It is not a delusion when it corresponds with events in the external world. And my experiences very much do have a correspondence with the external world.
You're going to have to elaborate, your response is vague and has no bearing on the conversation.
I'm unable to take it for anything if it's vague and has no bearing on the conversation. That's why I asked you to elaborate, but if you're unwilling to speak with clarity, there's nothing I can do about it.
Logic is clearly qualified to state that someone has made no attempt to prove the qualifications of their chosen authority.
Please observe how you ignored this...
Quoting Jake
That's because if you were to admit that this is a valid statement, you would then be required to apply the same process to other chosen authorities. This process is called intellectual honesty.
Reason is clearly proven useful for very many things. As example, we have many millions of cases of reason being used to successfully construct buildings. We have data, a documented record of success.
What members are typically doing is making an unwarranted leap from "reason is useful for many things" to "reason is useful for EVERYTHING", even in those cases where there is no data to support such a claim.
This is the equivalent of a theist saying "holy books are useful for providing comfort and meaning (proven fact) therefore holy books are qualified to provide credible answers to the largest of questions (wild speculation).
Many members don't yet understand that being loyal to logic only when it takes you where you want to do is not reason, but instead ideology.
Well it isn't working. We all experience the redness of red, unless we're colour blind or something. It is perfectly ordinary. That is certainly not true with regard to claims of psychic phenomena, or at least, it would require a hell of a lot more support. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That is not doing philosophy. That is doing wishful thinking.
He's not a philosopher on this matter, he just wants to be recognised as one. Maybe we should just give him a pat on the head and walk away.
The point is you are using logic and reason right now to make this argument, so, by your method, you would first have to establish that logic and reason have authority to speak to this kind of investigation. So how would you make that case? Evidently you would use logic and reason. So, by your method, you would first have to establish that logic and reason have authority to speak to this kind of investigation...
Quoting Jake
So how would they 'prove' that? Using what authority? And how would they then prove that such an authority were qualified to speak to such an issue...
Your answer seems to be little more than "it obviously is".
At some point, logic and reason are simply presumed. They must be for discourse to even proceed. So the relevant question to ask is not whether they are qualified to speak to the matter at hand, but on what grounds anyone wishing to dismiss them does so.
No one here is a philosopher, but at least some people contribute to coherent or even rational discourse.
I meant "philosopher" in a looser sense than being a recognised philosopher with formal qualifications, published writings, and a professorship, but not so loose a sense as anything goes, so long as it has a vague resemblance to what a philosopher might say.
Like you say, the point is to contribute to coherent or even rational discourse, not just to let loose brain farts.
Yes, so is it cruel of me to poke him just to watch him run against the wall? What do you do with these people? I hadn't realised posting here would raise such ethical dilemmas. Its more like working as an orderly in an asylum than discussing issues with peers.... "Yes Napoleon, I'm sure the aliens are coming to take you away again, but it'll all be better if you just take your pills and sit calmy down here..."
So you're off topic. Unless you can make a relevant connection to the topic.
So true! :lol:
I addressed this. I am examining the evidence, and coming to the correct conclusion that atheists in general typically never bother to even try to prove the qualifications of their chosen authority in regards to the largest of questions. I have clearly proven that logic and reason are qualified to address the topic I am addressing.
I haven't proven, nor tried to prove, that logic and reason are qualified to address anything and everything. That is, I am not a person of faith in regards to reason. I accept reason's ability where I see evidence of success, and decline to accept where I see no evidence of such a success.
All I'm doing is applying the very same challenge to reason as atheists apply to holy books. The very same exact thing. The problem is that such an intellectually honest process does not deliver the answer than many atheists wish to hear, and so the process is rejected, ie. ideology.
Quoting Isaac
That is true, that is what's happening. Atheists typically have a faith based relationship with reason that they are often unwilling to examine, because to do so would lead to a collapse of their perspective. If they were truly people of reason, a collapse of one perspective would be good news, because such a collapse would help advance the investigation. But, at least on forums, they are typically not people of reason, but ideologists who have built a self flattering personal identity out of atheism, and so that perspective must be defended to the death. :-)
My point is that we CAN use reason to reveal that nobody on any side has been able to prove anything, in spite of the earnest efforts of millions of intelligent people over a period of at least 500 years. We have data on this that we can examine. As example, the God debate threads on philosophy forums go on and on and on and on for years making the same old points over and over again precisely because nobody can prove anything, and thus the issue is never resolved.
My point is that we CAN use reason to reveal that nobody on any side can prove the qualification of their chosen authority, and thus the God debate collapses, leaving us with nothing.
My point is that we CAN use reason to then explore our relationship with this nothing, with this state of ignorance. The investigation can continue, but only when we realize and accept what the evidence the God debate has revealed. We are ignorant, in regards to questions of this scale. So long as we insist on pursuing fantasy knowings, we will remain stuck on a children's merry-go-round to nowhere.
I must have missed that, so perhaps you could repeat. You decided that the question "should atheists prove the authority of reason to speak to the question of whether or not there is a God?" is itself a question which logic and reason have authority to speak to. I'm asking what proof you provided for that assertion.
Quoting Jake
What other relationship with reason is it possible to have? Can one reason reason?
Quoting Jake
We can. But this could be for any number of reasons. Dogmatism on either side, social pressures, ignorance, subconscious bias... None of that has anything to do with authority to speak to the matter. It may well reveal the pointlessness of doing so, but it says nothing about which approach is most successful in the long run, nor which approach yields most correspondence with reality, nor which approach yields most fruitful models, nor indeed any epistemic model I can think of.
Quoting Jake
Only by a particular standard of proof. You claim to have proved the authority of logic and reason to speak to this issue, I disagree. Does that mean you now haven't proved it, or does that mean I am wrong?
Quoting Jake
Are you not literally finding the exact same protracted and inconclusive debate over this issue as you previously cited as evidence that logic and reason were not suitable authorities to speak on the matter of God's existence? What is it about this debate we're having right now that differs from the debate about God's existence that justifies you raising counter-arguments using reason and logic?
Nada. What differs between our aporoach and his is that he separates the one and the other without justification, also known as special pleading. We do not.
If you answer yes, then why are you resisting performing the same operation on other chosen authorities?
That's all there is to this.
Yes
Quoting Jake
I'm not. Logic and reason are ways of thinking presumed from the start of any discourse. The Bible is a book. They are not even the same type of thing and so I cannot think of a single reason why that which I apply to one should apply to the other.
Are you saying that we should assume without questioning that human reason is qualified to deliver meaningful credible statements on any subject?
Put another way, are you saying that a single species on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies, a semi-suicidal species with thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down it's own throat, is capable of generating meaningful credible statements on any subject anywhere in all of reality, a realm we can't yet define in even the most basic manner?
That asked, let's continue and be more specific to the subject at hand.
The question of the God debate is, does a god exist? The question presumes there are two possible answers, existence and non-existence.
Now let's observe reality. The vast overwhelming majority of reality at every scale is space. And yet space has none of the properties which we use to define existence. The point here is, it appears that almost all of reality does not fit neatly in to either the exist or not-exist categories.
Now let's observe God debaters. We can see that pretty close to every god debater who has ever opined on the subject, no matter how much education, intelligence or advanced degrees they may haven, has typically assumed without questioning that the only two possible answers to the God question are exist or not-exist.
Let's observe how philosophers great and small for 500 years have been eager to challenge the competing answers, but pretty much nobody has been interested in challenging the validity of the God debate question.
My point here is that even if we could somehow prove reason is qualified to deliver meaningful statements on the largest of questions, and few are willing to even try, there isn't a lot of evidence that human beings are capable of reason, at least on this subject.
Quoting Isaac
Logic and reason are the chosen authorities of atheists. The Bible is the chosen authority of Jews and Christians. You wish to apply one rule to theist authorities, and another rule to atheist authorities. That's not reason. That's ideology.
Everybody is entitled to their preferred ideology, no complaint there. But nobody is entitled to label their ideology as reason so long as they are unwilling to apply reason's processes in an even handed manner to all sides of a question.
I can offer real world documented evidence that atheists rarely (if ever) are willing to examine and challenge their chosen authority in the same way that they challenge theist authorities. Don't take my word for it, try and find a thread on any philosophy forum where such an examination is happening at all, let alone to the degree theist authorities are challenged.
Just read the thread above. Lots of different folks logic dancing their favorite God debate perspective, with no attempt at all to demonstrate that something as small as human logic can meaningfully address the very largest of questions about the most fundamental nature of reality (scope of God claims).
Just read the thread above. Lots of different folks assuming that the only possible answers are exist or not-exist, even though a casual observation of reality reveals that most of reality does not fit within that simplistic paradigm.
I've proven my perspective using real world evidence that is readily available to all. Atheist ideologues can't do that. That's the difference.
No, failure to apply logic and reason to logic and reason is irrational (not logical or reasonable). If I reason, for example, that you’re confused, but upon further pondering have the insight that you’re only feigning confusion and for some emotional reason choose to deny the insight and fail to revise the prior assessment, that’s irrational.
You need to show faulty reasoning and failure to revise the faulty reasoning. Good luck. :smile:
That's a "no", then, I suppose.
Yes, both 'meaninful' and 'credible' are are assessment within logic and reason. What faculty would you use otherwise to determine what a text is even saying? How would you even understand the meaning of a sentence, let alone a proposition, if you suspend logic and reason. I think you are confusing logic and reason with empirical science and you're confusing 'source' with 'authority'.
Empirical science is certainly not the only means, nor the only source from which to obtain meaningful propositions, but it is the closest we have to an 'authority'. An authority needs to have some justifiable claim to support its rejection of other propositions. Empirical science has such a claim (propositions it rejects are those which do not produce predictable results for a wide proportion of the population). Religious texts have no such justification and therefore no justified claim to authority.
Quoting Jake
Restating a proposition does not make it any more true unless you address the objections. Logic and reason are not 'authorities' they are habits of thinking and they cannot be suspended whilst maintaining even the very basic intellectual faculties such as reading. On cannot even comprehend what is written in the Bible without logic and reason. If the Bible says "do not kill thy neighbour", how is it that I know not to kill my neighbour. How do I know that pointing a gun at him and pulling the trigger is going to lead to his death and that this action is opposed to the proscription in the text? Logic, and reason.
Quoting Jake
That doesn't prove whether thay should (which is the debate we're having), only that they don't.
You didn't answer the question. Here it is again as a reminder.
Quoting Jake
Quoting Isaac
Being the best does not automatically equal being qualified. The smartest squirrel ever born won't be able to understand the Internet. A twelve year old will be better at math than a 4 year old, but neither will be able to do particle physics.
Quoting Isaac
You still are not challenging your chosen authority, but are instead focusing exclusively on defending it's superiority, just as all ideologists do. A person of reason would challenge all proposed authorities in an even handed manner with no dog in the fight.
Please Note: You believe in human reason. Ok, that's great. I'm just calling upon you to do human reason. Instead of ideology.
Quoting Isaac
You have no proven authority which can be used to dismiss the proposed authority of religious texts, at least in regards to the largest of questions. Smaller claims made by religions may be able to be debunked if there is real world data available to analyze.
Quoting Isaac
This does not automatically equal human logic and reason being qualified to generate meaningful statements on some particular question.
Again, please observe how even the most respected commentators in the God debate typically don't even question the "exists or not" paradigm which the God debate is built upon. It's entirely possible that the question itself is so flawed (ignoring the nature of reality) that any argument for or against in response to such a question is rendered meaningless. Such a possibility at least merits investigation, but pretty much nobody ever bothers. This is the system you are basing atheism upon.
Quoting Isaac
This does not automatically equal logic and reason being capable of generating meaningful statements about the most fundamental nature of reality, ie. the scope of most god claims.
Quoting Isaac
They should only if they wish to be people of reason. If they prefer instead to be ideologists the burden is lifted, and they may proceed as they wish.
If you wish, this exchange, which I thank you for, might provide you with some insight in to theism. Observe how determined you are to hang on to your chosen authority. That's not a theist thing, but a human thing. We want to know things, we really want to know. Or at least we want to have some methodology which offers some hope of knowing. This desire is very understandable, but does not automatically equal having such a methodology.
To me, just one view, the only way to rescue the God debate from being an endlessly repetitive merry-go-round to nowhere is to face the fact that when it comes to the largest of questions we simply don't know, and we simply have no proven methodology which can credibly fix that lack of knowing. Or to put it simply, we are ignorant.
It seems to me the centuries long God debate has delivered useful information, but we don't like what has been revealed, so we're ignoring it, pushing what the evidence is telling us away, sweeping it under the nearest rug.
We have every right to do this. But the price tag is the surrender of reason, and to ride eternally on the merry-go-round to nowhere.
Yes, ok, and that's what atheists are doing. They're experiencing a failure to apply logic and reason to logic and reason. That is, they are assuming, without proof, that logic and reason have infinite ability, are able to meaningfully analyze anything in all of reality.
It's an unwarranted leap from...
Reason is useful for very many things.
to...
Reason is useful for everything.
Theists often do the very same thing. They see the wisdom of some holy book teachings regarding human scale issues such as love, and then leap from that to the conclusion that therefore the holy book is qualified to provide answers to the very largest of questions.
If one can escape the ego fueled ideology, it's not that hard to see that human beings are very very very small creatures in a very very very big reality, and it's not that sensible to automatically assume that such a tiny creature would be able to grasp EVERYTHING. This is especially true when we observe that this tiny creature has thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down it's own throat, hardly evidence of advanced reasoning powers.
Really? Which one(s)? :chin:
Please define "an atheist". Please also explain how, by the definition of atheism or "an atheist", you can lump all "atheists" together in any way apart from that they do not believe in gods.
My post was supposed to be an answer to the question. If I asked you "which is better at golf - mathematics or the capital of Spain", you could not answer me in any way other than to explain that my question doesn't make any sense. That is what I have tried to do. Your comparison of reason and religious textbooks, as to which has authority to speak on a subject is nonsensical, its not a question that can be answered, only one whose incoherence can be discussed.
Reason is a habit or method of thinking. Religious texts are a collection historical/instructional propositions. The two are not even the same sort of thing, they cannot be compared any more than mathematics and the capital of Spain, can be compared for which is best at golf.
'Authority', in the sense your using it, means to have the correct (or at least a meaningful) answer. Reason does not 'have' answers, it is a method of thinking. Two people thinking reasonably can still arrive at two different answers.
Quoting Jake
I didn't mention being qualified in the absolute, I said it is the closest. A judgement made by reason. The same as you did with the twelve year old and the four year old. They may neither understand particle physics, but that does not mean they are equal, one will likely give a better account than the other.
Quoting Jake
What makes you think I haven't already done this. Are you so arrogant as to presume that the fact I haven't come up with the same answer as you is conclusive evidence that I mustn't have carried out the same calculation?
Quoting Jake
You previously claimed that reason was an appropriate method for determining the authority or otherwise of sources. How else are you concluding that 'reason' and 'religious texts' are equally qualified to speak on matters pertaining to the existence of God. You presumably reached that conclusion by reason, and so must have reached the conclusion that 'reason' was he qualified authority in that matter (though how did you reach that conclusion?).
If you can use reason to determine that religion and reason are both qualified in the this matter, then why cannot I use reason to determine that they are not?
Quoting Jake
Actually, the paradigm is frequently questioned.
"I think an almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not realizing what 'existence' means."
Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Essays (a famous atheist).
Your arrogance in thinking your insights unique lets you down. Try reading more.
All your argument seems to consist of is that propositions based on reason have so far failed to convince a large enough majority of people that we should hold the belief that there is no God.
What you have failed to yet provide is any argument as to why reason's failure to convince enough people has any bearing on it qualification to be used to address the issues.
That is what you are doing.
Is there another means to “analyze” reality, meaningfully or otherwise?
You haven’t shown anyone reasoning or making the claim that reason is useful for everything. You also need to show the error in reasoning that reason is useful for everything.
Or did he pluck it out of thin air?
I have little hope that he’ll be successful.
I think that you, me, and Isaac are of one mind on that.
When religious people seek answers, they turn to their holy book.
When atheist people seek answers, they turn to reason.
Each party references something which they believe will deliver useful information.
If I have to explain that, if I have to explain it 99 times, then I'm essentially in the same position as when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on my door. Engagement is pointless.
God is typically a proposal about the most fundamental nature of all reality. The proposal has the biggest scope of any proposal.
What's happening here is that all of you are atheist ideologists who perceive the threat to the glorious self flattering personal image you have created out of atheism, and so you are engaging the usual atheist dodges.
None of you have even attempted to prove the qualifications of the methodology which your entire perspective depends upon, because you know you can't. So rather than simply admit that (as most theists would honestly do) you're trying to flood the zone with as much pointless clutter as you can, hoping to bore me away, so you can get back to your fantasy superiority.
It's worked.
Show us, link to the thread where you challenge the qualifications of human reason for the largest of questions. You can't. Because you never did any such thing, and probably never even considered it was necessary until this thread.
I'm sorry guys, but you're all frauds, so I'm bailing. You win. Adios.
When religious people seek answers, they turn to their holy book. - and reason which they use to understand the meaning of the words there and how they apply to the questions.
When atheist people seek answers, they turn to reason - just reason, nothing else.
Reason is an absolutely necessary part of both consultations. The only difference is that religious people add a source of information atheists do not consider sound.
Religion encounters difficulty when the existing subject is negated through the dialectic movement into objectivity and speculation. This is where understanding commences, where the truth of understanding is posited through speculative system. Yet all speculative knowledge is merely an approximation, so that, objectively, we are only capable of apprehending relative and contingent truth. Only the existing subject stands in relation to absolute truth (God) through the religious commitment.
Religion is a dialectical halt, stopping with the existing subject in the inwardness of faith and the passion of appropriation. This is what makes religion such a tricky category, viz. by having its reality in the inwardness of the existing subject, its direct communication is rendered impossible. Since all speculation communicates directly, every speculative system, even mighty modern science, moves in the opposite direction, towards objectivity and away from religion.
Probably explains why classic religious documents have the tendency of being vague and cryptic. Like the finger pointing at the moon, religious texts are attempting to assist the existing subject into a direct relation with the absolute and be forgotten. But the religious texts have no inherent value. The absolute does not exist imminently as religious text, so that to relate oneself to the absolute by worshiping the text is simply idolatry.
The religious person's faith depends on his letting go of objective understanding, on grasping and cultivating his socratic ignorance towards the uncertainty of objectivity. The skepticism of Socratic ignorance is the opposite of modern skepticism because it exposes the unreliability of speculation and repels objectivity.
No, wrong again. The claim (it’s not a proposal) is that God exists and she created us, etc, etc. There are few if any claims about the fundamental nature of God himself, for instance, such as how God came to exist. If God created us, who created God? If God is everything then is it essentially nothing? All sorts of questions about the fundamental nature of reality are unaddressed by the religions that I know of.
It could be that we all exist in a simulation, for example, including God, and in the simulation, everything in the Bible and all other religious doctrine is actually true. In the simulation there’s a heaven and a hell for Christians, a Nirvana for Buddhists, a Valhalla for some pagans, whatever floats an individual's religious boat, so to say. In the simulation, even atheism could be true. Upon death, the atheists would simply be deleted from the simulation rather than placing them into an afterlife simulation. None of the religions in the simulation, though all of them concurrently true, would be making a claim about this more fundamental reality that is running the simulation.
You need to understand that religion doesn’t need to make claims about “the most fundamental nature of all reality,” and its claims don’t need to be true, they only need to be meaningful.
Quoting Jake
I just proposed a metaphysics that not only theorizes how the 'father in the sky' religion could be true, but that ALL religions, as well as atheism, could be true, and there are thousands of religions in the world. Sometimes I amaze even myself, speaking of self-flattery.
Quoting Jake
I assume you mean that none of us have attempted to prove the efficacy of using reason to formulate proposals about "the most fundamental nature of all reality," which is a proposal that has "the biggest scope of any proposal."
I just proposed a proposal that encompasses all religious claims, and I did it with reason. So you tell me, does this prove the efficacy of using reason to formulate proposals about oh-so MEANINGFUL stuff?
The atheist relies on direct proof to determine truth objectively, so the atheist belief lies primaliy in the proof (qua reason and methodology), and the truth merely becomes an incidental byproduct. It is reason and method that cause the dialectical movement from existinging subjectivity into objective understanding. Yet reason and method are infinite. So instead of stopping at faith as an existing subject with an attitude of socratic ignorance concerning objectivity, the atheist, regarding subjectivity as untrue (because unprovable), increasingly forgets what it is to exist as he gets gets lost in speculation.