|
lite frisk posted:"God" as you're describing Quift is a functionally impossible / incomprehensible concept in analytic philosophy, and since analytic philosophy has been trending in the Anglo world since the ~20s you're not going to get anywhere with your approximations. (*Refer to Russell and his pathological obsession with having a precise description of the world.) Might as well be talking about Hegel's "World Spirit." Afaik, the gap between analytic and continental philosophy is (philosophically) unbridgeable. This is brilliant and funny.
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 13:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 03:18 |
|
|
Hello Sailor posted:Why are you treating these writings as likely to be an accurate recounting of what one of Roman-occupied Galilee's apocalyptic preachers really taught, when (a) we have good evidence to indicate that these stories have been altered both accidentally and deliberately and (b) you're basing your ideas off of English translations of ancient Greek script? When I earlier proposed the very same concept (human collective consciousness) as a possible definition of God the reply I got was that it wasn't acceptable since it was not the common definition. The "more common definition" was instead something vastly less trivial; an independent bearded entity that was the creator of the entire universe, beyond time and space and sole inventor of whipped cheese. Basically people rejected my concept as "trivial", "to easy" and not "according to authority". Authorities listed were Anselm, Thomas of Aquinas and Bertrand Russell and a bunch of other really boring and pedantic nitpickers without a basic understanding of the world. Who else to misunderstand basic concepts such as truth, love and perspective. I reply with saying that at the very least 1 authority seems to agree with me. Jesus himself. Who in our culture is generally viewed as the epitome of understanding God. Basically a "my dad is bigger than your dad" argument. Since that's the sort of arguments some throw around as substitutes of independent thought. Do you seriously think I believe he was the literal son the bearded skygod born by a virgin mother after his father sent an angel impregnate her? Of course not. It is all rewritten to prove that earlier prophecies that were usually about a warrior king were actually about Jesus, our messiah. So some of the stuff written is really stretching to make it so. So we constantly need to separate 2 things. Things said BY jesus. Things said ABOUT him. belief in the first does not necessitate belief in the other. Something which should be quite obvious to analytical philosophers. Do i believe that Jesus was the most successfull of a bunch of preachers that wondered around in israel at that time. Yes I do. Do I believe he was a carpenter? No. of course not. That's symbolic. He was probably a sort of Rabbi. Was he born in Betlehem? nope. from Nazareth. Did his apostles try to keep as much of his sermons alive by writing them down as well as they could? yes i very much believe they did. Is there a specific passage that keeps one of his sermons possibly as unaltered as possible. Yes there is! Matthew and Luke both have it in 2 slightly different versions. It's no masterpiece like the gospel according to John (thats some sweet and cool linguistic analysis right there). But I deem their "And after those guys tried to insult jesus like so, he just answered this and it was so cool, you should have been there!" gospels as quite believable. So basically, according to Jesus his daddy is not a weird mystical sky figure but a state of mind, a kingdom of heaven that lives inside of us all. Ergo. I have at least one authority on my side when it comes to defining God. Or we could go with a definition of God so boring that it doesn't matter. Like the feasibly existing tea pot. I would prefer a more worldy definition that can be tested empirically.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 13:40
|
|
|
Hold still god while I take your blood sample
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 13:53
|
|
|
Quift posted:I would prefer a more worldy definition that can be tested empirically. Then why don't you propose one, because the 'collective consciousness' one was pure wordsalad garbage. What do you even think a collective consciousness is, and how is it any different from just 'culture'?
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 13:56
|
|
|
grate deceiver posted:Then why don't you propose one, because the 'collective consciousness' one was pure wordsalad garbage. What do you even think a collective consciousness is, and how is it any different from just 'culture'? Well, applying a little bit o' the old 'principle of charity,' I think he's using the term 'collective consciousness,' because 'culture' wouldn't capture the scope of what he's talking about. This is because when we refer to 'culture' we're generally not including things like individual phenomenal perceptions or private ethical interactions, etc. Depends on your definition of course. Idk, just riffing here, but imagine yourself as an individual entity and all of your personal phenomenal history (that's everything you've ever experienced, in the broadest sense of the term 'experience') and now take another 7billion entities and their phenomenal histories, and now put all of them into one big conscious clusterfuck data set. Don't really think we could do anything other than conjecture about this data set, but there you go. Personally speaking, I don't think it's fruitful to try to define God in these terms (or any other terms intended for syllogistic purposes), but this is how I'd clumsily clarify 'collective consciousness'.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 14:38
|
|
|
Quift posted:I do not get points. You however didn't make any proposition to argue against yourself. You only negated mine. So I will have to continue to argue that my Definition of God not only is valid, but also has basis in scripture. Uh, sorry, but that's because my position is essentially that of thousands of years of theologists' work on the subject, rather then your bogus thing. Your definition of god has absolutely no basis in scripture because it doesn't even make sens in context of biblical times.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 14:43
|
|
|
grate deceiver posted:Then why don't you propose one, because the 'collective consciousness' one was pure wordsalad garbage. What do you even think a collective consciousness is, and how is it any different from just 'culture'? Religion, Culture, society, civilization and political entities are all subtly differing concepts. Trying to draw simple distinctions between them on an internet comedy forum is therefor quite difficult. Specially when I don't know the level of competence within sociology, political science, economics, anthropology and philosophy or my readers. My attempts at hitting that sweet spot between easy and condensed have apparently failed miserably. Basically all of these above as well as linguistics are things that is done between people as well as inside of them. The line where you as an individual exist and where your culture, background and relations start to take precedence is quite hard to define. Probably because we insist of seeing ourselves as unique individuals. Yeah, unless you can accept the fact that all sense of individuality is an illusion you need to bother to read this. Ego transcendence is a quite vital concept. It is normally related to religion but there are atheist guidebooks to awakening written by neurosurgeons as well. http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636024 That would make it an empirical concept, since it is something that can be the subject of actual measurable (neurologically speaking) experience. Basically I propose that we are all ants and that we live in an ant hill which we should probably view as the more correct entity to see ourselves in. This might give our own small and insignificant lives some semblance of meaning.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 14:48
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:Uh, sorry, but that's because my position is essentially that of thousands of years of theologists' work on the subject, rather then your bogus thing. Your definition of god has absolutely no basis in scripture because it doesn't even make sens in context of biblical times. You claim so, but have not made a proposition to clarify your own position. "Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone" should not be understood as an instruction to throw stones around while not doing anything else to contribute. If my claim is not satisfactory, make your own and I will gladly treat it with the same respect you have treated me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 14:51
|
|
|
I'm really rusty on this stuff so don't feel equipped to comment but I think you're talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism Edit: Quift posted:Religion, Culture, society, civilization and political entities are all subtly differing concepts. Trying to draw simple distinctions between them on an internet comedy forum is therefor quite difficult. Specially when I don't know the level of competence within sociology, political science, economics, anthropology and philosophy or my readers. My attempts at hitting that sweet spot between easy and condensed have apparently failed miserably. The problem with this, respectfully, is that it's still grasping at straws. The immediate question that springs to mind is 'so what?, what can you do with this?' I don't think it qualifies as an empirical concept, because neurologically speaking we still don't know exactly what we're measuring in a lot of brain scans. This is because we have no choice but to use operational definitions when dealing with abstract values like "memory" or "love" or "ego." Parts of the brain light up when certain tests are performed. Ok. What does this actually mean outside of the operational language and parameters used in the experiment? Maybe this is a bit of a highfalutin way of putting it, but it's the fundamental epistemological difference between empiricism and rationalism. Rationalism can capture these abstract values and do work with them with relative ease because structured empirical data is non-essential to it. Empiricism, meanwhile, gives you the sweet sweet thing rationalism can't - predictability - but it can never talk about abstract things in an entirely satisfactory way. This doesn't mean one is better than the other, it just means that certain things work better in one than the other. You don't want to write an blog in excel and you don't want to make spreadsheets in word. I mean you can, but functionally speaking you're crippling yourself. lite frisk fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Oct 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 14:52
|
|
|
But how exactly is culture a kind of consciousness? We don't even know exactly what creates consciousness in the first places, to say that something else that's not obviously consciousness actually is means you have a surefire way of identifying it, which I don't think you do. But okay, suppose you do. This definition of God is totally at odds with what most people today would define god as, so to 'redefine' this Thing as god is a but rude, isn't it? Why should they accept your definition? Assuming they believe in you in thinking it exists, they'd call it something els. What reasons does anyone have to do otherwise?
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 15:14
|
|
|
Quift posted:You claim so, but have not made a proposition to clarify your own position. Yes I have, that god if existing is a manner of either supernatural or natural but excessively powerful singular being. Rather than a "collective consciousness" that didn't meaningfully exist or function until the birth of radio at the earliest, realistically not until affordable transoceanic instantaneous communication in all likelihood.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 15:18
|
|
|
lite frisk posted:I'm really rusty on this stuff so don't feel equipped to comment but I think you're talking about this: Rather Transtheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transtheism Interestingly this debate has descended into Deism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism Contra pantheism with the Deists all claiming to be atheists.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 15:32
|
|
|
Edit: holy poo poo i need to learn to post or treat my insomnia, one of the two, sorry.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 15:41
|
|
|
Quift posted:Basically I propose that we are all ants and that we live in an ant hill which we should probably view as the more correct entity to see ourselves in. This might give our own small and insignificant lives some semblance of meaning. Cool, but why would you call it God for any reason and not just 'society' or any other word that is vastly more suitable here? And why this view would be more correct than any other? You want to do sociology or other high-level description, you look at groups of humans. You want to do psychology or biology, you look at individuals. I mean, what is even the purpose in creating these new revolutionary meanings for words, other than to be obtuse. lite frisk posted:but imagine yourself as an individual entity and all of your personal phenomenal history (that's everything you've ever experienced, in the broadest sense of the term 'experience') and now take another 7billion entities and their phenomenal histories, and now put all of them into one big conscious clusterfuck data set. Don't really think we could do anything other than conjecture about this data set, but there you go. Ok, see this, Quift? At least it's a coherent definition, but as far as we know the experiences of 7 billion people aren't collectively stored anywhere in the known universe, so we're still in the realm of make believe. This kind of God isn't really any simpler than the christian one or w/e.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 16:49
|
|
|
Quift posted:Rather Transtheism Ok, I see where you're coming from. Tillich is a cool dude, even though I don't know his work very well apart from a cursory reading of The Courage to Be. Still, from what I remember, he's not doing analytic philosophical work, but some hybrid of theology and phenomenology(???). To be honest I really don't know how to classify it, but my point is that his philosophy stems from a completely different tradition than the zeitgeist in which you're currently trying to argue. It's not a gap that you can bridge so I guess I'm asking why you're trying to do it. The premise that the concept of God should be defined in some sort of way that lends itself to evidence is absurd in the first place. That's like asking your partner for evidence that they love you. Running with the same analogy, are there people in the world who haven't and won't experience 'love,' whatever that thing might be? Sure. Are they the worse for it? How could I ever know? Do I think I know what love is? Yes. Could I give you a definition? Absolutely not. Rationalist arguments for God, meanwhile, just don't work. I mean the closest to a tenable argument that I've personally come across was William Craig's "updated/extended" Kalam Cosmological argument, but even that is really really really loving controversial because it involves a whole bunch of claims about the nature of the universe and quantum mechanics and disputes with scientists, and I'd have to do a physics degree to even try to attempt to determine what the gently caress. At the end of the day it's fine to believe in God without logical reason or empirical evidence. Literally all societies in human history have been doing it for thousands of years despite the Lucretiuses, the Humes and the Russells; and we're almost certainly going to keep doing it no matter the amount of enlightened internet atheists who might wish otherwise or the religious fanatics who lend themselves to being strawman posterboys. I mean you have cognitive and evolutionary psychologists arguing that humans may have a predisposition to faith. I don't know what exactly the gently caress I'm supposed to make of these  , but there you go,  . Phenomenology is probably the coolest thing for all this because it tentatively sidesteps the impasse of premises that spark these exhausting debates. It's still completely ridden with problems but what's nice about phenomenology is that it tries as hard as it can to begin by answering the question: without assuming rationalism or empiricism beforehand, how does the world appear/show up for us? I want to say read Heidegger and/or Merleau Ponty if you can stomach them, but probably don't do this because it's exhausting, especially if you're doing it alone/without guidance, and at the end of the day you just get a conceptual toolkit that might bring you some comfort when confronted with the sheer complexity of experience, maybe. lite frisk fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Oct 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 17:26
|
|
|
Typ clarify for the umpteenth time. I am an atheist. The op clearly stated that this thread was for swapping roles. Of course I don't chose a rational argument for God. Those have no bearing and that would be a losing proposition. To prove the existance of God I therefor have to move towards phenomenology and reframe the discussion accordingly. Which proves to be a more difficult than expected mainly because I argue my point badly. In general I'm a happy albeit weird camper that loves to challenge himself. Believe me, expressing yourself in a language you barely speak (that of faith), is really hard. But the thread shows quite clearly why analytical philosophy sucks. So limiting!
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 23:22
|
|
|
The faith based argument for god is "I think there is one and I don't want to believe otherwise" Which gets dumber the more words you wrap it up in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
lite frisk posted:Plantinga's very point is that there can be no proof, but that the rationality of something cannot be determined solely on evidentialist grounds. So has he publicly retracted his modal ontological argument, then?
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 02:18
|
|
|
God is so obviously not real that firing the neurons required to contemplate its existence is a total waste of energy, which displeases Gaia.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 02:39
|
|
|
Apparently The God Delusion has sold over 3 million copies in English alone as of September 2014. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 06:30
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:The faith based argument for god is "I think there is one and I don't want to believe otherwise" That is because you lack even a basic understanding of the word "faith". You see faith as something other people (stupid people) do and not as something you yourself are doing. But you are not special. You are just like everybody else. Believe me life will become easier once you accept that. I will now continue to prove that you have faith in false idols  Faith in money is one of the more obvious examples. Money literally carries worth only because we collectivly believe it does. I personally don't believe in money though. Most people don't recognize that they are stuck in a belief system related to money.To quote myself from my comment on Ribbonfarm earlier today on the subject of Capitalism. -- "A capitalist is someone exerting power both economic and political through money. We are all capitalist in that sense but some of us are more capitalist than others. Capitalism is a belief system in which exerting power both economic and political through money is defined as the central human relationship. It stands in opposition to any value system that values something above money. One of the fundamental beliefs of this system is the founding myth of enterprise. Retold (badly) above. Some people believe so strongly in these founding myths that they construct mathematical models to praise the gods and daily read these nonsensical numbers as an act of devotion. Only reason I can imagine why someone would do something so boring every morning." -- So I could reasonably argue that the most commonly held definition of God is a dollar bill. It is what most people bow down to and strive for. People wish to unite themselves with the dollar bill to become wealthy because that is their true kingdom. They listen to pundits telling the foundational myth about the enterprise (Steve Jobs was like an angel, have you seen the movie about Zuckerburg!) and many believe this story (economics?) to be literally true despite it being vague mathematical models without any bearing on actual reality. Their false prophets constantly claim things that never come true in their "Prognosis" but faith keeps people from repeating the words of these prophets despite their earlier failures. The one with the dollar bill is the one worth listening to cause he has found profound meaning in life and can sell books telling the story of how he found his faith. Sorry, Fortune. In opposition to this I might argue that an awakened state of mind is the most important collective goal and become some sort of Buddhist or Christian.This is what we normally refer to as religious or spiritual. But the mechanisms and behaviour are the same both on the individual and collective level. In this way, a god is what our collective unconsciousness strive for. Observe, a god. not the God.This is more or less the polytheistic approach to the gods. They represent ideals that influence society thorugh belief. Belief shape actions. Actions shape society. It's really not that complicated. Belief is not to think that something exists (of course it exists. It's a mental model used by billions of people that heavily influences the world). Belief is to think that this particular value system should have precedence over others. Like how our devotion to money is either important or damaging other values such as you know, the planet we live on, our happiness and what else. These are the small gods. Belief in small gods make them great. The wise philosopher Terry Pratchett told me so in his treatise describing small gods named "Small Gods". Great Gods can shape the entire society around them. This is objectively true. We have plenty of both historic and contemporary evidence proving this to be true. The existance of gods is self evident, you probably carry a small token of your faith in money with out at all times. There are concepts, value systems, ideas shaping our collective minds. These gods have the strength of peoples beliefs. Independent transcendent Entities shaping the world around them by the power of faith. Is this enough of a god for you? All of this battling between different ideas, value systems and knowledge expressed through action is true on the individual level. We call this consiousness. This is literally what we mean in the phrase "I made the conscious decision to..." It is also true on the collective level. "I believe as a society need to..., do you follow me out of your own conscience?" So yeah, asking someone for time is a trivial way of using the collective consiousness. A dollar bill is the most commonly held definition of a god, and consiousness is realizing that believing in money is totally insane. Seriously, None of those prognosis have ever been true. Why do people believe in that poo poo? Quift fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Oct 8, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 07:30
|
|
|
I didn't say I don't have faith in things, I said it gets dumber the more words you use to justify it. I have faith in things because it is useful to me to have faith in them. I am aware that it isn't rational but attempting to justify it with a very roundabout explanation only serves to obfuscate the truth that I am simply believing things because I prefer to. What I think is silly is people not being aware of the foundation of their faith, which again, is simply unwillingness to believe otherwise. This is quite a normal human habit and I don't see the point in trying to rationalise it when it is inherently irrational. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Oct 8, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 11:06
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I didn't say I don't have faith in things, I said it gets dumber the more words you use to justify it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 11:19
|
|
|
I mean that arbitrarily believing in something because you want to isn't rational, which is the case for anything taken on faith.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 11:20
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I mean that arbitrarily believing in something because you want to isn't rational, which is the case for anything taken on faith. Of course belief is a rational choice. I believe that this dollar bill can pay my bills. I believe that this piece of paper that I got from someone for pretending to perform something valuable that doesn't even physically exist allow me to "pay" this other piece of paper that I received for having a home. Something which is a basic human right. However I don't own my own home but a banker does, I merely pay the bank to allow me to pretend that this appartment that I live in is mine. The entire sequence above is utterly absurd but belief in it may still be a rational choice. Wouldn't you agree?
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 12:10
|
|
|
Money does not have inherent value, but belief in it isn't blind faith. You can repeatably demostrate that you can swap money for things. That is repeatably, scientifically provable. It isn't an absolute law but it is true most of the time. You don't need faith in money to be able to spend it, because everyone can apply that same critical thought and reach the same conclusion. The same is not true of believing in god. No matter how much I believe in god it won't create objects from nothing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 12:35
|
|
|
There's a valid argument about whether ideology constituted a kind of faith, but to call the mechanisms of ideology 'conscious' and the fetishism of ideology a God is a little misleading. It is true in a sense in that peoples treatment of both is similar, but they aren't defined or understood as the same thing. So God functions as a kind of ideology, but ideology is not a kind of God.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 12:51
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Money does not have inherent value, but belief in it isn't blind faith. You can repeatably demostrate that you can swap money for things. That is repeatably, scientifically provable. It isn't an absolute law but it is true most of the time. You don't need faith in money to be able to spend it, because everyone can apply that same critical thought and reach the same conclusion. I can repeatedly as other people for knowledge and get answers to guide me. I can do this without having any faith in the process. It will still work.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 13:16
|
|
|
rudatron posted:There's a valid argument about whether ideology constituted a kind of faith, but to call the mechanisms of ideology 'conscious' and the fetishism of ideology a God is a little misleading. It is true in a sense in that peoples treatment of both is similar, but they aren't defined or understood as the same thing. So God functions as a kind of ideology, but ideology is not a kind of God. This is misrepresenting my point. "to call the mechanisms of ideology 'conscious' and the fetishism of ideology a God is a little misleading." I did none of those thing and claim neither. I'm claiming that the mechanism behind ideology and religion is identical in both the individual and the collective. This is essentially because it is a human way of functioning. Consciousness is where these different ideas battle it out. If we accept that consciousness exists. I'm on the fence on that one and can easily be persuaded that we actually have no consciousness as individuals. It might very well not exist at all. It does seem like an illusion.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 13:56
|
|
|
Fiat currency might not have any inherent value. A currency backed by Gold, on the other hand... P.S. audit the fed
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 16:47
|
|
|
Quift posted:I can repeatedly as other people for knowledge and get answers to guide me. I can do this without having any faith in the process. It will still work. Yes but that's got nothing to do with God. There's nothing supernatural about that. Otherwise I would suggest that the holy trinity is Wikipedia, Google, and Encyclopedia Britannica.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 19:03
|
|
|
gently caress the encyclopedia britannica yours is a false god
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 19:18
|
|
|
zeal posted:gently caress the encyclopedia britannica What are you some kind of protestant encyclopedian? Traditional media was good enough for your granddad and it's good enough for you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2015 19:47
|
|
|
rudatron posted:So God functions as a kind of ideology, but ideology is not a kind of God. Ideology is more angels and demons.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 04:43
|
|
|
Bryter posted:Fiat currency might not have any inherent value. A currency backed by Gold, on the other hand... Why? Gold has no inherent value either. It only has value because we believe it has. Gold has very few inherent qualities. One of them is that it is shiny. OwlFancier posted:Yes but that's got nothing to do with God. There's nothing supernatural about that. Independent transcendent Entities shaping the world around them by the power of faith. Is that not cool enough for you? yeah, once I explained it it seems less like magic and more like common sense. The same is true for basically any knowledge. It is only mysterious before you understand. If you think my world shaping indepedent transcendent entity is not supernatural enough. I wonder what is? Is the concept of an awakened state of mind, peace on earth and love towards your fellow human really that much worse to worship than Gordon Gekko? Is my definition of God seriously faulty because it cannot create items out of thin air. OwlFancier posted:Money does not have inherent value, but belief in it isn't blind faith. You can repeatably demostrate that you can swap money for things. That is repeatably, scientifically provable. It isn't an absolute law but it is true most of the time. You don't need faith in money to be able to spend it, because everyone can apply that same critical thought and reach the same conclusion. That is not spirituality, what you are asking for is magic. .png/revision/latest?cb=20120219190507)
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 08:45
|
|
|
lite frisk posted:"God" as you're describing Quift is a functionally impossible / incomprehensible concept in analytic philosophy, and since analytic philosophy has been trending in the Anglo world since the ~20s you're not going to get anywhere with your approximations. (*Refer to Russell and his pathological obsession with having a precise description of the world.) Might as well be talking about Hegel's "World Spirit." Afaik, the gap between analytic and continental philosophy is (philosophically) unbridgeable. I surmise what you're talking about when you refer to "minds" as somehow separate from behavior is actually representations, the cornerstone of cognitive psychology. The idea that unobservable representations cause behavior dominates heavily today, but there are growing schools of psychology which get around the problem of other minds by doing away with those, like ecological psychology . I make the same argument all the time in trying to convey why scientific psychology does not necessarily need representations to explain why people do what they do, only I don't end up at "well, I irrationally believe in other things, so why not this one too?" Belief in the existence of something you have no reason to believe in is not rational, and you cannot make it rational by showing that anyone else irrationally believes in other things for no reason. Convert to radical empiricism and agnosticism today. God may or may not will it, depending on His existence and the precise nature of that existence.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 09:32
|
|
|
We must separate rationality in two different categories. Rational actions and rational models of explanation. The former does not require the latter. Some beliefs that defy rational explanations may still be rational to hold, such as the belief in money for instance which has no rational explanation yet it is a rational position to hold the belief that money will work as a way to exchange goods and services. My end argument is not "Why not believe in this thing, since you do believe in this other thing." albeit I can understand why you read it that way. My position is that belief in a loving "God" that leads us to a state of mental clarity may be a rational action, without relying on a rational explanation and instead relying on a phenomenological one. Rationality isn't the only way to understand the world after all. Other paths may lead to other insights of equal value. Your position on representations sound interesting. Would you care to elaborate? Quift fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Oct 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 10:27
|
|
|
Quift posted:We must separate rationality in two different categories. Rational actions and rational models of explanation. The former does not require the latter. Ecological psychology has been covered by SurgicalOntologist here a number of times and I won't even try to do him better. D&D thread here, A&T thread here. I also recommend (former?) poster adwkiwi's blog for a related approach, radical embodied cognitive science. For the purpose of this, it suffices that there is no reason to believe representations exist, besides the fact that we usually already believe in them by the time we start thinking about it. Rationality always refers to belief. Clouds are neither rational or irrational, they just are; only our beliefs about clouds can be rational or irrational. A belief is rational iff it satisfies the conditions of an epistemological system, given its axioms and that the system is sound. It doesn't mean much more than that. There's no such thing as unqualified rationality, only rationality given some epistemological system and information. I don't want to impute anything, but I think you are confounding rationality and adaptiveness here. Rationality isn't always adaptive, of course, but adaptiveness can necessarily only be determined post-hoc, whereas rationality is knowable a priori. I don't understand what "belief in money" means. Sure, there exists a word "money" in English, and sure, almost all languages have some roughly equal word, but its instantiations in practice appear to have no unique unifying properties that wouldn't also apply to swaths of things the lay person would not consider "money," so I think it's quite fair to call its coherence as a single phenomenon into question. Money, I think, is in fact more like cancer: many causally different phenomena that look related when viewed from a distorted or distant perspective (say, modern economics). Or, alternatively, money is like a keychain with many different types of keys. They all unlock things, so they're superficially similar, but besides this surface similarity, there's not a lot of overlap between an RFID key and a house key in terms of what they do, where they come from, where you use them, when you use them, etc. Likewise, the kind of money an investment bank uses has very little to do with the money you pay for your groceries with. Zodium fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Oct 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 11:16
|
|
|
Thank you for the links. WIll read up. I dont agree with this specific passage. Zodium posted:Rationality always refers to belief. Clouds are neither rational or irrational, they just are; only our beliefs about clouds can be rational or irrational. A belief is rational iff it satisfies the conditions of an epistemological system, given its axioms and that the system is sound. It doesn't mean much more than that. There's no such thing as unqualified rationality, only rationality given some epistemological system and information. I don't want to impute anything, but I think you are confounding rationality and adaptiveness here. Rationality isn't always adaptive, of course, but adaptiveness can necessarily only be determined post-hoc, whereas rationality is knowable a priori. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory My background is in economics and political science so for me rationality has several different meanings. I do not differentiate between a choice and an action since making a choice is an action. Therefor actions can be rational without satisfying the conditions of an epistemological system. The action only need to be rational in a particular context to be deemed rational. Therefor rational actions are known post hoc and not a priori. Unless of course you are in a white tower taking no actions at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_reason Since both paying and praying for bread are daily actions they need to fulfill only the criteria of Rational Choice theory to be deemed rational. Neither action need absolute certainty to be performed so wasting energy to build or examine the epistemology of the concepts of prayer, economics or baking is reduntant. For the Belief in money part Zodium posted:I don't understand what "belief in money" means. Money literally has value only because of the beliefs of others. This is how markets work. The main indicator of future economic growth is "household expectations"., Meaning that if enough people thjink that the economy will be fina and sing Kumbaya in the shopping mall the economy will improve according to economic theory. The entire system is an insane collective delusion where cocaine is created for the rich out of the wishful thinking of the middle class. However the economy sort of works despite being a faith based pile of poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 12:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 12, 2024 03:18 |
|
|
Quift posted:Why? Gold has no inherent value either. It only has value because we believe it has. Gold has very few inherent qualities. One of them is that it is shiny. Can't print gold. Doubly can't print the purestrain.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2015 13:56
|
|