Religion

[gauchecritic]

I've just had a thought about the measureability of personal experience.

If we can agree that a profound experience such as 'love' or 'faith' can alter one's character or change their perspective, then however vague that change is (love sickness, proselytising where it wasn't apparent before) then there is your measurable change. How you would measure that except in terms of labels rather than any quantifiable terms (8 ounces of love or 6 times more religious) I have no idea.

Joe, there is still something wrong with your logic about omnipresence not being infinite.

You are denying that everywhere, really is everywhere. If 'everything' in the universe extends to a specific point then there simply isn't an infinity. If there is an infinity then there can be no specific point at which it ends.

You are in effect saying that there is an infinity but it isn't everywhere.

Everywhere = infinity. (or do you have a secret dictionary)

Serious question. Do photons have mass?

Gauche

 

[Guest]

Gauche, your idea of measuring love could only have called to mind for me Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. These are their opening lines:

Cleo: If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

Ant: There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

Cleo: I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

Ant: Then must thou needs find out new heavens, new earth.


Perdita


Right then. Back to logic, lads.

 

[cantdog]

I do love you, 'Dita

Also, amicus, I am happy to catch you in an introspective mood. We are proceeding like the mills of God here, but I imagine we'll get to most of the questions you've tossed like pebbles into the pond.

Right! back to logic and the step-by-each.

Gauche's observation about the outward signs of love or of faith or of serenity is the same as my own, simultaneous, post about interpretation, but from the top where mine came from the bottom, if you follow me. I was concerned with showing the limits of the process, but he with showing the aids to conviction which help make the process more reliable.

And he's right. We are seldom entirely in the murky realms of complete speculation. There is frequently a corroboration from the outside.

With faith, though, I find the corroboration means generally, "yes, the person genuinely has a faith" or "no, the charlatan is slinging the shit here."

Of the justification for the faith, of the validity of it, the corroboration says nothing to me. I can't get a sign, an outward clue, that tells me the faith is in a real God, only that it is real faith.

But then, I only have faith that there is no God. It might limit me.

 

[Pure]

PS to cant.

I greatly admire Piaget, and agree that his claims are in some cases 'truths.' His methods were closer to Freud's or M. Klein's than to 'scientific psychology.' Hence there are brilliant 'hits.' And well known misses. I.e., Piaget's highest 'stage' of hypothetic-deductive (scientific) is simply not ever attained in some cultures.

It may be relevant to note that Piaget's background was in zoology. Hence there IS a scientific flavor to much of his work. What there is not-- causing him NOT to get a Nobel prize, I'm told-- is employment of the methods--esp. laboratory, and controlled-- of scientific psychologists. Indeed psych purists hold that his area is not so much psychology as philosophy.

As to cant's bigger point, it seems that certain areas need their own special methods, such methods yielding an appropriate kind of objectivity. Even in science proper, geologic history cannot be pursued in the manner of physics. While I don't agree with cant that there's an "inner world" (except as a manner of speaking), the world(s) of experience, 'lived experience', and group experience (group psychology) need their own methods.

An example I've come across lately is 'profiling' (in criminology); a systematic attempt to link evidence at (and across) crime scenes to facts about the perpetrator, including what he's after (his inner world, as it were), e.g., that some rapists aim at assertion of 'power' over the victim (her compliance in sex), but not at grave injury (found in sadistic rapists).

 

[cantdog]

PS for Perdita

There is no art to read the mind's construction in the face.

 

[Pure]

as to this ongoing debate and tussle about whether God's being everywhere means that he is infinite.

could it be that God is nowhere, and yet still is infinite?

 

[mismused]

Re: interpretation

There's been a curse on this thread this morning, for me. This is the fourth time I began a response. Each time until now the board informed me I had a PM waiting. They've been excellent PMs! Love abounds. I am happy to have been pulled away from the replies here for their sake.

But to business. My hint to the universe that I would as soon have more PMs of that variety seems to have been shrugged off, so off we go.



interpreting

When someone communicates a report from the space I continue to call the self, the subjective space, the interior space where all is unmeasured and perhaps far from limitless just the same, the person receiving that report has to interpret it. Unless he hears something like, "I'm sick," and can see the cold sweat or the hangdog pallor, or "I'm scared," and can see that the kid just wants to be up out of bed a little longer, or something independently verifiable like that, I think it is interpretation, as a skill in the listener, which makes the moment useful or not.

You'll get better at it as you do it. Body language, expression, emphasis, and your own history with the person all inform.

Congruence with similar reports helps you believe it. I read Merton and al-Arabi (in translation) and they both referred to "time becoming irrelevant" in a mystical experience. James says the same. When I described my own experience the listener said I'd helped her to understand what those people meant. I had had one experience which I had little reason to imagine was not simply a schizophrenic episode, and yet I'd helped someone understand the writings of mystics! Blew me away a little.

What I said was just an attempt to describe how long it had lasted. I began confidently, and then realized I had absolutely no idea how long it might have been, except that it didn't seem to have been long enough to cause the sun to have shifted position in the sky. I sheepishly admitted I couldn't complete the thought because I really had no clue whether the thing was long or short. But that, she said, was undoubtedly the same as the remarks about irrelevance the sources she'd read had made.

That was the biggest clincher, but for her, everything I told her was congruent with the other reports and with her own experience. To make that judgement, she had to discount a lot. The interpretation placed on the experience by Merton, for example, has a good deal to do with a Christian God; al-Arabi had a different notion of the thing, but these are cultural traditions, and condition the context of the report and the terms chosen to describe it. Her decision that I had had a mystical experience was thus a sophisticated exercise in analysis.

Plus she had to decide I was sincere.

My report, as an atheist, had a different flavor altogether. Mystics are seldom atheists. But she made the connection, she was firm on it, and it was immensely reassuring and intriguing.


The description of interpreting, as a process, which I just used is itself "subjective" as well as "intersubjective" since it's concerned with the more-or-less social process of the dialogue itself. It, too, is unverifiable in any objective, concrete way.

But it rings true to you, I daresay. The ability to work beyond someone's choice of words and the unique context of their mind to hear that ring of truth (definition 3 in the m-w cited by Joe) is the skill of interpreting.

That's why I say it needs elasticity of mind, but I also say it is fallible. Freud was frequently off the track a bit. (I like Jung better.) Piaget, as I said, doubtless expected to be wrong in some way. The process is too intersubjective to be infallible.

As a method of deriving the true will of a God, it leaves much to be desired. It's sometimes a source of much wasted effort and false conviction. There are times when it just rings true, and it rings true for everyone. This is when we are in a place where the common threads of human brains and human experience are strongest. Consequently, the seemingly certain interpretations tend to teach us the least.

cantdog

=====================

SnP originally said:

"On another thread, we were talking about how it might be possible to believe something but believe that it might not be true for everyone."

Don't know if I'm adding to this, or not, but here goes.

Cant says:

"I had had one experience which I had little reason to imagine was not simply a schizophrenic episode, and yet I'd helped someone understand the writings of mystics!"

Actually, there may be a connection between your experience and schizophrenia. It's called schizothymia. You won't find it in all dictionaries, or much, if anything on the web, but it has been noted in autistic children, and it said to be helpful to them. Hmm! A usefulness in schizophrenia.

Anyway, it's a way of being inner, introverted, or in the case of autistic children, a way to focus. That's what meditation does, if successful, or at least to begin with.

Some Buddhists also have what they call "non thought." A being in the "moment," if you will, and thus being able to savor it, if you would like to, in a timeless fashion, or so I understand it.

What is, and what isn't? Depends on your point of view. In the classical world, we can usually define it, but the classical world we all know and love is made possible by the quantum world. The quantum world has it's own set of non-rules that rule (said tongue-in-cheek).

That said, it has been noted that there are virtual particles ". . . that can suddenly apprear and disappear back into nothing in a timeso short you cannot observe them directly."

Perhaps love, etc., is like virtual particles, or something else entirely that has not truly been looked into scientifically, if that's possible. Maybe in the quantum world it is.

I have no idea if this added to the intent of the thread, or just added so much more rubble. Hope it has somehow added.

mismused

 

[amicus]

Pure....'fairies outside my window..." Just as some are born with blue eyes, high intelligence and lefthandedness, I wonder if some are born with more or less of the ability to see those 'fairies?'

General opinion otherwise, I truly love the female of the species, as I find them much more open to the world of spontaniety and the ability to see those, 'fairies...outside the window.'

I am not so blessed with that ability to dispense with reality and open my arms to the mystical. But what a rich history of imagination has mankind with devils and demons and the gods of olympus and more....

And surely...these things are indeed a part of our history and our heritage and perhaps should be properly viewed as the stepping stones to knowledge as well as culture.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`


cantdog....I read your post three times through and the kernel escapes me....

you said at the close, "There are times when it just rings true, and it rings true for everyone. This is when we are in a place where the common threads of human brains and human experience are strongest. Consequently, the seemingly certain interpretations tend to teach us the least."

In almost every major religion, those separated by time and distance, there are many similarities. One of those is the duplicaton of the 'great flood' brought upon mankind when man transgressed on the edicts of the god/gods in question.

This apparent 'need' for a religion and the almost uncanny similarities strike a chord in me that our species does function in response to some very deep down 'absolutes' that drive us.

The untutored mind, that does not apply logic and reason to thought, may well be that 'artistic' visceral, subconscious energy or force that has been spoken of.

I know...from knowing musicians and actors and such...that their 'art' is often much less cerebral than one tends to think. The ability to communicate by music is another aspect of human characteristics that I tend to think one is either born with or not.

Well...that was a ramble...and again...with more questions than answers...

amicus...

 

[cantdog]

I like the idea, mismused. Anything is grist to this thread as it now stands, I think. We're in the highest levels of the high country of the mind, talking so extremely generally that nothing specific could escape being included! And as I invited Joe to do, a specific concrete and verifiable point which might bear on the moonshine we're talking here is always welcome. I am especially interested in the mechanisms of the mystic, if I may call them that. Any time.

SnP's complete comfort with a belief true for one yet not necessarily true for all-- I have to point again to the murky and fallible nature of much of the interpretive end of the process.

How many people here think that it is silly to say that people are quite different in their own heads, one from another? I mean, I know there are commonalities. But there are demonstrably lots of people, autistics as one example, who differ significantly.

I find that when I get to know, by hearing and sharing insights with, a really bright person, I always seem to discover that the way they're set up in their head is fundamentally different from the way the same sort of terrain strikes me in ordinary mortals. Intelligent people work differently. The texture of their thought, the mental map they use to navigate the world of experience, seems to me to be alien to the way most people seem to operate.

Then there are people who hear shapes, taste shapes, hear colors, see sounds. Everyone's sensorium is different, too, to begin with. A person with a well developed sense of smell would perceive everything with nuances I won't get.

I think different cultures cast a different shape on the mental mechanism, too.

So that, for me, I think it likely that each person, within broad limits of basic similarity, most likely is unique in their subjective space, their head-space. Can you agree?

My point is, that this is why not-x isn't necessarily false in the subjective, unverifiable sphere. A belief can be valid here, while there, for another unique person, the conflicting belief, not-x, can still be valid.

Logic exclusion, not-x is false if x is true, can hold only if I can be reasonably sure the other person's head works the way mine does.

Do you think yours works the way mine does, lol?

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by gauchecritic
I've just had a thought about the measureability of personal experience.

If we can agree that a profound experience such as 'love' or 'faith' can alter one's character or change their perspective, then however vague that change is (love sickness, proselytising where it wasn't apparent before) then there is your measurable change. How you would measure that except in terms of labels rather than any quantifiable terms (8 ounces of love or 6 times more religious) I have no idea.

Joe, there is still something wrong with your logic about omnipresence not being infinite.

You are denying that everywhere, really is everywhere. If 'everything' in the universe extends to a specific point then there simply isn't an infinity. If there is an infinity then there can be no specific point at which it ends.

You are in effect saying that there is an infinity but it isn't everywhere.

Everywhere = infinity. (or do you have a secret dictionary)

Serious question. Do photons have mass?

Gauche

To be honest, there isn't anything wrong with the logic.

I am not denying that everywhere /is/ everywhere. I'm saying that /you/ said that "if God is omnipresent, then he is infinite"

Omnipresent means "exists at all places at all times".

IF "all places" is a limited (finite) number of places, then God being omnipresent only extends to a limited (finite) number of places.

God, then, isn't infinite, based on presence.

I'm not saying anything about infinity not being everywhere. I'm saying that "presence" cannot be "infinite", if "all places" equates to a finite number. No secret dictionaries. No spooky definitions.

That is, I'm afraid, perfectly logical.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by cantdog
My point is, that this is why not-x isn't necessarily false in the subjective, unverifiable sphere. A belief can be valid here, while there, for another unique person, the conflicting belief, not-x, can still be valid.

Valid, maybe, but not sound at all--unless the belief is correspondant to what is actually true. Short of that, its a false belief.

Logic exclusion, not-x is false if x is true, can hold only if I can be reasonably sure the other person's head works the way mine does.

That's actually not true. It doesn't matter if you're reasonably sure or not... has nothing to do with verification. Saying "well, anything in their head is true if I can't be sure they're wired like me" is... erroneous.

 

[cantdog]

Yeah, Gauche, Joe said just that earlier. If the universe were one room, then God could be everywhere but still only in a limited number of places, compared to infinity. The prof who stated so categorically "there's no such thing" as infinity (from 'way far back in the thread) might have been correct. We seem to have a space-time bubble here with a definite boundary just beyond the background radiation of the big bang.

I think.

Not really infinite. Unless God, in order to be infinite, has that bubble and all the other bubbles in his glass of champagne in some unknowable and really infinite Godly realm, but if he's in our own realm, this universe here seems to be less than infinite. Omnipresence here would still be short of infinite presence. For what it's worth.


c

 

[cantdog]

Yes, Joe, erroneous! Exactly. In a place within the head so disconnected from the verifiable that the ONLY access to it is the testimony of the person who lives in that head, in THAT place, reconsider your remark.

unless the belief is correspondant to what is actually true. Short of that, its a false belief.

But in a place where NO PART of the thought is amenable to verification, NEITHER X NOR NOT_X can be shown to correspond to any measurable thing.

Therefore, since neither side is correspondent to anything which can empirically be shown to be true, neither side of the propositon can be anything,
as you say, but a false belief.

So that x and not-x, by that criterion, are both false.

THERE is the place where your infernal logic fails. Where the limits of the verifiable are exceeded, there can be no logical exclusion "not-x is false if x is true."

Because, as the very form of your assertion puts it "unless the belief is correspondant to what is actually true. Short of that, its a false belief."

In other words, the logical definition of what is true depends upon what is verifiable. Look at the criterion you stated again. It depends on whether it corresponds to something verifiable.

Thus, for me, is logic in the realm, properly, of the verifiable, the empirically true.

It has nothing to do with science, my ass! Science is confined to the same realm, the true, the verifiable, the objective, the concrete, the outside "it" world ONLY and it fails as the limit of the verifiable fails. Logic fails with it.

Put that in your pipe.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by cantdog
But in a place where NO PART of the thought is amenable to verification, NEITHER X NOR NOT_X can be shown to correspond to any measurable thing.

Therefore, since neither side is correspondent to anything which can empirically be shown to be true, neither side of the propositon can be anything,
as you say, but a false belief.

So that x and not-x, by that criterion, are both false.

You have an awfully fast and loose definition of truth (that actually doesn't have anything, it appears, to do with the real one). If you take a multiple choice test and the answer key gets lost... your answers aren't "both right and not right". They're either correct or incorrect... ability to verify them doesn't change that.

THERE is the place where your infernal logic fails. Where the limits of the verifiable are exceeded, there can be no logical exclusion "not-x is false if x is true."

Sure there can, you're saying that there can be no "empirical" conclusion. Logic can quite correctly conclude that "not-x is false if x is true". You're, again, mistaking "empirically verified" for "True".

Because, as the very form of your assertion puts it "unless the belief is correspondant to what is actually true. Short of that, its a false belief."

In other words, the logical definition of what is true depends upon what is verifiable. Look at the criterion you stated again. It depends on whether it corresponds to something verifiable.

I haven't said that, nor would I. The "logical" definition of truth would just be that actual definition of it... which would have nothing to do with verification. My criterion mentions "correspondance", but "correspondance" doesnt' mean "verified" either... I have no idea where you're getting all this stuff.

All correspond means (in this case) is that the contents of a belief (thinking about horses, we'll say) actually correspond to reality (thinking about horses). That the person thinking of horses is mute, we'll also say, doesn't mean he's both thinking and not thinking of horses. He either is or isn't. If he is, then it corresponds. If he isn't, it doesn't.

Thus, for me, is logic in the realm, properly, of the verifiable, the empirically true.

I... honestly... if you want to believe that, I can't stop you by any means. Its not correct. Logic has nothing to do with empirical verifiability. Logic, by definition, is analytic in nature and not synthetic. Its a priori, not a postereriori. I would be delighted for you to show me how logic has ANY basis in empiricism.

It has nothing to do with science, my ass! Science is confined to the same realm, the true, the verifiable, the objective, the concrete, the outside "it" world ONLY and it fails as the limit of the verifiable fails. Logic fails with it.

Put that in your pipe.

Again, you're mixing your terms and coning out with false conclusions. Science is a study that seeks to discover objective truths about nature from the uses of logic and observation. Science is not synonymous with Logic... no moreso than "carpenter" is synonymous with "hammer". Science relies on empirical verifiability. Logic does not. Look up the most basic explanation of logic, you'll find I'm right on this one.

That science fails, then, in things it can't verify doesn't mean that logic automatically does, too. They measure VERY different things. Logic is only used by science to analyze the relationships between some of its data. Has nothing to do with its collection or observation (where the verification comes in).

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

English and logic debates always worry me. People getting so worked up about if this word means this then so forth or they play around with "x"es as if "x"es alone make something mathematically provable.

What this debate looks like to me is a mixture including:

a) Descartes famously flawed essay (I think therefore I am) in which he proved god by a serious of false assumptions and logical fallacies. His measured tone and use of logical tools however hid this fact long enough for Descartes to become famous for this exercise. Point 1: Logical language does not a logical man make.

b) Those old math exercises where 1 is shown to equal 2 and you must show where the flaw in mathematics is made. Except unlike those debates, you can't point to the movement error all set out, because by translating that old exercise into a game of words, you've stripped out the cold universality from the debate. Arguments are being made by everyone over which definition from the dictionary to be used, which dictionary should be used, how much cultural interpretations of the word are a factor, etc... The universality of the system breaks down here and all is left is "a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing". Point 2: Words differ from mathematics by their lack of universal consistency.

c) A man forever beating his head against the wall. Honestly all of you, Joe will forever dismiss whatever criterion you present because he's a (sorry Joe) control freak. Furthermore none of you seem to be willing to compromise very much on the interpretations of words and are expending huge volumes of words to explain one or two words that actually have little to do with your initial point. Also, the debate is not collapsing towards synthesis, it is schisming. You are becoming more separated and angrier in each of your views on the meaning of certain words and its polluting any chance for all of you to return to the initial debate. Point 3: Joe stop being a control freak over words, use your big bad brain and logic to argue points of view not semantics. The rest of you, stop arguing over the meaning of words. You're not linguistics professors and you're becoming angry and just a little pissy. (Honestly, the thread is starting to drip with understated intellectual testosterone).

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Honestly, LC, its like someone coming up to you and saying "Border-line Bi-polar means not bi-polar in any way" and then basing an entire argument that says, at the end, "Borderline bi-polar people are liars".

It isn't a matter of "semantics". Its a matter of "your conclusion is wrong and can mislead others because your premise butchers a definition at your convenience". It just isn't prudent to allow errors in understanding to continue.

I'm not trying to disprove religion, here. I'm trying to figure out how someone can say that "logic is emprical" when the word has never, ever meant that. Because the moment people start thinking that logic is empirical, they run the risk of entirely abandoning reason because the tool is broke (when they're just trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver).

 

[mismused]

I like the idea, mismused. Anything is grist to this thread as it now stands, I think. We're in the highest levels of the high country of the mind, talking so extremely generally that nothing specific could escape being included! And as I invited Joe to do, a specific concrete and verifiable point which might bear on the moonshine we're talking here is always welcome. I am especially interested in the mechanisms of the mystic, if I may call them that. Any time.

======================

Moonshine! Now that will take you to another world, and maybe the emergency room too. (smiles)

======================

SnP's complete comfort with a belief true for one yet not necessarily true for all-- I have to point again to the murky and fallible nature of much of the interpretive end of the process.

How many people here think that it is silly to say that people are quite different in their own heads, one from another? I mean, I know there are commonalities. But there are demonstrably lots of people, autistics as one example, who differ significantly.

I find that when I get to know, by hearing and sharing insights with, a really bright person, I always seem to discover that the way they're set up in their head is fundamentally different from the way the same sort of terrain strikes me in ordinary mortals. Intelligent people work differently. The texture of their thought, the mental map they use to navigate the world of experience, seems to me to be alien to the way most people seem to operate.

=======================

Mostly, I think, we're all the same, but we haven't all learned to use what we have in the same, or even similar way. Yes, some seem to be born different, but like with the autistic, sometimes it's just that something is exaggerated in them. Some say that's how humans evolved. Some exaggeration became thne norm, and voila!, here we are as we are.

=======================

Then there are people who hear shapes, taste shapes, hear colors, see sounds. Everyone's sensorium is different, too, to begin with. A person with a well developed sense of smell would perceive everything with nuances I won't get.

======================

On our perceptions, in the early or mid nineties, even the Wall Street Journal ran a three day column on page one about how we're perceived to be able to perceive. In sum, we can't, at least not directly.

Yes, even touch and taste is not direct. What it is is a set of impulses so fast that we think it's really real time, but it is something that is almost instantaneously fed to portions of the mind which interpret it all, and make judgements. That's also true of seeing. We, the outer body, if I can use that loosely, must wait to know what it is we saw, or thought we saw, until whatever it is that we are tells us what it thinks we saw. (Mercy, did I say all that mumbo-jumbo?)

=======================

I think different cultures cast a different shape on the mental mechanism, too.

So that, for me, I think it likely that each person, within broad limits of basic similarity, most likely is unique in their subjective space, their head-space. Can you agree?

=====================

Subjective, objective, I agree, we do have the same mechanisms, for the most part, the intuitive mechanisms for sensing what we think we see, know. Funny part is that we all say it's all in the mind, but no one has ever been able to say what mind really is, or even where it is, old wives tales no being counted, that is. In the little, or large space, if it is space, that our minds seem to give us, we can see something tiny, or the vastness of space and the stars. Odd, huh?

====================

My point is, that this is why not-x isn't necessarily false in the subjective, unverifiable sphere. A belief can be valid here, while there, for another unique person, the conflicting belief, not-x, can still be valid.

Logic exclusion, not-x is false if x is true, can hold only if I can be reasonably sure the other person's head works the way mine does.

Do you think yours works the way mine does, lol?

====================

I'll leave the points to others. Logic scares me. It has its place, but it is not always true, or infallible. I like using what is, is (Uh, excuse the Clintonism, or unintended pun). Still, I like you way of searching, your intent, if you will.

mismused

 

[Guest]

You have an awfully fast and loose definition of truth (that actually doesn't have anything, it appears, to do with the real one).

I'm only here to say, Aye, Carrumba!

I'm no longer involved in this 'discussion', but I'm listening.

Perdita

 

[amicus]

cantdog....


you said..."But in a place where NO PART of the thought is amenable to verification, NEITHER X NOR NOT_X can be shown to correspond to any measurable thing.

Therefore, since neither side is correspondent to anything which can empirically be shown to be true, neither side of the propositon can be anything,
as you say, but a false belief...."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


If you are saying that 'thought' cannot be verified or shown to correspond to any measurable thing...."

The perhaps a recent Discovery Health Channel program where in specified electrical current in the brain was observed to peak when a 'new' idea was introduced in the mind, might interest you.

Secondly, although one cannot take a thought and fondle it, thus measure it in the real world....one must acknowledge that the mind works in the same manner for each human being.(normative), not autistic or otherwise impaired)

Since human perceptions all come about the same way, through near identical sensory input, the the correlation of the content of the mind, i.e. thoughts and ideas, Do have a direct connection to reality, thus can be equated to being real.

I sense you are trying to make an argument that all thinking is thus subjective, thus fallible, thus not provable and I reject that out of hand.


amicus...

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Honestly, LC, its like someone coming up to you and saying "Border-line Bi-polar means not bi-polar in any way" and then basing an entire argument that says, at the end, "Borderline bi-polar people are liars".

It isn't a matter of "semantics". Its a matter of "your conclusion is wrong and can mislead others because your premise butchers a definition at your convenience". It just isn't prudent to allow errors in understanding to continue.

I'm not trying to disprove religion, here. I'm trying to figure out how someone can say that "logic is emprical" when the word has never, ever meant that. Because the moment people start thinking that logic is empirical, they run the risk of entirely abandoning reason because the tool is broke (when they're just trying to use a hammer as a screwdriver).

I have no problem with people arguing premises. Arguing those is a fine logical tradition. Most disagreements come from a fundamental disagreement on the premises of the argument.

However, I do get a bit annoyed from this habit you have of ignoring both the premises and point of an argument so that you can argue about a misused word and thus infer that the argument is wrong because of that word. You did that once before on me when I tried to make the point that the use of polytheistic deities constitutes a religion and you argued with me about my bad use of the word "semantics" and my uncouth language in general.

The fact is that there is middle ground here but there must be give and take. You on your side have to be more willing to deal with points and overall arguments as they are made separate from their language use. On the other hand, the others must be careful whenever a flawed argument happens to be a key premise.

Now on your examples premise, and unfortunately stepping into your trap of thinly disguised male posturing, I would counter in my counterargument that your overall point is logically solid, but I disagree on the minor premise that unless you've gone from normal to being restrained by friends in a second flat or have ever had a voice not you take over all your body functions for a hear stopping full minute, you and your opinion of my bi-polar and MPS can go fuck themselves you domineering, arrogant, son of a bitch.






I am sorry. Listen, Joe, you are a privileged control oriented man whose background has been one of popularity, I am a chaos oriented, literal bastard whose background has been one of pain. We will never agree on anything it seems and I would rather concede this all-too-obvious mutual dislike rather than get into any more pissing contests with you. Farewell, Joe.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Burley, thanks so much for the 'jewel' metaphor, very good. P.

Yes, I really liked it too.

 

[mismused]

It has nothing to do with science, my ass! Science is confined to the same realm, the true, the verifiable, the objective, the concrete, the outside "it" world ONLY and it fails as the limit of the verifiable fails. Logic fails with it.

Put that in your pipe.

=======================

Skipping the logic, if I may, yes, science is in the business of verifying the objective world, if you will, including that world I mentioned that is quantum, and appears, and disappears at will, or whim.

However, it also has to do with "faith," if I may. My example of this is Fred Holyle, he who disparagingly coined the term "Big Bang."

He had faith in where his knowledge was leading him, though it had been said by one and all, including, I understand, all the computers available. Yet he "knew" that there was a resonance in that elusive form of beryllium that made it possible for carbon atoms to come into being.

Hmm! Some crackpot friend gave him a place, and facilities to use, and it was true. It was as he "knew" it, had "faith," for it could be termed as almost nothing else, that it was so.

Amen. mismused piously disappears into the quantum nebulousness that is and isn't.

mismused

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Lucifer_Carroll
Now on your examples premise, and unfortunately stepping into your trap of thinly disguised male posturing, I would counter in my counterargument that your overall point is logically solid, but I disagree on the minor premise that unless you've gone from normal to being restrained by friends in a second flat or have ever had a voice not you take over all your body functions for a hear stopping full minute, you and your opinion of my bi-polar and MPS can go fuck themselves you domineering, arrogant, son of a bitch.

So, instead of dealing with the actual point I was making, except to say that its logically solid (which it actually isn't, as "borderline bi-polar means not bi-polar at all" is a bad premise)... I'm just a son of a bitch for making it.

It may be valid, but it isn't sound. It isn't true. And it isn't true because the premise is false. It has nothing to do with "male posturing" (and I ask, kindly, that you leave Ad hominem attacks out of this one, too). It wasn't intended to piss you off, LC, it was intended to demonstrate that when you start fucking with definitions and changing them to mean other things... really unfair and erroneous conclusions can come out of it.

Your reaction seems to lend some evidence to my point that it isn't a good thing.

Relax, Jeez.

am sorry. Listen, Joe, you are a privileged control oriented man whose background has been one of popularity, I am a chaos oriented, literal bastard whose background has been one of pain. We will never agree on anything it seems and I would rather concede this all-too-obvious mutual dislike rather than get into any more pissing contests with you. Farewell, Joe.

edited because its not productive

 

[cantdog]

Okay, never mind then. Sorry.

Fuck, it sounded so good, too.

Let's get back to talking about sensible stuff, then. Amicus has a point, and so does Lucifer. My motivations were testosterone driven, as Perdita perceives.

*hmm*

 

[sweetnpetite]

He probably spits on the sidewalk just as we do.

Logic is so silly in this context, Joe.
You have quoted the dictionary and ignored it in the same paragraph.

There are clearly three main definitions in the citation, with sub-headings for the third one. Yet having placed the mildly insulting dictionary entry on our plate, you reference to it carries on about the unitary nature of the definition of the word.

I suspect, therefore, that you are bludgeoning us here with half-truths in pursuit of an agenda.

Yes, thank you cant. I was going to point out basicly the same thing.

Even in the dictionary there are 3 seperate definitions of truth including these two:a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b : a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true

which go along w/ the idea of spirtual truths as apposed to facts.

For instance, one can find truth in a work of fiction, although the story itself may contain no facts and may not be in any way shape or form factually true. I would think that this sort of thing would be fairly obvious to anyone hanging out in an authors forum.