Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Saturday, February 21, 2009, 11:25 (5753 days ago) @ George Jelliss

In his post of 19 February at 10.48, George wrote: "As to "gestalten", which is a German word meaning something like "forms", I'm still unclear as to its implications." - In my response of February 20 at 08.22 I tried to explain the implications by showing how our perceptions ... and hence our interpretations ... of reality entail using subjective links to form Gestalten. All interpreting follows the same process, and I used several examples, both theist and atheist, to show how it works: we join up segments, we foreground x and background y etc. - In your post of 20 February at 18.52 you wrote: "This seems to be saying that theism and atheism are equally sound views of the world, like the two interpretations of the vase/faces image." Both here and in the rest of your post I'm afraid you have completely missed my point. This may be my fault, if the text did not make it clear that I was explaining how we form Gestalten, not trying to convey value judgements. Alternatively, it may in itself be further evidence of how the process works, as from my perspective you have backgrounded my foreground ... the nature of Gestalten and the process of interpretation ... and concentrated only on interpreting the examples (somewhat contentiously) in the light of your own atheism. Let me stress, then, that the process of interpretation tells us nothing about the validity of the Gestalt ... that is a totally different subject. - In order to make things clearer, it might help if I take an example on which we both agree. Creationists believe that the world is no more than 10,000 years old, God created all the animals and man in a kind of paradise, and it was not until Adam fell that all the trouble started. You and I both believe in the findings of modern science, i.e. that the Earth is billions of years old, and there was a vicious free-for-all long before man came on the scene. And so we agree that the creationist Gestalt ignores vast areas of evidence. The creationists, however, will argue that we have formed our own Gestalt and are ignoring weightier evidence in what they believe to be God's Word (the Bible). Both sides have formed Gestalten in exactly the same way: by joining up segments, by foregrounding and backgrounding etc. We think theirs is wrong, and they think ours is wrong, and we each accuse the other of ignoring the evidence. The difference between the two sides is the subjective manner in which everyone joins the dots: we prioritize science, they prioritize the Bible. It's the prioritization that forms the subjective basis of our Gestalten. - Similarly, you say that evidence for the paranormal is weak, weak, weak, and "vague things are naturally placed in the background, like mist." That may be a "natural" Gestalt for you, but someone who believes he has had a paranormal experience will bring totally different priorities to the argument: he foregrounds his experience, and so for him the evidence is strong, strong, strong. Both of you are indulging in the same process: you see segments of what you think is reality and join them up in accordance with your subjective concept of what constitutes evidence.. - The point about theist and atheist scientists is not to distinguish between religious beliefs/non-beliefs and science, but again to show the process by which each of these scientists analyses the same reality and comes to different conclusions. We have observed this on our own forum. You and David are both scientists: David has examined the evidence and concludes that life is the product of design. You have examined the evidence and conclude that it is the product of chance (plus natural laws). Reality, whatever it may be, remains the same, and so it is your subjective ways of joining the dots that lead to your different Gestalten. Every single disagreement on this forum is the result of that process, and it would be nice to think that once we're aware of the mechanism, it might make us look more closely at our own mental processes and the manner in which we come to our conclusions. Any conclusion will inevitably entail selection and exclusion, and if we do no more than acknowledge our own selectivity, it might possibly lead to a greater degree of tolerance. However, you should not take this as a sign that I hold all beliefs to be equally true! I am merely pointing out that all beliefs are arrived at through the same process.