Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Order of Rank?) (Humans)

by dhw, Sunday, March 06, 2011, 16:26 (4819 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt has explained what he is trying to achieve with this thread. First of all, let me express my appreciation of your patience in doing so. This post is much clearer than before. Perhaps, like most of us agnostics, you are more skilled at asking the questions than at answering them! (I don't mean that unkindly.)-MATT (to dhw): You mentioned previously that you shift your weights depending on the scenario ... but the question that I would ask here is "Why is this reasonable? Why do you do it?"-If I want to know how a machine works, how the body works, what causes physical phenomena, I will go to science for my answers. Materialism is king. If I'm trying to solve a puzzle, analyse a text, do my accounts, I will use reason and intellect (or in the latter case, get my accountant to use his!). If I'm writing a story or play, I will give absolute priority to intuition, although when polishing it, I will use reason and intellect to ensure that there are no inconsistencies. Many real-life decisions will hinge almost entirely on emotions: love conquers all, does it not? Each situation demands a different approach or combination of approaches, which is what I tried to set out in twenty-four-one. Why is it reasonable? Because experience has taught me that this is my best chance of getting the most reliable results. In matters relating to religion, however, no matter which of these faculties I use, I come to a point at which none of them can provide a convincing answer. Hence no priorities, within the all-important bounds of common sense.-You say there are "only two means to inform ourselves about the world": direct experience (including seeing connections) and empirical means, and the divide between theists and atheists is that "each rejects the other's means of exploring the world". This may be true of some people, but certainly not of others. David and George have explored the same material world with the same empirical means, but they have formed different connections. (See next paragraph for possible ramifications.) I'm very unsure about this division anyway ... the 5 senses as opposed to the mind. A vast amount of our culture is based on indirect experience: we inform ourselves through other people's minds, other people's senses, and other people's connections. That's part of what makes us unique in the animal kingdom, but it blurs your boundaries. Perhaps you could elaborate a little on what you understand by "direct" experience.-I have no doubt that the decision "to reject some arguments and not others" will in some cases be due to the person concerned having already formed his connections and being unwilling to rejig them. I think both David and George are comfortable with the diametrically opposite conclusions they have reached as a result of their studies, and in neither case are the opposing arguments convincing enough to shake them. Hence David's faith in a UI and George's faith in chance's ability to generate life and its evolutionary mechanisms. In order to find out why THIS is so (and why we rank some property, trust some people...), you would need to spend a few months psychoanalyzing David and George ... assuming they would cooperate! The same applies to your question: "Are we not choosing for egoistic reasons?" You would have to go back and back into each person's life history and psychology, and you would also come up against Romansh's favourite barrier ... the problem of free will. -In the narrow confines of our discussions, I don't think it's "unreasonable to infer a God" in the light of impossible odds against chance producing life. Nor do I think it unreasonable to infer the non-existence of God in the light of impossible odds against the universe as we know it containing an inconceivable, unknowable form of conscious intelligence that never had a beginning. As you will no doubt have discovered in writing your novel, the most interesting conflicts derive from situations in which both sides have an equally reasonable case.-I hope we're now on the track you wanted, though I'm sure we still have a long way to travel!