So, I am going to put on my nitpicker hat for a second just to demonstrate my point. Every vocabulary you make your own for the purpose of some discourse brings with it a bunch of connotations and denotations you just can't get rid of.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am EDIT: I get at this issue below, but I think I have a better way of questioning around it. People have beliefs and these often relate to larger models/worldview, etc. Thoughts in the head.
So for example you've stated that "people have beliefs". OK...
You've also used the expression "thoughts in the head." OK...
What's the difference between believing in God and simply having the thought of God in my head?
I fully expect you to begin saying things like "But do you think it actually corresponds to reality..."; or some such attempt to relate my epistemology with my ontology.
But... the epistemology/ontology distinction is just a rhetorical device. In pratice there's no difference between the two. Perception is reality - ontology is epistemology.
This is true for all thoughts in all heads. They influence your thinking in one way or another - and your thinking influences your actions.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am That can lead to certain behaviors and actions and how the person approaches problems, etc.
So it seems like a pointless thing to point out because it's never not true.
Whether I agree or disagree with you on the particular issue above entirely depends on what you mean by "clear". Do some people have "clear" approaches to dealing with things; while other people don't?Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am But we also have behavior, as a potential starting point. You don't have a belief system, one. We can't even summarize you down to a couple in combination or three.
If we look at different people with particular worldviews, they can have very clear approaches to dealing with crises, with problem solving, with finding out more information.
Do you have a "clear" approach to riding a bycicle or driving a car? Could you tell us with absolute clarity what that approach is?
There's such a thing as tacit knowledge. And; of course you could always insist that you can "explain your approach to riding a bycicle or driving a car" but I could always argue that you can't. Not with any degree of sufficiency anyway.
Explain your approach to a robot and teach it how to ride a bike; or teach a car to drive itself.
Being able to teach a machine to do what you do is my criterion for "clarity of approach".
If you can explain it to the machine then you have clarity.
If you can't explain it to the machine then you don't have clarity yet.
I would love to! I can already imagine the euphoria the participants experience. The sense of unity. The sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself. Such level of devotion and submission is so rare in this day and age.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am You may well be a Muslim when talking to Muslims, but I would guess you don't feel any internal pressure to go to Mecca.
But once you scratch your human itch for feeling some sense of belonging - what happens then?
Want to see my meditation app? 20 minutes every 3 hours.
Ehhh? Of course I do! Especially on moral issues that I've never encountered. I don't consult the Koran, but I sure consult the moral authorities and experts I recognize.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am You don't regularly consult the Koran or experts in it to decide what is moral.
Is that a pre-requisite for being muslim? Show me any person that follows any rule-based system verbatim.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am You don't follow traditions that arise or supposedly arise out of the Koran when it comes to relations with Jews or heathens or women or children.
Are you a Law-abiding citizen? Do you follow every single tratidion that supposedly arises out of case law with relation to - all human affairs?
Is a single legal transgression (and you know you've broken the law - lie to me but don't lie to yourself) sufficient to label you a non-law-abiding citizen? Who is a law-abiding citizen by such a strict standard of evaluation?
There is none righteous, no, not one
You are using the vocabulary of "ontology", "epistmology" that already suggests that you self-identify as a Philosopher.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am What you do in crisis, what you do when you want more information, the kinds of experts you consult when you want information, they ways you approach, say, making your body feel better, function better, your moral code...these may well fit with some worldviews (including epistemology, ontology, ethics and so on) and not fit well with others.
Most people just call it "reality" (ontology) and "belief" (espistemology). And they use phrases like "justified true belief" (e.g knowledge) for the relationship between epistemology and ontology. That's generally how the correspondence theory (supposedly) works.
There's no way to assert whether they "fit" or not! Language does NOT correspond to reality except in the ways we use it.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am So, have you ever started acting in ways that fit better with a new worldview in a sustained way? And what does it take for such a thing to happen?
Language is primarily coherent. Correspondence to reality is indeterminate.
And at this point I've committed myself to epistemic coherentism over correspondence; but that would be a misinterpretation.
What I am actually saying is that nothing prevents an infinitude of coherent epistemologies (paradigms?) from "corresponding" to reality for some particular purpose. There's simply no privileged descriptions of reality in some universal context.
You call this color "red". I call it "blue". Call it whatever you want. It doesn't in any way say anything about its "true nature". It's just a way of speaking about it. Neither label "corresponds" any better or any worse.
Have you heard of Perennialism?Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am Perhaps you started getting accupuncture treatments and throwing the Dao. This doesn't mean you are now Confucian or Daoist, but for some reason you considered it possible/likely that there might be value in something that didn't fit with the medical/pharmcological/epistemological ideas that led to what you chose when wanting a new direction or for your bad knee.
The only direction I want for my bad knee is an improvement from bad to good. What that looks like in practice could be anything.
How you work your way to a strategy for improving my bad knee - that could be anything also.
Ancient tribes used to praise their Gods for the miracle of tree bark - and when you eat the tree bark your knee was now "better". The pain went away!
Modern tribes praise the miracle of quinine's pain relief properties.
The effect/outcome is the same - the justification/language around it is different.
The semantic property, the feeling, the expience that results in either case is the betterness of your knee.
You appear to be reifying the paradigms as something real/tangible. I think of them as nothing other than mental instruments - thinking tools.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am You may not have a language based, explicit belief based paradimg or mashup of a view, but it's possible that your actions reveal tendencies handed to you by paradigms you grew up in or move toward to get away from that.
If there have been changes in significant actions/approaches, let me know. And what led to them?
You can run Windows on your computer (brain); you can run Linux on your computer (brain). The operating system doesn't matter. It's how you use it.
That question doesn't even make sense in my taxonomy. I use whatever works. Some times it turns out that ancient traditional medicine works too.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am And my examples are just guesses. Perhaphs you've always gone to accupunturists and avoided modern medicine. Or perhaps you did for a long time and then you changed and use modern Western medicine more regularly.
It's just that Western reductionism hasn't quite isolated the precise reasons for why it works; or how it works. Some things are simply beyond the methods and understanding of reductionism.
Late recent developments in psychology - so many people are reporting that psylocybin has positive effects on depression and anxiety. People have been reporting this for 10000 years! Western society still outlaws psylocybin for psychotherapy.
There's no question that psylocybin has positive effects. Western medicine just doens't (yet) understand how it works and why. Because the relationship between subjective experience and brain physiology is not even close to being understood.
The most significant change in my paradigm has been that I recognize that every human is basically an empiricist, but they don't really talk about themselves in those terms.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am My point is partially that even if there is a kind of openness to ideas and models and no committment to any particular on, the way we live may well come out of or be biased by models and paradigms...and then by habit/acculturation. Why fix what ain't broken? type stuff also.
So if there has been a significant change of the types I am mentioning, let me know.
We learn by trial and error. Exactly like science does. The smarter humans are also capable of learning from other people's trials and errors.
But at some point or another just about everyone makes the error of assigning greater significance to their own experiences; than to the experiences of other people. This is where all the sampling biases come into play.
All the studies in the world can tell you that medicine X is safe, but if two of your neighbors experience the (exceptionally rare) side effects listed on the brocuhure - there is "no way in hell you are putting that poison in your body!"
So of course I am talking about statistical reasoning. But statistics is just another vocabulary.
You can talk about statistical phenomena using that vocabulary; or you can talk about those exact same phenomena using the vocabulary of information theory.
The results will be the same. The two theories are mathematically identical - but their vocabularies differ.
I have no idea. I use tools. The adjective "theist" or "atheist" does nothing about the denotation of the tool. It's just a characterisation of the tool with zero effect on the tool itself.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am When you go about taking action in the world, solving problems, improving your abilities and social connections, trying to make the world better or more as you would like it....
how much do you use theist tools?
The adjective projects your state of mind onto the tool, but it says nothing about the tool itself.
To use a programing language analogy - suppose I am using an algorithm implemented in the programming language Haskell.
Obviously my tools are more "haskellian" than "pythonic" - but the tool/algorithm can be translated into any programming language in principle.
So you've learned nothing about the tool itself, but you have learned about which sub-culture implemented it in their favourite programming language.
You've started with the pre-supposition that the two paradigms are isolated/separate. But the entire point I am making is that they do coexist in my head. I've reconciled science and religion.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am Are they any heuristics or acts that fit better with a theist model of the universe than an atheist?
Are there any heuricists or acts that fit better with magical models of causation than scientific ones?
Religion is all the useful concepts upon which science rests.
Numbers. Where are those things? It's no more possible to demonstrate the existence of a number than it is to demonstrate the existence of God.
But if some 20 year old testosterone driven naive realist tried to attack me (as kids do while they are learning how to think) and challenged me on the existence of numbers they absolutely win in the eyes of other 20 year old status-driven kids struggling for status, dominion and social recognition on the intellectual battlefield.
So having lost the naive realist argument for the existence of numbers now what? Do I go and say "Oh! You are right. Numbers don't exist. I no longer believe in them."
OK... and now what? Do we abolish all of science? Do we burn it to the ground and rebuild it on some other foundation which makes no mention; or use of numbers?
No. Because those things aren't implicit. Their formalizatons/definitions/vocabularies are implict - but the paradigms remain in people's heads.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am I would guess you can see where I am heading. Even if you, perhaps, do not choose a worldview formally, might not your acts and approaches and heuristics fit one model more than others? That there is an implicit model/belief system.
But words have intrinsic meaning independent of people's minds. Right! Right ?!?!? They don't ??? And the symbolist dream dies a painful death.
In principle I have infinitely many subpersonalities. One for each possible emotional landscape, perspective and combination of acceptable and unacceptable concepts and foudnational beliefs.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am I didn't mean all of your history or influences, but more like subpersonalities. I agree with what you say as far as summing up my entire set of experiences and attitudes ever. But in general I find I have a relative small number of subpersonalities.
Yeah, you are talking about models and I am talking about model-building.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am I am using that term loosely, blackboxing if there is a real 'thing' for each of these. But it works for me, generally as a model. There are a handful of primary ones.
I intuitively understand the idea of The Creator - creating concepts using nothing but my own imagination as source of inspiration.
But, of course that metaphor gets too closely to make theists uncomfortable because I am almost painting myself The Creator.
So... what I really meant to say (so as to avoid triggering people) is that "I am made in The Creator's image"
Well, that goes too far in the way of assaulting people's intuitions.
But for as long as we are talking about our conception of reality - each and everyone of us can chop it up however they want to!
We are The Creators of taxonomies. And so - We create all interpretations of reality.... in his own himage.
I would guess if there were approximatelly the same number - I would be attacking the group that is pretending to be more self-righteous.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am So, you would guess (or know) that if there was the same number you'd be contrasting them pretty much equally?
Trying to dominate another paradigm amounts to saying "The Steelman of my paradigm is bigger and better than the Steelman for your paradigm."
My Steelman is right!
Your steelman is wrong!
But that's just the same as saying "My God is bigger, better and more righteous than your God".
But we are made in God's image so.... that's exactly the same as saying "I am bigger, better and more righteous than you!"
First rule of life: don't be a ****.
Secondn rule of life: if you choose to be a domineering **** attempting to subjugate other people to your perspective, by the principle of "I don't want to start a fight, but I will gladly finish it" - I promise to be a bigger, more dominating; more subjigating ****.
Dialectic is about synthesising a higher truth that accomodates both of our perspectives. If either perspective dominates - there's no reason for higher truth or synthesis. Just as soon as you recognize that I am right and you are wrong - you can adopt my vocabulary/perspective
Nothing explicitly. Reality is one big bowl of soup. There's no categories/lines in it except the ones we choose to create.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 amHow about implicit categories? What gets rejected out of hand, even if it is not formally argued against?Yeah, I abhor categorical reasoning. I see dialectic in the spirit of thinking along continuums and nuance. If categories are a necessary evil and we have to have them - lets synthesize them from scratch.
I could explicitly create two categories: humans, reality
I could epxlicitly create one category: reality. With humans belonging to that category.
Because it's not useful. Unless we are attempting to work together towards some common goal.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am A separate question: why wouldn't you approach social situations in the same way? I understand that the context of a philosophy forum more or less calls out for critique and questioning. But in general aren't both you and the person you are talking to, in a social situation, missing out on what could be gained through contrast (if a more gentle version)?
Most people aren't skilled in dialectic. And even worse - most people in Western society are absolutely incapable of navigating contradiction.
You hit that contradiction and they dismiss you because their God/Religion (the "law" of non-contradiction) commands them to dismiss you.
Eastern cultures are far more dialectical than Western cultures. Yin and Yang etc.
My arguments are always consistent with the organisation's goals. Not necessarily with the organisation's principles.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am But aren't there consistancy in your arguments and reasons. IOW would that indicate beliefs and worldview if you tend to expect employers or people to act in certain ways and use certain methodologies?
Social norms get in the way of such overt pragmatism.
I have no ideaIwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 am Isn't your moral code a system of beliefs? And possbility one entailed or entailed by a main ontology and determined via some epistemology?
I go on intuition 99% of the time.