Syntheism vs. Noncognitivism

[tar]

Kyrisch,

"I said nothing about importance because I thought it could be assumed that rational thoughts which actually reflected reality and which could be used to better the human condition would be considered more important."

Well then here we should chat a bit on the point. Yours is an assumption which I am taking to task on certian levels, in certain ways. It is exactly this assumption, that rational thought trumps human nature, where I see a contradiction, an inconsistency and where I make a tie in to the "religious" nature of belief in the "scientific method".

In your view of the world, reality is what can be "objectively" measured, and subjectivity accounts for nothing.

In my view of the world, subjective experience is ALL we've got, and an image of objective reality is arrived at, through the agreement and concensus of humans over long periods of time.

This agreement and concensus can take on different forms. There is, in the scientific community a hatred for those things which cannot be measured and repeated. These things fall outside of the reality which the scientific community has established and strives to maintain.

Thing is, the religious community has established and strives to maintain a reality as well.

Both camps believe however, that there is only one reality.

Both camps are deluded, to think they have the special, correct handle on it. And both camps are sensible to strive to maintain the established, consensus view.

And in both cases the believers are subjective human beings, who have an image of an unseen other who or which, holds an objective view, that they can put themselves in the shoes of.

This unseen other is "objective truth" in your case, and perhaps a powerful green being from Alpha Centuri for the madman, or God for the Thiest.

In all cases, it's just us, imagining an unseen other, and putting ourselves in the shoes of it.

There is none of us, that actually have an objective view. There is none of us that can shed our reactive primitive brain, or even have a logical thought, without it.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

Feb 20, 2010 6:49:05 GMT tar said:

In your view of the world, reality is what can be "objectively" measured, and subjectivity accounts for nothing.

In my view of the world, subjective experience is ALL we've got, and an image of objective reality is arrived at, through the agreement and concensus of humans over long periods of time.

This agreement and concensus can take on different forms. There is, in the scientific community a hatred for those things which cannot be measured and repeated. These things fall outside of the reality which the scientific community has established and strives to maintain.

Thing is, the religious community has established and strives to maintain a reality as well.

Both camps believe however, that there is only one reality.

Both camps are deluded, to think they have the special, correct handle on it. And both camps are sensible to strive to maintain the established, consensus view.

While I see what you are trying to say, you are incorrect. You can in no way conflate science and religion. First of all, subjective reality is indeed all that we have access to, but the assumption that it lends us information about objective reality is necessary for sanity. Furthermore, through repetition we can establish what aspects of our subjectively experienced reality are overarchingly consistent and which most likely are also aspects of some objective reality.

Additionally, the religious community does not strive to maintain a (any) reality. They strive to maintain their own reality. This is why there are innumerable sects in religious communities, and there are only ever really one or two scientific consensuses. This is ridiculous because each religious sect thinks that they are right and that everyone else is wrong while, unlike scientific consensuses, none of them have any evidence for any of their claims to begin with because it's all a matter of faith.

In science, consensus is formed based on evidence, not a mutual truthiness.

This agreement and concensus can take on different forms. There is, in the scientific community a hatred for those things which cannot be measured and repeated. These things fall outside of the reality which the scientific community has established and strives to maintain.

There is no such hatred, and so say so is to be awfully uninformed. I hate how people conceive and talk of the "scientific community" as if it were some elitist group of men in white coats who dictate what is and is not part of the scientific consensus. I am part of the scientific community. Anyone who has ever done science and who has or may someday publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

Furthermore, there is nothing that is not measurable does not exist. This may not seem immediately obvious at first, but I invite you to think deeply on it. Anything that exists must have attributes or characteristics, and all such things are detectable.

So, you're wrong. The scientific method is the best way we can turn subjective experience into a model of objective reality. In this way, it does trump religion because religion falls prey to precisely what you claim. Religion claims to have the truth and is static. Science attempts to model the truth and so must admit to its own fallibility and be dynamic to compensate.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

I know of at least one person, who actually HATES religious thinking. You yourself condemn it, as contrary to reality.

What I am trying to etch out here, is the fact that reality does very well completely on it's own, and your view of it, or my view of it, won't change it a whit. What we do, or what we say, what we bring into reality, how we manipulate it, what we build and maintain, does however change reality.

You say I am incorrect in conflating science with religion. You point to an "objective reality" which exists and that is guiding science, which science is trying to know, trying to find, that trumps "religion". You have not yet seen what I have noticed, about myself and others. You have not yet drawn the analogy.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You were not trying to etch out anything, you were clearly conflating science and religion. And in the only part of the post where you actually referenced my argument, you dismissed it with some handwaving that I do not understand. Please clarify.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

I do not argue that the scientific method is not a wonderful way to arrive at truth about the physical world. I argue that measurable, detectable, peer reviewed reality, was there, before we detected it, measured it and reviewed our findings. Reality does not belong to scientists, by virtue of their knowing something about it. Reality is equally real, and equally a possesion of every conscious human. Sure we share our findings, and use our knowledge to improve our condition and aid our survival. Science is wonderful. But here is the area where I draw an analogy between religion and science. Objective reality exists as something greater than us, as something that takes care of itself, that trumps us, that contains us, that we are subject to. It created us, we have no way to be anything but subject to it. Now here is where the analogy is drawn. Mohammed named this objective reality Allah. He personified it, he put himself in the shoes of it, so to speak, he befriended it, he imagined he knew what it wanted, that he knew the truth, and nonbelievers were in error. Atheist are not part of any different reality than a theist is, however. Same reality, there is only one god, only one Allah, only one objective reality. Scientists put themselves in the shoes of this objective reality and feel they know the truth and have the special key required to be on its side, to be right, to be true and everybody else is in error. Muslims feel all will be right, when all the world is for Allah and the truths his messenger has revealed. Scientist feel all will be right, when all the world accepts only the truths revealed by scientific method, and carefully measured and peer reviewed, repeatable experiments.

The equipment both the theist and the atheist is working with, in terms of the human brain, is very similar. Both are wired for religion. Both accept the authority of their preists, who bring the truth of reality to them. Both put themselves in the shoes of objective reality and feel that they have the special key required to understand it, and respond to it properly.

You don't see this?

Regards, TAR

The association

[Kyrisch]

I don't. Scientists don't claim to have the truth, they claim to be working to get asymptotically close to it. Religious people claim to have the truth, and that is patently absurd.

Allah is not personified reality, Allah is Muhammad's imaginary friend. If the floorboards creak in my house and I 'personify' them as due to a ghost this is wrong because there is no reason to believe that whatever caused the floorboards to creak is personifiable. At worst it's lumping a whole lot of other unsupported characteristics with the mechanism which caused the floorboards to creak (relation to deceased persons' "souls", agency, competency, alignment), and at best it's simply renaming a phenomenon. It's useless lexicography, not truth-seeking, coupled with making shit up because you feel like it. Subjectivity is useless. Intersubjectivity is important.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Well I agree with you, but there are subtleties which I have determined are crucial to understanding ourselves, others, and the nature of our existence, and indeed the nature of the world which we are of and in.

You say Allah is Mohammed's imaginary friend, which is true, but you fail to admit the corollary, which is that objective reality is your and my imaginary friend.

And you fail to admit, that there are elements of the relationship (Mohammed to Allah or TAR to objective reality) that are not imaginary at all.

Regards, TAR

[tar]

And we make a lot of shit up, that forms the basis of our every day lifes, goals, and happiness.

The border between Canada and the U.S. for instance. Canada and the U.S. also. The 10 commandments, love, the Yankees, chess, the internet, the Salvation Army.

Here the intersubjectivety is important. Agreements between humans. Imaginary stuff, made real, by common agreement.

When my Mom died, I spoke at her memorial service. I suggested (even though those there knew I was an Atheist) that my mother still existed in our memories, and was now in the loving arms of Jesus Christ, who she loved.

Everybody knew what I was talking about. The Christians there, the Atheists there. I wasn't making anything up.

TAR, by himself, is a lump of arranged atoms, somehow conscious of the signals and chemicals occuring in his brain, body and heart. Enter intersubjectivety, peer review, and TAR can put himself in the shoes of an unseen other...and see himself.

This is imaginary in nature, to think that I know what Kyrisch thinks of me. But it is the basis of our reality, of the complex societies we have built. The basis of laws, promises, contracts, and organisations of all sorts, from marriages to companies, to associations, universities, political units, churches and religions.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

You're mistaking intersubjectivity and shared delusion. And you are also fiercely equivocating, which is a blatant fallacy. When I said 'made up', I clearly was referring to something like the explanation of a phenomenon or something else that is falsifiable. Chess and the Canadian-US border are not falsifiable.

But you may have been hearkening back to the heart of the thread in which I claimed various idea and words to be devoid of meaning. Even in this case, the things mentioned above are not devoid of meaning, but abstract. They are examples of a class of words which describe things that cannot be touched, smelled, or heard. But those are not the only kinds of properties things may have. The Canadian-US border, for instance, has a location. Chess can refer to the pieces, which are physical, or the rule set which describe cartesian transformations on a grid. These things are made up, but are not meaningless. Religion is both made-up in the first way (falsifiable and patently wrong) and more to the point of the thread, completely incomprehensible.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

You are no doubt right, but right, within the framework of accepted human usage, and common, accepted combinations of mutually accepted real things.

The Canadian border has a location surely, but not discernable in any physical way at many points. Where it goes through a lake, or an area where there are no fences or roads, there is no measurement equipment that can be used to measure it, no physical reality. It exists in our heads, in our laws, on our maps, but is not really there, to an objective observer. This is the analogy I draw to certain religious beliefs, where hell and heaven, although not measureable, and non-existant in the physical world, exist as abstract ideas, that two people agree on.

Similar to the observation, that if the first globe maker had been from the southern hemisphere, he/she would probably put the south pole at the top, and consequently the Earth would be known to have a clockwise spin, as opposed to the counter clockwise spin we know it to have, since the first Globe maker, put his half of the world, on the top.
Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

Let's use your own examples. Let's compare Hell and Heaven to the U.S.-Canadian border. The latter, though not physical, certainly has a distinct location. Where are Heaven and Hell?

I think you'll find a very obvious difference between the non-physical concepts that you mentioned and the non-significant concepts I have been referencing.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Well yes, I agree there is an obvious difference, the one having a location you can visit, and the others being ONLY concepts. I was only pointing out the made up nature of the border, and the conceptual nature of it, that bore no importance or any material characteristics that would be noticed by a non-human entity. And although you and I know one can not visit heaven or hell, even us non-believers can reference them and know what they symbolize to others, and perhaps even have a rough idea of what they symbolize to us.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

And this is the problem! The fact that we can seemingly conceptualize things that have no real significance, so they seem real but when you dig deeper they, as concepts, dissolve.

When I say "characteristics" I don't mean strictly material in the colloquial sense. Charge is a characteristic, as ethereal as it may seem. But the problem is, concepts such as the ones I have referenced throughout the thread have no such characteristics at all.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

But they do have characteristics, when viewed from a human standpoint. This is my point. We as humans feel pain, feel pleasure. Know good, know evil. Feel good when we complete things, learn things, win at things, and feel bad when we fail, and forget and lose.

These things have mechanisms by which they operate, synapses are firing, chemicals are being created and exchanged, signals are flowing, it is all real, measurable stuff. Even our dreams, are real, in this way.

Any of it. All of it. Only makes sense to us, from our perspective. The position of the quarks, and their spin, is not the important thing. Not the best thing. Not the ultimate thing.

We can not experience the world from a non-human viewpoint. The human viewpoint is the only one we have.

You speak as if there is something more real, more true, more valuable than human experience. A reality that you can know, independent of human consciousness.

I assure you, you cannot know anything, without you doing the knowing.

We are stuck with us.

Did you ever notice, that everywhere you go, there you are?

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

Apr 13, 2010 4:31:30 GMT tar said:

Kyrisch,

But they do have characteristics, when viewed from a human standpoint.

No, they seem to have characteristics, but are still markedly different from real things like national borders and objects.

They do not have characteristics in the same way. They have imaginary characteristics. Though I understand why people identify with the ideas, you seem to have an extremist humanist approach. If one person (who, by all common standards) is completely delusional, are his ravings and ramblings as valuable towards statements of reality as someone who is sane?

Just because people identify with an idea, does not mean that ideas can be shown to be more or less significant than others. And in a society of somewhat rational creatures, cognitively significant ideas tend to be more valued than concepts that have no bearing on accepted reality.