---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote :
Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! M: We all run a system for this consciously or unconsciously. Whatever it is we share a common human tendency to believe that our system is a better one than it actually is. 2. what do we mean by knowing? Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. M: This is too abstract if we remove it from the context. Epistemology or the system to evaluate how we can be confident about our knowledge is context dependent. Good thinking skills are different when dealing with material things or more abstract things but they can exist in each area in more or less degrees. S: Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the "truth" of the song. M: I think for many arts we do this and deduce the authenticity of the lyrics from matching it to our experience. That is why so many lyrics are formulated out of a the hypnosis language or poetry playbook so more people can relate to them. Some lyrics are purposely individual so that you take a ride into the story. It can still feel true or false to us but we give more leeway to the story lyrics. It has to be consistent for the created character. Here are example from my songs: Abstract The river of missing you , it flows a long long way It starts the day you left me, wont end till judgement day And: Story: Eating hash browns in a diner under a broken neon sign, waitress tries to turn my table, but I just take my time She wont refill my coffee so my cup is gett'n cold Catch my reflection in the window, I sure am looking old And combining both: Well worn at he edges, kinda torn at the seams, try'n to find our way together, where did we lose our dreams She left her head shape in her pillow, blankets falling off the bed, My mind can't stop repeating the last words that she said. All three are my attempts to either express feelings I have had authentically or characters that are genuine enough that you might recognize yourself or someone you know in the story. You add the details from your own life and if I have succeeded you say: I know that guy, or I AM that person. The first offers the least conflicting details so filling in the details is all on you. The second is probably not you, but if I have made the character compelling you wonder what comes next. Is he going to stiff her on the tip or give her an inappropriately big one? What kind of guy is this, we don't know yet. The third is a dance between you filling in your own details in parts and being able to be separate from it all to see another person's life as a fly on the wall. Some of the words might connect with your personal experience. Have you had a relationship that was "well worn at the edges, kind of torn at the seams?" So you might buy into the story on a more personal level until it goes in a direction you can't relate to personally. It is all a work in progress, songwriting is very hard given our exposure to fabulous songwriters who are geniuses at this. I am going as far as I can with what I have to work with. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by "worthwhile reality"? Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? M: I was using that as an evaluation of what we pay attention to. I believe there is a LOT of reality that is not worth focusing on and that is up to us. I also believe that society is judging the value of the humanities and the arts badly these days and not paying attention to some worthwhile realities. It is undervaluing the importance of how human's communicate through stories: visual, linguistic and sensory-moter. We are forgetting how we evolved the brain we have through multi-sensory manipulatives and are making some really unwise decisions in education because of it. Now that I have clarified what I meant would you care to share (pun intended) your perspective? Thanks for the invitation to express! On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of "how could we know?" Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: "Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material." M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been "We have it all figured out already" over "Let's find out." The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <inmadison@...> wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual) to explain stuff like value, and the moment by moment appreciation of an otherwise brutish world.
