On 01/08/2015 10:47 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Victoria writes: > > "So any belief other than one's own is a delusion?" > > Subjective experience must run counter to objective evidence to get this > label. A belief that can be represented by a set of features, understandable > by independent observers in a repeatable way is not a delusion. If someone > wants to bind a name like Seraphim to such a set of features, they may, > provided the other observers agree that name is not confused with other > useful names. But if no features are described in detail, there is no way > to tabulate evidence or cross-check the tabulations. Faith creates names > for things, and constraints amongst things which either can't be grounded in > evidence or must endure being mistaken. One way to endure is by recruiting > more people to have affinity for those ungrounded names and constraints.
Well, Tory makes a good point, though, about the ability of our methods (scientific or not) to establish any sort of objectivity. Sure, faith (and it's kin) is one of the most egregious and specious of the pseudo-objective centroids, gathering lots of people who talk about faith as if it's a real thing, but never being able to actually describe what it means, what it does, how it works, etc. But there are plenty of other concepts, even in science, that are guilty ... not just as guilty, perhaps, but guilty still. I tend to think evolutionary selection is one of them. All of us who believe in it can describe what we think happens and, each of us has an onion-like description. Our outer layers all agree fairly well (much like the faithful). But as you peel each onion, the inner layers can look different from one selection believer to another. Worse yet, amongst the lay population who _say_ they believe in evolution, their onion is really more of a hollow spheroid, with a flimsy outer layer alone. And one way for believers in selection to endure is to recruit more people by giving them hollow spheroids to play with. -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella Can't stand I wouldn't go there ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
