Does Music Inspire Spirituality with Listeners?

[jochanaan]

...Or, you could say that not everything can be explained under materialism, but that everything that is explained has been explained consistent with the extensible frameworks materialism provides...

You could say that--but is it true?

[drogulus]

    jochanaan, interesting posts. I have to go to work now. I'll get back to these later.

[jochanaan]

    jochanaan, interesting posts. I have to go to work now. I'll get back to these later.

Thanks for taking the time to read them.

[drogulus]

Supposing for discussion's sake that I have had an experience that I believe touched God or the spirit world (which may be equivalent to a pure-energy state but probably isn't), I am saying that a true skeptic must be willing to consider the possibility that I really have done so.  Making the assumption that my experience has a materialistic basis will inevitably affect how you hear what I'm really saying, and so does not reflect the mindset of a true skeptic, for such people are willing to consider positive as well as negative possibilities, as well as the distinct possibility that we all have more to learn.

    jochanaan, I think this is the part I most want to respond to. For discussion's sake, that is.  

    In an ideal world there would be as few presuppositions as possible or even none at all. An ideal world would provide us with brains so fast and reliable that they could decide correctly on a case by case basis which reports of experience (ones own or someone elses) to take literally as factual accounts and which require reinterpretation as accounts of experience that may not provide factual information you could take to the bank. I generally prefer fewer rather than more presuppositions (with none everyone would be thinking "outside the box" because there would be no box). As I've made clear, too many beliefs gum up the works, and some have a nasty habit of turning the believer into a vessal for their propagation without feeling obliged to inform the vessal of the actual contents: I believe, but I don't know what. *

    Maybe you are the exception to the general rule that reports of being touched by God or the spirit world are best seem as metaphorical attempts to define experience that is otherwise indefinable, and a literal translation is inappropriate because it was either not part of the speakers meaning or that no real state of affairs could ever be seen to conform to it. This presupposition could be wrong, but has it ever been shown to be? Obviously not. Whatever the real nature of your experience or mine (where I would be unlikely to use such language, I presuppose ), I think it's good policy to go with this interpretation until some dramatic and earth-shaking event intervenes.

    _{* Computers do this occasionally. I hate that!}

[drogulus]

    

...Or, you could say that not everything can be explained under materialism, but that everything that is explained has been explained consistent with the extensible frameworks materialism provides...

   

You could say that--but is it true?

    I think so. Success can't mean anything other than verification, and verification is required under materialism (to the extent it's possible) and deplored and disparaged under "other ways of knowing".

    If there's another way of knowing something than why is verification poison to it? If there's another way of knowing why is verification irrelevant to it?

    If you have an intuition that you believe is true when do you know it really is? When something outside that intuition, like a fact in the world, tells you so. IOW, when it's verified. And verification is fused completely with the materialist operations everyone uses, whatever they choose to call what they're doing. There may be a difference between a metaphysical materialist like me and an operational materialist like almost everyone else but it's a paper thin one when you get down to cases.

    As Dawkins says: "We are all materialists at 30,000 feet."

    True? Maybe not. Some people really are out to lunch on a gargantuan level. But what about the pilots?

[jochanaan]

Thanks for those replies, drogulus.  I suspect, though, that we're getting far enough from both the original topic and Good Music that we'd better continue in The Diner, if we do. Still, I doubt either of us is going to convert the other at this point.