I don't need to be saved.

[karlhenning]

As I read your post, Alan, it isn't so much that I thought about regarding a painting of a landscape, as that I found myself suffused with the indefinable feelings I well remember on viewing inspiring landscapes (paintings, again I mean). I sat in consideration of this invocation of experience, and I thought, This post should by rights be in The Shed.

But then, as The Shed contains all things — it already is.

[Elgarian]

As I read your post, Alan, it isn't so much that I thought about regarding a painting of a landscape, as that I found myself suffused with the indefinable feelings I well remember on viewing inspiring landscapes (paintings, again I mean). I sat in consideration of this invocation of experience, and I thought, This post should by rights be in The Shed.

But then, as The Shed contains all things — it already is.

Well of course I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek there, Karl, in amused response to an earlier post. But you're right. It is an issue for the Shed, to be sure, though there are those who would say we confuse Sheddistics with woodwork.

[Guido]

That's very interesting Elgarian - art has the power to do that and is one of its greatest beauties. To be able to represent the world more truthfully than we normally percieve it is an astonishing feat that few artists fully achieve.

Don't know what you're getting at with the brain chemistry bit... Why would this be inexplicable naturalistically?

[Guido]

haha,...maybe you would accept me as a Christian because I say so, but I would be quite suspicious of anyone like me!! I feel much more hypocritical, than saved, most of the time. I certainly can't live up to my own standards.

Christianity, not Churchianty, is esoteric and exoteric, indeed, but it would be nothing without Power.

Phew!

[Florestan]

Now, frankly and friendly Dave --- why any little personal facebook's annoyance should make its way here on GMG is beyond me. As Pascal once put it, I wouldn't have paid the least attention had you not brought it to my knowledge.  .

[Florestan]

     I can't imagine beliefs being passed around like viruses. It takes me a long time and study to decide whether I think any novel proposition is true. I imagine that I'm normal in this way, so belief as it's used here must refer to something else. It does. What people mean when they adopt therapeutic beliefs is that it's good to believe them, not that they do. Thinking a belief is good puts you on the side of those you imagine really believe what you think is good to believe, and this seems to be the point.

     But maybe the believers are only saying they believe x, maybe they're doing what you're doing, "trying" to believe. Since one normally scales belief to evidence and plausibility it appears that this beliefism doesn't actually involve belief in the ordinary sense at all, just a process of proclaiming and taking sides. That does all the work that real belief does except that highly optional part about thinking what you believe is true.

     So I take it with a grain of salt when I hear that someone believes something. If it's really a case of thinking something true that will make itself evident. If not, if it's just a belief that too will become evident, largely by a lack of curiosity about how such a divergent belief is supported, and by obviously bogus rationales about "other ways of knowing" that never actually show up. This belief thing is really pretty transparent when you think about it. Just think of how easy it is to expose the flaws in a religion you don't "believe", and how hard it is to do so for your own.

     It occurs to me that while implausible beliefs aren't necessary to form stable social groups that offer the advantages that religions do, there may be good reasons to include them. Beliefs that are hard to accept increase the social distance of a group from society at large, fostering group cohesion and solidarity. This may also form part of the rationale for religious "budding". Then there's the "antler theory" of W.D. Hamilton and others, but that's a real stretch.

As usual, ranting is your middle name. 

[Elgarian]

That's very interesting Elgarian - art has the power to do that and is one of its greatest beauties. To be able to represent the world more truthfully than we normally percieve it is an astonishing feat that few artists fully achieve.

Don't know what you're getting at with the brain chemistry bit... Why would this be inexplicable naturalistically?

I was being too tongue-in-cheek for my own good, and am now in the embarrassing position of having to explain myself - which I'm not sure I'm able to do satisfactorily. What I was getting at was that one looks for the appropriate answer for the appropriate question. So when Ernie raises the issue of whether we explain the lump on a leg in terms of a bite by an insect or a god, we all know what the appropriate answer is, and which one looks rather silly. What struck me was that we can make anything look silly by asking the wrong questions about it.

So I tried to reverse the process, and posed a similar fake question about the insight we feel we get when we're amazed by a Cezanne landscape. What fascinates us at such a moment is the insight we're getting, and an answer in terms of brain chemistry is (in this instance) the inappropriate one. (It's like someone asking a question about London, and being shown a signpost pointing to it. The study of signposts may be a good and noble thing, but it's no use to the guy who wants to know about London).

But it was just too difficult to make the point clearly, and look at the tangle I've got myself into now. So I think I'll disown my own post. I might even disown this one as well, now I've just re-read it and seen how convoluted it's become!

(Not to mention the fact that it's 5 billion light years off topic.


... or is it?)

[drogulus]

     I don't see the point of confusing aesthetic appreciation with truth concepts. You can respond to art without resort to confusing statements about truth. You can even indulge a little bit of this and talk about poetic truth without harm so long as you keep your meanings straight. I don't have the problem you think I have. If your beliefs are poetically "true" then it looks like you've solved the problem on my terms (there's true and "true"). The problem is when you use one meaning of true where another is appropriate.

     What makes sense in a way about how a painting makes you feel is not the same as what exists. You actually know this, you just find it inconvenient to acknowledge that the truth about how x makes you feel and the truth about the existence of x are not the same. Unicorns make me feel groovy. That's true, literally (sorry to be blunt about it but that's what's required evidently). In addition there are no unicorns, also a true statement. What I don't countenance is talk about how something making you feel some way used as an argument for the existence of a supposed cause in the absence of good reasons to think the cause exists, and an appeal to ones aesthetic sensitivities doesn't help. Unicorn grooviness does not lead inexorably to unicorn existence.

[Elgarian]

I won't persevere with this because I began the confusion in the first place with a muddled post, and followed it with a second. But I do need to make it clear that I'm talking about perception, not aesthetics*; and insight, not grooviness. The words you use are not my words. To imply that they're the same seems a very strange reduction in the acknowledged range of our responses to the world. But I suppose that's where scientism leads, and as we learned some time ago, there's no possibility of one of us understanding the other.

*I admit that I damaged my case in an earlier post by talking about 'feeling', but that was loose talking and I wish now I'd written it differently.

[drogulus]

     It wouldn't surprise me if many believers followed the aesthetic model by bracketing belief-based truths (a different kind of truth) in a manner that suggests that when unbelief is too discomfiting to be embraced a form of quasi-belief can come to the rescue. But I still see this as professing something and believing something else. Just because you think it's good to believe something doesn't mean that you do.
   
     It's a mistake to think that someone like me who observes strict truth conditions doesn't appreciate beauty or feelings in the same way as one who talks loosely about truth for whatever strikes them as good. The evidence is that while feelings and beauty are explained differently they are felt the same way, though it shouldn't be possible to prove it.

     

I won't persevere with this because I began the confusion in the first place with a muddled post, and followed it with a second. But I do need to make it clear that I'm talking about perception, not aesthetics*; and insight, not grooviness. The words you use are not my words. To imply that they're the same seems a very strange reduction in the acknowledged range of our responses to the world. But I suppose that's where scientism leads, and as we learned some time ago, there's no possibility of one of us understanding the other.

*I admit that I damaged my case in an earlier post by talking about 'feeling', but that was loose talking and I wish now I'd written it differently.

     No, the myth of scientism doesn't help. There is no range problem. Dawkins wrote a book about this common error, Unweaving the Rainbow, in which he takes issue with the idea that knowledge kills beauty.

     I'm not having any problem understanding what you say. And "grooviness" is an example and not, as you would have it, an indication of the vast gulf between us.

     Oohh, I got one!

     So, the gist of it is that believers do not feel more deeply, they think more shallowly. You can do both, you know (think & feel, that is).

[Elgarian]

I'm not having any problem understanding what you say.

From where I stand, that statement is part of the illusion created by the scientism that you say is a myth. I'll drop out at this point.

[bwv 1080]

   

     It occurs to me that while implausible beliefs aren't necessary to form stable social groups that offer the advantages that religions do, there may be good reasons to include them. Beliefs that are hard to accept increase the social distance of a group from society at large, fostering group cohesion and solidarity. This may also form part of the rationale for religious "budding". Then there's the "antler theory" of W.D. Hamilton and others, but that's a real stretch.

The costly signalling model is the best in this regard - in older societies it was engaging in expensive sacrifices & rituals, now it suffices to signal one's allegiance and status to the group  believing something completely idiotic like YEC or Xenu

[drogulus]

That's very interesting Elgarian - art has the power to do that and is one of its greatest beauties. To be able to represent the world more truthfully than we normally percieve it is an astonishing feat that few artists fully achieve.

Don't know what you're getting at with the brain chemistry bit... Why would this be inexplicable naturalistically?

     Guido, you're using the word truth in exactly the way I described, in a second sense. Let's not confuse them, and especially let's not deliberately confuse them for the purpose of an argument. There are truths about feelings, but that does not mean that feelings tell truths about the world. Feelings don't make anything true on their own authority beyond the truth of how they feel. If you want to know if they really say something true about the world you need to know about the world in some other way. And, of course, you do, which explains how you know that some feelings can mislead you. They can make you believe things that are not true. If you accept that, then you understand my argument is merely an extension of common sense, only more violent.

[david johnson]

sigh...my comrades here should realize that it isn't the believers who are in the little cell, even when they are tossed into one for believing.

dj

[karlhenning]

I was being too tongue-in-cheek for my own good . . . .

Hey, I enjoyed your post.

[karlhenning]

I know of no one else who is entertaining in quite the way that Ernie is.

[drogulus]

From where I stand, that statement is part of the illusion created by the scientism that you say is a myth. I'll drop out at this point.

     It doesn't sound like it's worth it for you. I don't know why you bother.

     Look, if what you say is true then it needs to be said in a way that makes it clear how it's true. That's why esoteric ideas of truth have no significance. They can only be communicated by a process of refusing to examine the contents.

     Example: Desi loves Rock, and Lucy loves Rock, so they agree. They also believe in esoteric truth, that you can agree about unknowns in a significant way. So Desi can love Rock Music, Lucy can love Rock Hudson, and together they can pray at the Church of Rock. What do they agree on? They believe they agree that they love Rock, and that no meaning or truth conditions needs to be attached to their belief. One might think it would be cruel to disturb this happy complacency. Maybe so, but sometimes you have to, even if only to prevent the teaching of Rockism in the schools. Not that I have anything against any of the multiple Rocks in themselves, it's just that I oppose the tawdry thinking that says it doesn't matter what Rock is. How do you know that you believe if you don't know what you believe?

[drogulus]

sigh...my comrades here should realize that it isn't the believers who are in the little cell, even when they are tossed into one for believing.

dj

     Asking you to explain what you mean, and holding you responsible for that meaning, is not putting you in jail.

     Any more nonresponse responses? Why not try answering my view by saying, for example, that I'm wrong, that feelings do make things believed in appear, that you can know what isn't known by using alternative methods to be named later, or never?

     Then you can explain how this works. See, no tricks, just normal discussion. All you have to do to make your ideas clear to me is to make them clear to you. Or do you think your ideas will seem more true if they aren't explained? I wonder why that would be? Hmmmmm?

[drogulus]

   

The costly signalling model is the best in this regard - in older societies it was engaging in expensive sacrifices & rituals, now it suffices to signal one's allegiance and status to the group  believing something completely idiotic like YEC or Xenu

     We should be cautious about applying the antler theory here since it's a sexual selection theory. Then there's the problem of group selection. The real question is why religions are founded on unverifiable propositions, often ludicrously unlikely ones. I don't think this is just a case of poor cognition. It looks like a misfire with an adaptive benefit that outweighs any disadvantage, especially when you see that cognitive disadvantage can be cordoned off as in the case of compatibilists like Frances Collins. You can pursue knowledge while simultaneously indulging beliefs. Some subconscious brain function must be able to police the views so one doesn't disable the other. You may not know what's true but something in your head does! For some reason this makes me happy. All those believers are unaware that at the behavioral level they have a "tell" a mile wide!

[bwv 1080]

   
     We should be cautious about applying the antler theory here since it's a sexual selection theory. Then there's the problem of group selection. The real question is why religions are founded on unverifiable propositions, often ludicrously unlikely ones. I don't think this is just a case of poor cognition. It looks like a misfire with an adaptive benefit that outweighs any disadvantage, especially when you see that cognitive disadvantage can be cordoned off as in the case of compatibilists like Frances Collins. You can pursue knowledge while simultaneously indulging beliefs. Some subconscious brain function must be able to police the views so one doesn't disable the other. You may not know what's true but something in your head does! For some reason this makes me happy. All those believers are unaware that at the behavioral level they have a "tell" a mile wide!

there is an established, albeit controversial costly signaling theory of religion.  Works very well in explaining the cultural advantages.  It is not a sexual selection strategy (at least not directly).  Take Islam, which came about in an area of constant tribal warfare.  The religion allowed the constuction of larger social groups than tribal kin groups, which conferred an advantage as the larger groups had greater military force.  However to eliminate free riders, adherents had to do several costly behaviors such as give up alcohol and pray 5 times a day.