Really great post! You are completely right on all accounts. Except I really am not a post-modernist, I just agree with some of their ideas, especially conceptions of power as you have pointed out.
I am particularly impressed with Bullet point # 2, because not only does it show an understanding of the basis of my ideas, but it also accurately points out irrationality in my actions given the theories I assert.
I would then ask you if understand this aspect of communities including your own, would you call this rational? It is no excuse, but I think coming...
Sorry I was again assuming a common basis of knowledge. Carbon emissions would be environmental damage (damaging to the biosphere as a whole). Ecological damages more commonly refers to damages to ecosystems (smaller communities within the biosphere). When people talk about ecological damages they are primarily talking about invasive species. Invasive species are plants, animal, bacteria, and fungi that have been artificially transported from one ecosystem to another and have no natural predator within it. Huge portions of American forest are being eradica...
I felt the major point of this article, "How to lose an argument," was that accepting that your beliefs, identity, and personal chocies are wrong is pyschologically damaging, and that most people will opt to deny wrongness to the bitter end rather than accept it. the author suggest that if you truly want to change people's opinions and not just boost yoru own ego, then it is more cost-effective to provide the oppostion with an exit that does not result with the individual having to bear the pyschological trauma of being wrong.
If you except the a...
My example wasn't meant to be a strawman, but simply an illustration of my point that human thoughts and behaviors are predictable.
I did not say your example was a strawman, my point was that it was reductionist. Determining the general color of the sky or whether or not things will fall is predicting human thoughts and behaviors many degrees simpler than what I am talking about. That is like if I were to say that multiplication is easy, so math must be easy.
...I am fairly certain I personally can predict what an average American believes regarding th
Facts of the first kind are the overwhelmingly more numerous than facts of the second kind. Facts of the second kind are more important to human life. I agree with you that this community underestimates the proportion of facts of the second kind, which are not universalizable the way facts of the first kind are. But you weaken the case for post-modern analysis by asserting that anything close to a majority of facts are socially determined.
I was never trying to argue that the majority of facts are socially determined. I was arguing that the majority of f...
Ok but then I do not understand how eliminating God or theism serves this purpose. I completely agree that there are destructive aspects of both these concepts, but you all seem unwilling to accept that they also play a pivitol social role. That was my original point in relation to the author of this essay. Rather than convincing people that it is ok that there is no God, accept the fact that "God" is an important social institution and begin to work to rewrite "God" rationally.
Can you say more about how you determined that "rewriting God" is a more cost-effective strategy for achieving our goals than convincing people that it is OK that there is no God?
You seem very confident of that, but thus far I've only seen you using debate tactics in an attempt to convince others of it, with no discussion of how you came to believe it yourself, or how you've tested it in the world. The net effect is that you sound more like you're engaging in apologetics than in a communal attempt to discern truth.
For my own part, I have no horse...
... you conviently do not address some of the examples I provide of the negatives of flight. I am not against either techology or science in moderation, which I do not think exists in the current state of things.
This is, at best, an argument against technology, but not against science.
No, it is an argument against the ideology that endless minipulation/dominance of the material world is purely benefical. Science is as much an attempt to dominate/minpulate reality as technological development.
My argument is to exist socially is not always alligned with what is nessecary for natural health/survival/happiness, and yet at the same time is nessecary.
We exist in a society where the majority of jobs demand us to remain seated and immobile for the better part of the day. That is incredibly unhealthy. It is also bad for intellectual productivity. It is illogical, and yet for a lot of people it is required.
...I don't understand. Much of our self-identity is symbolic and imaginary. By self-created reality do you mean that our local reality is heavily influenced by us? That our beliefs filter our experiences somewhat? Or that we literally create our own reality? If it's the last one, the standard response is this: There is a process that generates predictions and a process that generates experiences, they don't always match up, so we call the former "beliefs" and the latter "reality". See the map and territory sequence. If that's not what you
I agree that "learning the truth and winning at your goals" should be the ideal. But I also believe the following
-Humans are symbolic creatures: Meaning that to some extent we exist in self-created realities that do not follow a predictable or always logical order. -Humans are social creatures meaning that not only is human survival is completely dependent on the ability to maintain coexistence with other people, but individual happiness and identity is dependent on social networks.
Before I continue I would like to know what you and anyone else thinks about these two statements.
You are correct that their are traditional bodies of knowledge that are not religious, but my point was never that religion is the sole creator of knowledge. That said, it was a pretty big one. If you think the written laws of the romans or the Chinese did not represent their religious beliefs you are crazy.
If is funny you call my position Eurocentric. I am trying to use western examples as much as I possibly can to relate to the audience of this blog. But if you want to talk about China, the creation of a Chinese civilization is directly related to their...
Sure some information is. But you cannot deny that there is a huge body of information we accept to be truth soley based on the authority that provides it. For example, I could know using my senses that either the sun or the earth moves because I can see a change in the position of the sun as the day goes on. But it is impossible for me, or any other person, to know just from my sensory experience that the earth revolves around the sun (given the practical constraints of my life).
How do I know the earth revolves around the sun? I trust a network of peopl...
Look I am not trying to disagree with the scientific method. It is incredibly powerful and beneficial methodology for producing knowledge. What I am saying is
1-that as an institution and a belief-sysetm "science" does not live up to the scientific method. 2- That it is impossible to do so given what we have learned about the human condition.
Yes! Thomas Kuhn is a brilliant writer and his theory is powerful. But let me ask you what you think he is saying in that book? I am asking because I feel that we draw different conclusions from it.
Have you read Structure of Scientific Revolutions? Many of us have and find it very interesting. But even if you apply post-modern methods to the scientific process, you still need to explain why science can predict which planes will fly and which will not.<
The post-modern question to science is not about whether or not science can predict reality. The question is whether or not science is produced scientifically. Or to put it another way, can science be separated from power and discourse?
Phenomenological knowledge- is knowledge that you actively perceive Political knowledge- is knowledge that is accepted due to its relation to some structure of power (parents, church, country, God, etc)
All of those tools are easy to verify.<
They are easy for you to verify because you have the tools to verify them. Whether it is due to economic, motivational, or biological reasons, not everyone has the tools to verify knowledge. You see it as easy because we are talking about a sphere of knowledge you are well-endowed in.
Yes. I am sorry I did not clarify that. For me it is assumed that legitimized knowledge includes self-legitmized knowledge because the self is clearly a major authority in a person's life.
I am writing too fast and not taking into account that you all do not have a background in sociology or anthropology.
Note I said a "huge portion of knowledge." There is sensory knowledge as you have pointed out, but my point was that there are also institutions and individuals that produce knowledge outside of your sensor experience that you readily accept. When you read an academic paper you do not repeat all the experiements contained within it and its review of the literature. It would be inefficent. You accept because it is in an academic journal or because person X tells you it that it is reliable and true.
But to some extent even sensory knowledge is filtered through the institution of langauge.
Well think about it. How many facts do you believe because you have preformed the experiments yourself, and how many do you believe because scientists or scientific publications have told you to believe them? How many things do you believe because a person you trust tells you? We look down on hearsay, but in reality a huge portion of knowledge is hearsay. It is just hearsay that has been legitimized by power.
Knowledge is legitmized information whether you except it or not. It would be an enormous limit on what peopel could know if they would have to experience everything themselves.
Christianity was an just an example. The theory I am suggesting is that any global religion has existed for this long because it contains attributes beneficial to human survival ( benefits to human survival are not limited to the promotion of literacy; though I would bet that is a key attribute). I used Christianity as an example because that appears to be the majority of this websites background. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism are not inferior to Christianity. Confucianism for example strongly promotes literacy as well, one could argue even more than...
Religion is the original norm for producing knowledge whether you like it or not. I am not saying it was a good method, but you cannot deny that it is embryologically the basis of knowledge and knowledge production. The first scholars were theologians and aristocrates, the first colleges were religous institutions. I am not saying that it is a correct methodology, but it is our history.
Early doctors healed people in ways we no longer condone, but we cannot deny the fact that they were the forefathers of modern medical knowledge.
You are correct that rhetoric can be misused. It should be complemented by facts. My point is that just because rhetoric can be used to convince people of falsehoods does not prove that truth is not equally dependent on rhetoric to become normative in people's minds.
People are not born judging information by its verisimilitude. Empirical fact as a criteria for knowledge must be taught. I am not saying it is a bad thing to teach people (it is really good), what I am saying is that judging information by fact has to be seen as highly technical knowledge, n...
I probably did mis the humor I am really gullible, but you missed my point about the morality of the universe.
by transcendental I meant a value dealing with issues of the meaning of life. Anytime you talk about what is the purpose of life, what should people do, what is moral, is the universe moral, whether you are talking about a god or a godless universe, it is a transcendental question. There is a misconception on this blog that transcendental means christian or God.
I am not a theist. I am a transatheist.
The author of the article is arguing that a b...
I never really thought of my posts as debates. I write them during my break at work as fast as possible. I would call them brainstorms more than anything. I can see how that makes understanding what I am saying complicated. I will try to be more considerate from this point on.
-Rhetoric is orthogonal to truth. I like truth. While rhetorical knowledge is not a valid way to discover truth about the true nature of reality, it does reflect truth about the nature of human psychology. There is truth about the human condition. The idea I am trying to convey is...
Don't you think it would be easy to say your point, or the problem that you have with my point than cryptically telling me I am missing something. You ever think it is you who are missing something you are just not being open enough to let me figure out what it is. Same to the other 4 silent people.
In my opinion the Karma system is really stupid if you just criticize someone's idea without stating what it is your criticizing or even who you are.
This is a wonderful post, and it is a personal problem I strongly sympathize with. Here are my thoughts; I hope they are of some use.
You see physics and rationalism as right, but at the same time you value community (which is also right seeing as humans are social creatures who demand healthy relationships). This is an ethical ... (read more)