Faith and Reason: Incompatible or ????

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I understand what you're saying that in an ultimate philosophical sense that positivism is dead.  But we should acknowledge that its not dead for the hard sciences, and in that sense I wonder why you continue to emphasize that positivism is dead, when it works really well from a practical application perspective in just about everything we do. 

It seems to me that this philosophical thought exercise shouldn't be used to critique physics and math.  Why are you using it as a criticism of the hard sciences?  

I just lost a lengthy post by hitting the wrong tab

I will give you a distilled version and we can discuss it farther if you want.

You make two assertions or points here:  1

Quote

I understand what you're saying that in an ultimate philosophical sense that positivism is dead.

Yep "it's dead in an ultimate philosophical sense"

Science still works.  Plumbing still works.  Geology still works.  Medicine still works.  Physics still works.

We can do things like send rockets to Mars and land rovers and discover all kinds of true stuff.  We can cure innumerable diseases and I have personally benefited numerous times.  I would be dead if it were not for modern medicine.

But is it the "ultimate philosophical truth"?   Of course not!!  You say so yourself!!

Assertion 2:

Quote

It seems to me that this philosophical thought exercise shouldn't be used to critique physics and math.  Why are you using it as a criticism of the hard sciences?  

I never did that!

All I did is say that science is not "ultimate truth" which is exactly what you just said yourself!

Section 93

Quote

 

29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

 

Rorty video:

"We know that statements can be true with or without being justified but there are no descriptions that come closer to reality than others, we know what truth is we just cannot define it.  There are no facts only interpretations"

Truth exists in spheres that work.  But as you your self say- and Rorty above says, and I say with you-" in an ultimate philosophical sense that positivism is dead."

I was always speaking that way and never deprecating science at all except as not being "ultimate truth"

Hawking was great at physics- arguably the best ever, I don't know, but as far as ultimate truth,  he had nothing to say. He was stuck in his positivist sphere and never- as far as I know- got out of it.

In fact "ultimate truth" is unspeakable and can only be experienced directly.  As Rorty says, it is "ineffable" 

[mfbukowski]

11 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I understand what you're saying that in an ultimate philosophical sense that positivism is dead.  But we should acknowledge that its not dead for the hard sciences, and in that sense I wonder why you continue to emphasize that positivism is dead, when it works really well from a practical application perspective in just about everything we do. 

It seems to me that this philosophical thought exercise shouldn't be used to critique physics and math.  Why are you using it as a criticism of the hard sciences?  

I just found a website which is fantastic and of course sets out the points I have been trying to help you understand

The articles are short one pagers- I know you do not like to read my references but these won't take long.

Both of this speak of famous physicists on religion and their views- which are also mine since I learned from these guys.  You ask me why I take on the role of "teacher" and I do that because I have been studying this stuff for 50 years and I know you have not been.  I first encountered these ideas around 1967 and have been studying it ever since.  We are talking Einstein and Neils Bohr here, with a dash of Heisenberg.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/02/01/niels-bohr-science-religion/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rd23Vd0zkWAThOqDuhYLz0-6SWKXk6g1AcCVClqIJ18/edit#

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/15/sam-harris-waking-up-spirituality/

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

On 8/31/2018 at 3:29 PM, hope_for_things said:

Help me out then here, you're much better at discussing these things with MFB than I am.  He gets me all twisted around in my thinking sometimes (my fault due to my puny brain).  I'm trying to follow a consistent line of reasoning, but its hard for me to keep everything straight.  Do you have any thoughts on this matter, I value your perspective as well.  

I'm not sure I'd say physics is positivism. Positivism unarguably sought to apply what it thought was going on in the hard sciences to more general questions of meaningfulness and epistemology. But that seems a different matter. Certainly one can be a physicist without being a positivist. I'm certainly not a positivist even though my background is physics. If anything I'd say the typical physicist is philosophically naive and incoherently switches between instrumentalism, empiricism, and realism in how they view scientific knowledge. So I'm a bit loath to make a physics/positivism comparison. In particular Hawkings and several other writers of popularized physics literature also tend to be fairly philosophically naive. Among those who are better versed and even read philosophy of science I'm not sure the positivism issue comes up that often.

As I said though, I'm not entirely sure what's being argued. Unless we clarify what we mean by reason and faith the question is pretty meaningless. Both terms are pretty ambiguous. As I typically use the terms there's no conflict at all. Indeed I'd go so far as to say real faith requires reason. 

Getting back to whether positivism is dead, again I think we have to ask what we mean by that. It seems like things are being thrown around without being clear what it is we're talking about. Certainly very few people self-identify as positivists today. There are various reasons for that. One can't deny the role of philosophical fads in that death. Overall though I think two main arguments tend to be brought to bear. The first is that claims to be verified are theory laden. That is we don't verify particular claims singularly but against a web of various beliefs and theories. The second problem is that the verification criteria for truth in positivism was itself far too restrictive and unable to verify itself. Now contra to the popular view, the positivists themselves were quite aware of these issues. Most of the purported killers of positivism were anything but. I think the bigger issue is that people just looked at two main figures who came out of the positivist movement (Kuhn and Quine) and found their approaches far more productive than what was coming from the the main positivists grappling with these issues. 

But again, I'll just reiterate that it's completely unclear to me what the dispute even is in this thread.

My own view is that we shouldn't dismiss verification just because of the failures of the positivist movement. One just has to be careful not to make ones verificationism so narrow that the problems the positivists faced came up. By and large once you broaden it somewhat I think the problems disappear. I also think one then tends towards a kind of Peircean approach. C. J. Misak has a great book arguing just this. 

Edited September 5, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

Brainpickings...love the name.  Post it in a month or so again please as my brain is picked dry and yet is mushy and will continue that way for at least a few more weeks as I do the eternal dance that is dealing with .Mom and her 'oh I am so thankful we didn't wait even a day longer, only wish I had thrown that panic attack that forced the move a year or two ago' move into assisted living (turns out she hid her memory issues much better than .I guessed and I can't take anything she says as 'reality' outside that moment I am in the same time and space with her...thankfully I know in actual reality we are all just sitting in a vat somewhere dreaming so it doesn't matter what I 'do').

Caffeine...great until it's bedtime and your eyelids won't close even if you superglue them....sigh.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Calm

[hope_for_things]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Yep "it's dead in an ultimate philosophical sense"

Science still works.  Plumbing still works.  Geology still works.  Medicine still works.  Physics still works.

We can do things like send rockets to Mars and land rovers and discover all kinds of true stuff.  We can cure innumerable diseases and I have personally benefited numerous times.  I would be dead if it were not for modern medicine.

But is it the "ultimate philosophical truth"?   Of course not!!  You say so yourself!!

I agree with this for the most part.  I know I used the words ultimate philosophical truth earlier for simplicity sake in the discussion to differentiate, but I would like to qualify that statement and say that I'm not confident that any of us are capable of proclaiming what exactly this ultimate philosophical truth is, or whether we'll ever be able to arrive at that kind of a position.  

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Quote

It seems to me that this philosophical thought exercise shouldn't be used to critique physics and math.  Why are you using it as a criticism of the hard sciences?  

I never did that!

All I did is say that science is not "ultimate truth" which is exactly what you just said yourself!

Section 93

If you aren't using philosophical thought to critique other disciplines of science then I must be continuing to misunderstand you.  That is exactly where it seems like you were critiquing what I posted about Hawking and theoretical physics.  Glenn's OP references this article from Dan P. and which essentially is that faith in religious ideas are reasonable because he thinks the evidence for natural causes isn't sufficient to overturn subjective religious evidence that he's using to weight against the scientific evidence. 

I quickly pointed out that this is a category error, and I continue to believe it is.  You can't compare physics to religious subjective theological positions.  This is a problem that religions have gotten themselves into throughout history.  Religious claims about the reality of things that can be tested and observed using the scientific method have an abysmal track record.  These claims continue to be proven false over and over and over again.  So religions typically shift the goal posts, after it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the old paradigms of the tradition don't square with natural explanations as given to us through science.  

This is why thinkers like Spong write books like "Why Christianity must Change or Die".  Biblical literalism and premodern superstition don't fit in a post modern world.  Yet he wants to hold onto the good aspects of Christianity and religion and find a new language to describe the God experience.  I agree that this is a possible path forward.  

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I was always speaking that way and never deprecating science at all except as not being "ultimate truth"

Hawking was great at physics- arguably the best ever, I don't know, but as far as ultimate truth,  he had nothing to say. He was stuck in his positivist sphere and never- as far as I know- got out of it.

In fact "ultimate truth" is unspeakable and can only be experienced directly.  As Rorty says, it is "ineffable" 

I think I can agree with this as you've written it, but I think you take this much further in practice than I think its reasonable to do.   It seems to me that you're calling personal religious experience true in the same sense that gravity is true.  And I would not call them the same kind of truth at all, or of equal validity arrived at through rational exploration.  I think you take the personal and subjective too far.  Its not ultimate truth either.  And besides all that the people promoting the use of religious evidence follow no systematic process with rigorous standards.  They don't even attempt to disprove anything in the way that science attempts to find answers to disprove an assumption, and replicate those results.  Religious experience is a thing entirely different, its non falsifiable and subjective.  

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure I'd say physics is positivism. Positivism unarguably sought to apply what it thought was going on in the hard sciences to more general questions of meaningfulness and epistemology. But that seems a different matter. Certainly one can be a physicist without being a positivist. I'm certainly not a positivist even though my background is physics. If anything I'd say the typical physicist is philosophically naive and incoherently switches between instrumentalism, empiricism, and realism in how they view scientific knowledge. So I'm a bit loath to make a physics/positivism comparison. In particular Hawkings and several other writers of popularized physics literature also tend to be fairly philosophically naive. Among those who are better versed and even read philosophy of science I'm not sure the positivism issue comes up that often.

As I said though, I'm not entirely sure what's being argued. Unless we clarify what we mean by reason and faith the question is pretty meaningless. Both terms are pretty ambiguous. As I typically use the terms there's no conflict at all. Indeed I'd go so far as to say real faith requires reason. 

Getting back to whether positivism is dead, again I think we have to ask what we mean by that. It seems like things are being thrown around without being clear what it is we're talking about. Certainly very few people self-identify as positivists today. There are various reasons for that. One can't deny the role of philosophical fads in that death. Overall though I think two main arguments tend to be brought to bear. The first is that claims to be verified are theory laden. That is we don't verify particular claims singularly but against a web of various beliefs and theories. The second problem is that the verification criteria for truth in positivism was itself far too restrictive and unable to verify itself. Now contra to the popular view, the positivists themselves were quite aware of these issues. Most of the purported killers of positivism were anything but. I think the bigger issue is that people just looked at two main figures who came out of the positivist movement (Kuhn and Quine) and found their approaches far more productive than what was coming from the the main positivists grappling with these issues. 

But again, I'll just reiterate that it's completely unclear to me what the dispute even is in this thread.

My own view is that we shouldn't dismiss verification just because of the failures of the positivist movement. One just has to be careful not to make ones verificationism so narrow that the problems the positivists faced came up. By and large once you broaden it somewhat I think the problems disappear. I also think one then tends towards a kind of Peircean approach. C. J. Misak has a great book arguing just this. 

Yep, works for me

But the definition of positivism is clear:  a proposition is MEANINGLESS if it cannot be empirically and objectively verified. That's easy to look up.  And we run in to yahoo atheists on this board all the time who are positivists.

As far as the definition, Wikipedia actually gets it pretty right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Edited September 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

17 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I agree with this for the most part.  I know I used the words ultimate philosophical truth earlier for simplicity sake in the discussion to differentiate, but I would like to qualify that statement and say that I'm not confident that any of us are capable of proclaiming what exactly this ultimate philosophical truth is, or whether we'll ever be able to arrive at that kind of a position.  

If you aren't using philosophical thought to critique other disciplines of science then I must be continuing to misunderstand you.  That is exactly where it seems like you were critiquing what I posted about Hawking and theoretical physics.  Glenn's OP references this article from Dan P. and which essentially is that faith in religious ideas are reasonable because he thinks the evidence for natural causes isn't sufficient to overturn subjective religious evidence that he's using to weight against the scientific evidence. 

I quickly pointed out that this is a category error, and I continue to believe it is.  You can't compare physics to religious subjective theological positions.  This is a problem that religions have gotten themselves into throughout history.  Religious claims about the reality of things that can be tested and observed using the scientific method have an abysmal track record.  These claims continue to be proven false over and over and over again.  So religions typically shift the goal posts, after it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the old paradigms of the tradition don't square with natural explanations as given to us through science.  

This is why thinkers like Spong write books like "Why Christianity must Change or Die".  Biblical literalism and premodern superstition don't fit in a post modern world.  Yet he wants to hold onto the good aspects of Christianity and religion and find a new language to describe the God experience.  I agree that this is a possible path forward.  

I think I can agree with this as you've written it, but I think you take this much further in practice than I think its reasonable to do.   It seems to me that you're calling personal religious experience true in the same sense that gravity is true.  And I would not call them the same kind of truth at all, or of equal validity arrived at through rational exploration.  I think you take the personal and subjective too far.  Its not ultimate truth either.  And besides all that the people promoting the use of religious evidence follow no systematic process with rigorous standards.  They don't even attempt to disprove anything in the way that science attempts to find answers to disprove an assumption, and replicate those results.  Religious experience is a thing entirely different, its non falsifiable and subjective.  

Einstein Heisenberg and Niels Bohr thought that you could use philosophy to criticize science, and understood the place of religion and the entire discussion. I have already referenced those articles.

You continually assume that I'm pulling this stuff out of my own head. I am not.

Dr. Peterson was explaining a single article by William James and did a wonderful job explaining a fairly complex issue. But it was a summary of James.

Your argument is with those figures not me. I also agree with Spong.

I personally think they got it right.

But no of course I did not come up with this stuff on my own. I also suggest more study on category errors. They are based on semantic errors not ontological categories.

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

34 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

But the definition of positivism is clear:  a proposition is MEANINGLESS if it cannot be empirically and objectively verified. That's easy to look up.  And we run in to yahoo atheists on this board all the time who are positivists.

Again though unless one is clear what verification entails, that isn't too helpful a statement. 

[hope_for_things]

11 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Both of this speak of famous physicists on religion and their views- which are also mine since I learned from these guys.  You ask me why I take on the role of "teacher" and I do that because I have been studying this stuff for 50 years and I know you have not been.  I first encountered these ideas around 1967 and have been studying it ever since.  We are talking Einstein and Neils Bohr here, with a dash of Heisenberg.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/02/01/niels-bohr-science-religion/

Ok, I've loved brainpickings for a few years now, so you caught my interest with this one, and I'd like to focus on a couple statements in this article that I think apply.  First is this quote from Bohr:

Quote

We ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.

I find this very intriguing.  I have been talking about separating subjective and objective, but his comments about that separation being too arbitrary I would like to understand better.  The article talks about how in quantum physics we have a more difficult time with complete objectivity that there are elements of subjectivity that enter into some of these disciplines.  I think this is an important point and something for me to think about further, and there are some good additional articles and resources in this link, thanks for posting it.  

Quote

This, Bohr notes, is why the language of objectivity doesn’t belong in religious rhetoric — religion and its pluralities are best understood, and best applied to human life as an instrument of moral enrichment rather than one of dogmatic constriction

This second idea seems place some limits on what religious experience should apply too and what its limits are.  Objective language shouldn't be used to describe it, and religion operates in the world of moral enrichment, and later the article emphasizes the social benefits of religion. 

Quote

In that sense, religion helps to make social life more harmonious; its most important task is to remind us, in the language of pictures and parables, of the wider framework within which our life is set.

This last part sounds an awful lot like what I've been saying as well.  The benefits of religion to describe our lived experience and relationship to one another.  But this does not mean we should confuse the experiential with the empirical.  

I'll take a look at the other links when I get some more time, but wanted to post these thoughts on this first article.  Thanks

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Einstein Heisenberg and Niels Bohr thought that you could use philosophy to criticize science, and understood the place of religion and the entire discussion. I have already referenced those articles.

You continually assume that I'm pulling this stuff out of my own head. I am not.

Dr. Peterson was explaining a single article by William James and did a wonderful job explaining a fairly complex issue. But it was a summary of James.

Your argument is with those figures not me. I also agree with Spong.

I personally think they got it right.

But no of course I did not come up with this stuff on my own. I also suggest more study on category errors. They are based on semantic errors not ontological categories.

I couldn't get access to your google docs link, I requested it in case you have the ability to grant access.  I also read the brain pickings article about Sam Harris, I'm pretty familiar with him, and like much of his stuff, and I didn't have any disagreements with it.  

Hmm.. I think we might be misunderstanding each other here.  I know I accused you of using philosophy to critique the hard sciences.  I guess it was the way that you seem to want to dismiss the hard sciences that I have a hard time with.  I think philosophy can be used to critique things, nothing should be above reproach and immune to critique.  I don't think philosophy invalidates the hard sciences, or what Hawking has observed, you seem to take the positions too far for my comfort.  

I also suspect that Dr. Peterson is taking his ideas too far as well.  I'm suspicious of this phenomenon which I've seen happen many times with respect to people cherry picking statements to validate their world views. 

The brainpickings articles are a great example of taking various different ideas from important thinkers and having them interact in a thoughtful way, not to put anything above criticism and to try to be respectful of different views that have been expressed.  I like this approach and I find it persuasive and a good example of how to thoughtfully interact.  

 

[hope_for_things]

11 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure I'd say physics is positivism. Positivism unarguably sought to apply what it thought was going on in the hard sciences to more general questions of meaningfulness and epistemology. But that seems a different matter. Certainly one can be a physicist without being a positivist. I'm certainly not a positivist even though my background is physics. If anything I'd say the typical physicist is philosophically naive and incoherently switches between instrumentalism, empiricism, and realism in how they view scientific knowledge. So I'm a bit loath to make a physics/positivism comparison. In particular Hawkings and several other writers of popularized physics literature also tend to be fairly philosophically naive. Among those who are better versed and even read philosophy of science I'm not sure the positivism issue comes up that often.

As I said though, I'm not entirely sure what's being argued. Unless we clarify what we mean by reason and faith the question is pretty meaningless. Both terms are pretty ambiguous. As I typically use the terms there's no conflict at all. Indeed I'd go so far as to say real faith requires reason. 

Getting back to whether positivism is dead, again I think we have to ask what we mean by that. It seems like things are being thrown around without being clear what it is we're talking about. Certainly very few people self-identify as positivists today. There are various reasons for that. One can't deny the role of philosophical fads in that death. Overall though I think two main arguments tend to be brought to bear. The first is that claims to be verified are theory laden. That is we don't verify particular claims singularly but against a web of various beliefs and theories. The second problem is that the verification criteria for truth in positivism was itself far too restrictive and unable to verify itself. Now contra to the popular view, the positivists themselves were quite aware of these issues. Most of the purported killers of positivism were anything but. I think the bigger issue is that people just looked at two main figures who came out of the positivist movement (Kuhn and Quine) and found their approaches far more productive than what was coming from the the main positivists grappling with these issues. 

But again, I'll just reiterate that it's completely unclear to me what the dispute even is in this thread.

My own view is that we shouldn't dismiss verification just because of the failures of the positivist movement. One just has to be careful not to make ones verificationism so narrow that the problems the positivists faced came up. By and large once you broaden it somewhat I think the problems disappear. I also think one then tends towards a kind of Peircean approach. C. J. Misak has a great book arguing just this. 

Clark,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.  Upon reflection, I think part of what keeps bringing myself and MFB back to these exchanges has to do with poor communication on both our parts.  I don't have the philosophical background that he does, so I inevitably don't speak with precision on these topics.  So when he takes a statement of mine and says something like "see this is positivism and positivism is dead".  I don't have much to counter back with.  I make the assumption that he's right about how he's characterized my points as positivism and just try to move forward on the discussion.  

After many back and forth exchanges I typically begin to realize that we actually agree on much more than MFB would like to give us credit for.  Your confusion about what we're even disputing makes me wonder once again if we really disagree all that much on these issues after all.  The links he provided recently I agree with just about everything the authors wrote.  

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Again though unless one is clear what verification entails, that isn't too helpful a statement. 

That is discussed in the wikipedia article with which I agree.

I didn't intend to give a dissertation on positivism.

Edited September 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

Clark,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.  Upon reflection, I think part of what keeps bringing myself and MFB back to these exchanges has to do with poor communication on both our parts.  I don't have the philosophical background that he does, so I inevitably don't speak with precision on these topics.  So when he takes a statement of mine and says something like "see this is positivism and positivism is dead".  I don't have much to counter back with.  I make the assumption that he's right about how he's characterized my points as positivism and just try to move forward on the discussion.  

After many back and forth exchanges I typically begin to realize that we actually agree on much more than MFB would like to give us credit for.  Your confusion about what we're even disputing makes me wonder once again if we really disagree all that much on these issues after all.  The links he provided recently I agree with just about everything the authors wrote.  

Good

 Then it's semantics. I try to get it philosophically precise.

I have no clue who's reading this stuff, and quite honestly I'm not writing it for you I'm writing for whoever might be reading who understands it.

[hope_for_things]

9 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Good

 Then it's semantics. I try to get it philosophically precise.

I have no clue who's reading this stuff, and quite honestly I'm not writing it for you I'm writing for whoever might be reading who understands it.

I don't think its semantics that Clark was pointing out as a problem, I think he was pointing out that Hawking and other scientists aren't positivists in any strict sense, and that there are many different schools of thought out there, and that we were both making things very difficult to discuss because of conflating terms.  

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

So when he takes a statement of mine and says something like "see this is positivism and positivism is dead".  I don't have much to counter back with.  I make the assumption that he's right about how he's characterized my points as positivism and just try to move forward on the discussion.  

In general I find using positivism as a kind of boogey-man to be unhelpful. As I said, the positivists were far more interesting and sophisticated than their boogey-man status suggests. Further labeling someone as a positivist tends to not really communicate much if the person one is speaking with doesn't already know about positivism. I usually find it's an unfair label at best and often a strawman. Speaking of LDS apologetics in general, I've come around to thinking just keeping the positivist label out of discussions would be tremendously helpful. The only thing worse is the postmodern label.

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I don't think its semantics that Clark was pointing out as a problem, I think he was pointing out that Hawking and other scientists aren't positivists in any strict sense, and that there are many different schools of thought out there, and that we were both making things very difficult to discuss because of conflating terms.  

No, semantics was my main concern. No one's really clarified how they're using their terms with regards to the reason-faith debate. The old joke is that 90% of any philosophical debate is getting the semantics right.

My point about Hawking was more than he was just philosophically naive and doesn't understand the topics of discussion. It's a common failing among even brilliant scientists who just misunderstand the points of contention. 

Edited September 5, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

6 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

No, semantics was my main concern. No one's really clarified how they're using their terms with regards to the reason-faith debate. The old joke is that 90% of any philosophical debate is getting the semantics right.

Probably a good reason for me to stay out of philosophical debates then, I get way too frustrated with arguments about semantics.  

[clarkgoble]

10 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Probably a good reason for me to stay out of philosophical debates then, I get way too frustrated with arguments about semantics.  

It's actually pretty helpful though. Usually once one clarifies the debate, solving it is pretty trivial. It's somewhat akin to how in science the big issue is figuring out how to measure something. Once you've done that the experiment isn't typically that hard.

This is important in philosophy as otherwise one ends up equivocating. Further questions may appear to be the same through time but actually end up being very different questions due to how the terms are understood.

I also think this is actually a place where philosophy is useful practically. Particularly in discussions with people who use similar terminology, often major disagreements occur because the same terms are used but there are subtle differences in meaning. You see this in theological discussion in particular. So if you're speaking with an Evangelical about faith vs. works clarifying what they mean by works or faith is pretty key since Mormons tend to use the terms differently.

The other thing is that terms can be intrinsically vague which means we don't fully understand what they mean. Even in science you have things like that - dark matter or dark energy for instance. People don't pay enough attention to unavoidable vagueness. It actually frustrates some people who think you're dodging a discussion simply because terms are vague. (The classic one in Mormonism is atonement)

Edited September 5, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, I've loved brainpickings for a few years now, so you caught my interest with this one, and I'd like to focus on a couple statements in this article that I think apply.  First is this quote from Bohr:

I find this very intriguing.  I have been talking about separating subjective and objective, but his comments about that separation being too arbitrary I would like to understand better.  The article talks about how in quantum physics we have a more difficult time with complete objectivity that there are elements of subjectivity that enter into some of these disciplines.  I think this is an important point and something for me to think about further, and there are some good additional articles and resources in this link, thanks for posting it.  

This second idea seems place some limits on what religious experience should apply too and what its limits are.  Objective language shouldn't be used to describe it, and religion operates in the world of moral enrichment, and later the article emphasizes the social benefits of religion. 

This last part sounds an awful lot like what I've been saying as well.  The benefits of religion to describe our lived experience and relationship to one another.  But this does not mean we should confuse the experiential with the empirical.  

I'll take a look at the other links when I get some more time, but wanted to post these thoughts on this first article.  Thanks

Great!

This ambiguity was exactly what I was trying to get you to think about in William James and his notion of "radical empiricism", that I posted about earlier, and since day 1 we have heard Rorty say the same thing in my siggy.  It takes a while for this stuff to "click"- I understand.  So James, Bohr, and Rorty are essentially saying the same thing here once you understand the lingo.

Britannica gets it right, as does Rorty but both are perhaps too terse for someone not used to the language to understand so I will re-say it yet again line by line

https://www.britannica.com/topic/radical-empiricism

Quote

 

Radical empiricism, a theory of knowledge and a metaphysics (theory of Being) advanced by William James, an American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist, based on the pragmatic theory of truthand the principle of pure experience, which contends that the relations between things are at least as real as the things themselves, that their function is real, and that no hidden substrata are necessary to account for the various clashes and coherences of the world. 

James summarized the theory as consisting of (1) a postulate: “The only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience”; (2) a factual statement: “The relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves,” which serves to distinguish radical empiricism from the empiricism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume; and (3) a generalized conclusion: “The parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous transempirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure.” The result of this theory of knowledge is a metaphysics that refutes the rationalist belief in a being that transcends experience, which gives unity to the world.

According to James there is no logical connection between radical empiricism and pragmatism. One may reject radical empiricism and continue to be a pragmatist. James’s studies in radical empiricism were published posthumously as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).

 

I will now explain the above passage into a format less for specialists in the field and elaborate on it while doing so:

"Radical empiricism is a theory about  what is "real" and how we "know" what "reality" is, advanced by William James.  He believed that it was necessary not only to talk about things in the world but also how things relate to each other and held that these relations were as important as the things themselves.  For example to speak empirically about the bricks which might be used in making a home- one must not only look at the bricks, but how the individual bricks IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER form a "HOME" in which a family might dwell.  

So a fully "empirical" discussion about the dimensions of the bricks, their composition and how they are made etc , the full "reality" of a brick in this context must also include the full empirical way we perceive the bricks as part of their relations- that they are not just a pile of bricks, but actually someone's HOME with all that entails in the importance of those bricks in a real person's life.   So radical empiricism speaks not only of measuring bricks but the context in which the bricks are found and their practical importance in someone's life.   One cannot fully capture our experience of a brick in someone's home without understanding that it is a PART of a greater whole.  And all those relations that we experience about those bricks are important in producing a truly "empirical" study of the bricks of a home.

The full description INCLUDES the importance of the bricks- because we in fact understand in looking at the bricks in someone's home- they are different than bricks NOT in someone's home - and to have a fully "empirical" discussion about them, all that must be included.

So bricks are not "things in themselves" they are always in a context that we experience and what we need to discuss is the full experience in order to capture what a given brick "IS"

There is no need for a "substrata" to project the existence of a "brick" outside of its use, because to do so invents a "reality" we do not actually experience.   As Rorty might say, what we are observing is not a "brick as it is" but what we are observing is our own "mental state" about the significance of that brick.

Bricks might be a trivial example- but suppose we are talking of the nose cone of the space shuttle.

Discussing the composition of that particular object MUST always include the purpose of its design, why the particular materials we selected, the aerodynamics, heat resistance and ultimately even the importance of the space shuttle to the "space race" and how that particular thing has vast political importance and scientific importance and even importance for the progression of mankind through the discoveries on the many missions of the space shuttle.   It is not just a "piece of material xyz"- THAT is an insufficient description of it as a "thing in itself"- a full empirical description of that object must include all those other relations.

So now William James proposes as a postulate that we always look at those relations in order to have a "RADICAL Empiricism"

Postulate:

"The only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience”;

Factual statement:

“The relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves,”

So the nose cone as a "thing in itself" INCLUDES it's importance and the significance we give it as PART of any fully empirical description.  The full human experience of the nose cone AND its significance IS the "experience" of the nose cone- and there is no way to escape how we experience it to get to the abstract "thing in itself".  We cannot see the thing as it is- but only in its relations as created by the human mind

So James concludes:

Quote

The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous transempirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure.”

Which MEANS that the universe AS WE HUMANS EXPERIENCE IT needs not to postulate any "substrate" or world independent of our direct experience because IN OUR DIRECT EXPERIENCE it possesses its own continuous structure which INCLUDES its relations.  You can't see the space shield nose cone independently of it BEING the nose cone- it's not just something defined by its chemical composition.

Rorty says the same thing thusly:

Quote

To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states.  To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences, there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.

   "Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot." 

Bohr says:

Quote

 

"Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far."

Kant says (via my professor and friend Bob Solomon- this is what goes back to 1967 for me):

https://www.bookdepository.com/From-Rationalism-Existentialism-Professor-Robert-C-Solomon/9780822630173

Nietzsche says:

Quote

There are no facts, only interpretations

So ALL - and a list too long to detail- are saying, with Bohr, that "splitting this world into objective and subjective doesn't get us very far"

Do we need more quotes?

Disregard the image below- I cannot erase it for some reason.  But it IS interesting!  AND evidence that this same view has been around for 2000 years.   We cannot bifurcate reality.  It is splitting the baby in two to see how it works.  All you end up with is a bloody mess!

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

It's actually pretty helpful though. Usually once one clarifies the debate, solving it is pretty trivial. It's somewhat akin to how in science the big issue is figuring out how to measure something. Once you've done that the experiment isn't typically that hard.

This is important in philosophy as otherwise one ends up equivocating. Further questions may appear to be the same through time but actually end up being very different questions due to how the terms are understood.

I also think this is actually a place where philosophy is useful practically. Particularly in discussions with people who use similar terminology, often major disagreements occur because the same terms are used but there are subtle differences in meaning. You see this in theological discussion in particular. So if you're speaking with an Evangelical about faith vs. works clarifying what they mean by works or faith is pretty key since Mormons tend to use the terms differently.

The other thing is that terms can be intrinsically vague which means we don't fully understand what they mean. Even in science you have things like that - dark matter or dark energy for instance. People don't pay enough attention to unavoidable vagueness. It actually frustrates some people who think you're dodging a discussion simply because terms are vague. (The classic one in Mormonism is atonement)

Yep exactly the point!

Jargon is useful but one must speak the language!

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

 The old joke is that 90% of any philosophical debate is getting the semantics right.

And the later Wittgenstein's position was that it was 100%!

He had "solved" philosophy and so I left it !  But if you don't understand WHY it's "all semantics" you won't get far.  The answer of course is in my siggy.

Language is all there IS ....... that we can TALK about.

IF you "get" that, you "get" why philosophy is 100 % about clarifying how we speak.  To clarify how we speak is to clarify reality. 

 

[hope_for_things]

On 9/5/2018 at 2:29 PM, mfbukowski said:

This ambiguity was exactly what I was trying to get you to think about in William James and his notion of "radical empiricism", that I posted about earlier, and since day 1 we have heard Rorty say the same thing in my siggy.  It takes a while for this stuff to "click"- I understand.  So James, Bohr, and Rorty are essentially saying the same thing here once you understand the lingo.

Just wanted you to know that this is a helpful step and thoughtful post.  It’s been a busy day for me, but I hope to respond tomorrow.  Thanks for this 

[hope_for_things]

On 9/5/2018 at 2:29 PM, mfbukowski said:

So ALL - and a list too long to detail- are saying, with Bohr, that "splitting this world into objective and subjective doesn't get us very far"

Do we need more quotes?

Disregard the image below- I cannot erase it for some reason.  But it IS interesting!  AND evidence that this same view has been around for 2000 years.   We cannot bifurcate reality.  It is splitting the baby in two to see how it works.  All you end up with is a bloody mess!

Ok, so I have read all of this first response a few times now, and I think it makes sense and I think I agree with it generally.  I think the individuals quoted, likely had different nuances in their approaches, for example, I don't think the Bohr quote necessarily shows that he agreed with James's radical empiricism philosophy in total.  There are similarities across all these thinkers, but I guess I don't want to make a mistake by conflating them all together and saying that these thinkers all agreed. 

Its hard enough to get one person to agree with their own ideas throughout their life (many people change their perspectives throughout their life), let alone getting multiple people to agree on these points.  

So, I think this a good time to ask how an understanding of these principles applies to the topics we discuss around Mormonism and religious thinking.  It seems to me that this emphasis on context, and relationships between things, both physical and mental, are very important considerations.  It also seems to me that it would be important to remember how relativity plays into theological constructs.  

On this message board there are many participants who have a strong relationship to their views about God's authority for example.  Can it be that their view about authority is true from their perspective, given their context and the relationship that they have to this view.  I'm willing to say yes.  But conversely I would have to also say there are people I know who have very strong views that Mormonism isn't authoritative for them, and that its not true and sanctioned by God.  If I agree that Mormon authority is true for certain people in their context, then conversely I have to agree that Mormonism isn't true for certain people in their context.  

All of these principles seem to push back against the exclusivity and universal claims that correlated Mormonism preaches.   And bringing my point back full circle to some recent comments I've made in another thread, I've come to the position where I'm completely comfortable with people asserting certain beliefs they have as being completely valid from their perspectives.  But where I differ is when they confuse the kinds of evidence they use to support claims that can be studied in the categories of science.  Claims that have empirical evidence that can be evaluated at the academy.  And in those very specific scenarios, the evidence for BoM historicity using archaeological findings for example is not conjunctive to spiritually interpreted evidence.  The spiritually interpreted evidence is personal and subjective and can't be evaluated using the tools of archaeology, so essentially its inadmissible.  

So, let me know what you think about those points, and maybe you can help me understand if you differ with me on how to apply these principles to our Mormon discussions on this message board, and how you'd see things differently.  Thanks

[mfbukowski]

16 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Ok, so I have read all of this first response a few times now, and I think it makes sense and I think I agree with it generally.  I think the individuals quoted, likely had different nuances in their approaches, for example, I don't think the Bohr quote necessarily shows that he agreed with James's radical empiricism philosophy in total.  There are similarities across all these thinkers, but I guess I don't want to make a mistake by conflating them all together and saying that these thinkers all agreed. 

Its hard enough to get one person to agree with their own ideas throughout their life (many people change their perspectives throughout their life), let alone getting multiple people to agree on these points.  

So, I think this a good time to ask how an understanding of these principles applies to the topics we discuss around Mormonism and religious thinking.  It seems to me that this emphasis on context, and relationships between things, both physical and mental, are very important considerations.  It also seems to me that it would be important to remember how relativity plays into theological constructs.  

On this message board there are many participants who have a strong relationship to their views about God's authority for example.  Can it be that their view about authority is true from their perspective, given their context and the relationship that they have to this view.  I'm willing to say yes.  But conversely I would have to also say there are people I know who have very strong views that Mormonism isn't authoritative for them, and that its not true and sanctioned by God.  If I agree that Mormon authority is true for certain people in their context, then conversely I have to agree that Mormonism isn't true for certain people in their context.  

All of these principles seem to push back against the exclusivity and universal claims that correlated Mormonism preaches.   And bringing my point back full circle to some recent comments I've made in another thread, I've come to the position where I'm completely comfortable with people asserting certain beliefs they have as being completely valid from their perspectives.  But where I differ is when they confuse the kinds of evidence they use to support claims that can be studied in the categories of science.  Claims that have empirical evidence that can be evaluated at the academy.  And in those very specific scenarios, the evidence for BoM historicity using archaeological findings for example is not conjunctive to spiritually interpreted evidence.  The spiritually interpreted evidence is personal and subjective and can't be evaluated using the tools of archaeology, so essentially its inadmissible.  

So, let me know what you think about those points, and maybe you can help me understand if you differ with me on how to apply these principles to our Mormon discussions on this message board, and how you'd see things differently.  Thanks

Thanks. 

I don't know why you care so much about what other Mormons think.

Authority is something we give to an institution by our own free will. It is a decision to submit to the authority that creates the authority in the first place.

Yes they can throw you in jail theoretically. But then of course we have people like Martin Luther King jr. And Gandhi. You can imprison a body but not a mind. 

Anyway this epitomizes the issue and shows its solution in my opinion:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/27/when-einstein-met-tagore/

Mormons worship the infinite man if they know it in those terms or not.

This should be pure Mormon theology.  After my studies this is exactly what I saw when I joined the church, so what this Mormon believes is what this Mormon believes and I am a true believing Mormon.

This is my theology, though I never seen it all in one place before.

Edited September 7, 2018 by mfbukowski

[hope_for_things]

3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Thanks. 

I don't know why you care so much about what other Mormons think.

Authority is something we give to an institution by our own free will. It is a decision to submit to the authority that creates the authority in the first place.

Yes they can throw you in jail theoretically. But then of course we have people like Martin Luther King jr. And Gandhi. You can imprison a body but not a mind. 

Anyway this epitomizes the issue and shows its solution in my opinion:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/27/when-einstein-met-tagore/

Think of other Mormons as bricks that compose the house of Mormonism.  Does our relationship from one brick to another matter?  

Do I worry about my own status with God based on what other Mormons think?  No, not anymore, I used to when I was orthodox, but I'm free from that.  

But we have discussions on this message board about Mormon topics, and when I participate I'd like to think I'm being thoughtful about the topic and engaging with the conversation.  It won't do me much good to just tell people I don't care about what they are saying or just say they are wrong.  I'm attempting to learn and persuade using reasonable argumentation.  

Are you not wanting to comment on the practical application of these concepts to some of our recent discussions?  I understand if you're tired of it, so no pressure, but I'm sure these things may come up again, and I'd like to think through how these concepts apply to these topics.  

[mfbukowski]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Think of other Mormons as bricks that compose the house of Mormonism.  Does our relationship from one brick to another matter?  

Do I worry about my own status with God based on what other Mormons think?  No, not anymore, I used to when I was orthodox, but I'm free from that.  

But we have discussions on this message board about Mormon topics, and when I participate I'd like to think I'm being thoughtful about the topic and engaging with the conversation.  It won't do me much good to just tell people I don't care about what they are saying or just say they are wrong.  I'm attempting to learn and persuade using reasonable argumentation.  

Are you not wanting to comment on the practical application of these concepts to some of our recent discussions?  I understand if you're tired of it, so no pressure, but I'm sure these things may come up again, and I'd like to think through how these concepts apply to these topics.  

You didn't read the article did you?

I am interested in the truth.

I've never cared much about what other people believe, I see that as matter unorganized to be used to create our own individual worlds.

I have never been disillusion because I was never illusioned in the first place as Sterling mcmurrin has said.