Christopher Hitchens Caught Affirming Spiritual Experience as Valid

[USU78]

Let's take one sense, touch and look at its mechanics:

Step 1:  Your finger touches something.

Step 2:  Your somatosensors send an electrochemical signal upstream through the nervous system, from neuron to neuron, reporting the fact and experience of your finger touching something.

Step 3:  Your brain receives and processes both the fact and experience of your finger touching something. 

Step 4:  Your brain delivers to your consciousness both the fact and experience of your finger touching something.  We are a universe away from understanding what or where consciousness is, however.  There may be more steps than this, but ultimately, you experience the touch in your consciousness. 

You don't meaningfully experience the touch in your finger.  You experience it in your consciousness.  And the same holds for every other sensory system.  You experience all of them in your consciousness.

[Proviso]Yeah, I'm not addressing autonomics, but rather the issue of experiences, which is the only relevant brain functionality to the issue of experiencing G-d.[/Proviso]

[mfbukowski]

15 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Let's take one sense, touch and look at its mechanics:

Step 1:  Your finger touches something.

Step 2:  Your somatosensors send an electrochemical signal upstream through the nervous system, from neuron to neuron, reporting the fact and experience of your finger touching something.

Step 3:  Your brain receives and processes both the fact and experience of your finger touching something. 

Step 4:  Your brain delivers to your consciousness both the fact and experience of your finger touching something.  We are a universe away from understanding what or where consciousness is, however.  There may be more steps than this, but ultimately, you experience the touch in your consciousness. 

You don't meaningfully experience the touch in your finger.  You experience it in your consciousness.  And the same holds for every other sensory system.  You experience all of them in your consciousness.

[Proviso]Yeah, I'm not addressing autonomics, but rather the issue of experiences, which is the only relevant brain functionality to the issue of experiencing G-d.[/Proviso]

Surely you could not mean it's all in your head?

But where's Truth then?

I suppose hanging out with Courage and Freedom at Starbucks. 

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, USU78 said:

Let's take one sense, touch and look at its mechanics:

Step 1:  Your finger touches something.

Step 2:  Your somatosensors send an electrochemical signal upstream through the nervous system, from neuron to neuron, reporting the fact and experience of your finger touching something.

Step 3:  Your brain receives and processes both the fact and experience of your finger touching something. 

Step 4:  Your brain delivers to your consciousness both the fact and experience of your finger touching something.  We are a universe away from understanding what or where consciousness is, however.  There may be more steps than this, but ultimately, you experience the touch in your consciousness. 

You don't meaningfully experience the touch in your finger.  You experience it in your consciousness.  And the same holds for every other sensory system.  You experience all of them in your consciousness.

[Proviso]Yeah, I'm not addressing autonomics, but rather the issue of experiences, which is the only relevant brain functionality to the issue of experiencing G-d.[/Proviso]

As Example #2, say somebody had their finger amputated some time ago, but still feels a "ghost finger" from time to time. Somehow, some broken links in the nervous system cause the brain to receive some electrical signals that it interprets as "the fact and experience of your finger touching something." Out there in the real world (if you believe in such a place), the finger didn't really touch anything. As a matter of fact (if you believe in such things), there is no finger. Yet, you experience the finger touching something.

So here are some questions (and forgive me if these are pedestrian--I'm not a philosopher):

1- Is "feeling your finger touching something" when your finger is in fact touching something a categorically different experience than "feeling your finger touching something" when you don't have a finger and it really isn't touching something? Are those two different types of events, or if they feel identical to each other, are they the same thing?

2- If we agree that feeling something that is there with a real finger is different than feeling something with a ghost finger that isn't there, does it matter whether feeling God is more like one or more like the other?

[USU78]

13 minutes ago, Analytics said:

As Example #2, say somebody had their finger amputated some time ago, but still feels a "ghost finger" from time to time. Somehow, some broken links in the nervous system cause the brain to receive some electrical signals that it interprets as "the fact and experience of your finger touching something." Out there in the real world (if you believe in such a place), the finger didn't really touch anything. As a matter of fact (if you believe in such things), there is no finger. Yet, you experience the finger touching something.

So here are some questions (and forgive me if these are pedestrian--I'm not a philosopher):

1- Is "feeling your finger touching something" when your finger is in fact touching something a categorically different experience than "feeling your finger touching something" when you don't have a finger and it really isn't touching something? Are those two different types of events, or if they feel identical to each other, are they the same thing?

2- If we agree that feeling something that is there with a real finger is different than feeling something with a ghost finger that isn't there, does it matter whether feeling God is more like one or more like the other?

Where do we experience the phantom pain and/or other sensory signals?  In the air where the finger used to be?  In our medulla oblongata?  In our left-side erector spinae, about at L3? Or is it in our consciousness?  You've shifted us from the marble circle to the foursquare court, but we're still in the same playground, A.  You're still experiencing something, even if it's a phantom something:  your nerve pathways, so used to sending "AOK" and other signals back and forth along the neurons, sometimes get knocked out of whack by, in your scenario, trauma.

Neuralgia, phantom pain, and other, similar conditions are quite real, "real" being there are actual pain and other signals sent upstream to the brain, whence they are communicated to "you" "your consciousness" "your soul" or whatever it pleases us to call that place where we are conscious of the electrochemical signals.

Personal aside:  First wife had chronic "fake pain," which put her into the hospital as "actively dying" because of the agony more than once, admitted under "pseudosepsis" because they couldn't call it what it really was for insurance reasons.  This stuff is nothing to joke about.  She felt every zap up every nerve pathway in her mind, her consciousness, and her soul.  That there was no discernable organic cause for it is irrelevant to its being all too real.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

As Example #2, say somebody had their finger amputated some time ago, but still feels a "ghost finger" from time to time. Somehow, some broken links in the nervous system cause the brain to receive some electrical signals that it interprets as "the fact and experience of your finger touching something." Out there in the real world (if you believe in such a place), the finger didn't really touch anything. As a matter of fact (if you believe in such things), there is no finger. Yet, you experience the finger touching something.

So here are some questions (and forgive me if these are pedestrian--I'm not a philosopher):

1- Is "feeling your finger touching something" when your finger is in fact touching something a categorically different experience than "feeling your finger touching something" when you don't have a finger and it really isn't touching something? Are those two different types of events, or if they feel identical to each other, are they the same thing?

2- If we agree that feeling something that is there with a real finger is different than feeling something with a ghost finger that isn't there, does it matter whether feeling God is more like one or more like the other?

In radical Empiricism meaning and regulation is part of the experience. That means context is included in the experience itself. You say and do things that act differently a church perhaps that do you do in other places.

So the guy would have to have forgotten that he lost his finger, your scenario to work.

Regardless it would be a real pain.

Whatever sensation it was it would be a real sensation.

Ask anybody who has neuropathy if their pain is real.

And yes it is pedestrian.

In fact it is a well-known logical fallacy called appeal to the stone.

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

Edited April 25, 2019 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

2 hours ago, USU78 said:

First wife had chronic "fake pain," which put her into the hospital as "actively dying" because of the agony more than once, admitted under "pseudosepsis" because they couldn't call it what it really was for insurance reasons.

Idiopathic neuropathy here.  I could swear my feet are encased in ice they burn with cold...and yet I touch them and at most slightly cool to the touch.  Restless legs syndrome (where I feel nonexistent  ants crawling on me and needles being stabbed into my legs and electrical shocks emanating from them) is actually a neurological disorder, related somehow to dopamine levels in the brain.

[USU78]

17 minutes ago, Calm said:

Idiopathic neuropathy here.  I could swear my feet are encased in ice they burn with cold...and yet I touch them and at most slightly cool to the touch.  Restless legs syndrome (where I feel nonexistent  ants crawling on me and needles being stabbed into my legs and electrical shocks emanating from them) is actually a neurological disorder, related somehow to dopamine levels in the brain.

Yup.  It's frustrating that so many don't get it.  You have to live it/live with it to get it.  Can you believe I was so clueless that I bought her a yoga video with the thought that I would do the yoga with her?  It never came out of the plastic wrap (VHS/plastic wrap/remember?).  Thought I was helping. 

[Calm]

21 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Yup.  It's frustrating that so many don't get it.  You have to live it/live with it to get it.  Can you believe I was so clueless that I bought her a yoga video with the thought that I would do the yoga with her?  It never came out of the plastic wrap (VHS/plastic wrap/remember?).  Thought I was helping. 

This makes me cry.

Because it reminds me of the heartbreak of not being understood, looked on by my family as a youth and young adult to be a lazy hypochondriac (once the disorder hit them, that disappeared though some were working hard at not judging before that) as well as one rare occasion being given a lecture by a close friend who I thought understood on how I was setting a bad example for my kids by my lack of attendance at certain Church meetings (because driving and sitting for any length of time atthat time of day would destroy my ability to do anything but hate being there), so it appears she was just humoring me for all those years.   My parents were constantly coming up with a new project for me to be healthier (pretty much everything made things worse).  It is hard knowing I was disappointing people who expected "better" from me.  I think my dad may have finally figured out I was a hard worker when he saw what I did to my house (his compliment was "I never saw someone do so much with so little").  I still constantly secondguess myself I am choosing because of prudence vs. laziness/not enough real commitment to push through the hard times.

And I am crying because it means so much, so very much when someone turns from not understanding to getting it.  

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Calm

[Tacenda]

27 minutes ago, Calm said:

This makes me cry.

Because it reminds me of the heartbreak of not being understood, looked on by my family as a youth and young adult to be a lazy hypochondriac (once the disorder hit them, that disappeared though some were working hard at not judging before that) as well as one rare occasion being given a lecture by a close friend who I thought understood on how I was setting a bad example for my kids by my lack of attendance at certain Church meetings (because driving and sitting for any length of time atthat time of day would destroy my ability to do anything but hate being there), so it appears she was just humoring me for all those years.   My parents were constantly coming up with a new project for me to be healthier (pretty much everything made things worse).  It is hard knowing I was disappointing people who expected "better" from me.  I think my dad may have finally figured out I was a hard worker when he saw what I did to my house (his compliment was "I never saw someone do so much with so little").  I still constantly secondguess myself I am choosing because of prudence vs. laziness/not enough real commitment to push through the hard times.

And I am crying because it means so much, so very much when someone turns from not understanding to getting it.  

 

I am crying with you Calm, I feel awful for thinking my husband causes his stomach ailments by his anxiety with things in his life. I keep trying to watch what I do, but feel bad if I've blamed it on anything other than what it actually is. He has stomach pain but has been tested for everything. This has been an on and off thing for a few years now. The latest episode is from an over zealous golf swing, his love. He recently went on a friends/sons golf trip to St. George that they do yearly, and he wasn't able to play once. He sat in the cart for each 18 hole day, four days, w/o playing. 

I'm sorry for your pain. My good friend has it as well in her feet. I gave her some CBD salve and it didn't help, funnily she said if she could she'd smoke a joint to get rid of the pain. But I highly doubt she would, she was kidding I believe, or maybe not, lol. And when I had her try some of my oil under the tongue it made her heart race but it had THC in it. Another friend has the restless leg syndrome and takes a drug for it. I think she should try some CBD oil, but she hasn't. 

But I'll shut up about the oil, and just say that I'm going to work extra hard to try to understand my husband's condition. I've had stomach pain most my life but at certain times, and I can't stand up straight. So I guess I think he would do the same, but it must be a different kind of pain. 

[Calm]

I am going to try the oil once I get off the usual drug I take.  I am pretty sure my body has had enough.  Usually it shows this with migraines.  This time it is nausea so it took forever to connect the dots.

The CostCo pharmacist brought it up the other day, so you are not the only one feeling positive about it.  

[USU78]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

This makes me cry.

Because it reminds me of the heartbreak of not being understood, looked on by my family as a youth and young adult to be a lazy hypochondriac (once the disorder hit them, that disappeared though some were working hard at not judging before that) as well as one rare occasion being given a lecture by a close friend who I thought understood on how I was setting a bad example for my kids by my lack of attendance at certain Church meetings (because driving and sitting for any length of time atthat time of day would destroy my ability to do anything but hate being there), so it appears she was just humoring me for all those years.   My parents were constantly coming up with a new project for me to be healthier (pretty much everything made things worse).  It is hard knowing I was disappointing people who expected "better" from me.  I think my dad may have finally figured out I was a hard worker when he saw what I did to my house (his compliment was "I never saw someone do so much with so little").  I still constantly secondguess myself I am choosing because of prudence vs. laziness/not enough real commitment to push through the hard times.

And I am crying because it means so much, so very much when someone turns from not understanding to getting it.  

 

It's hard unlearning what you know.

[USU78]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I am going to try the oil once I get off the usual drug I take.  I am pretty sure my body has had enough.  Usually it shows this with migraines.  This time it is nausea so it took forever to connect the dots.

The CostCo pharmacist brought it up the other day, so you are not the only one feeling positive about it.  

They've got the over the counter versions of the roll on and drops, too. A bit cheaper, depending on your coverage.

[Calm]

27 minutes ago, USU78 said:

It's hard unlearning what you know.

Yep.  Kids aren't skeptics when they learn, so when it sticks, it is stuck.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

So sorry to hear these stories. But I understand this well myself from personal experience.

Perhaps the key is to say that sensations are always real. They are always real sensations. Whether they are caused by something trans empirical becomes irrelevant.

Seeing God in the sacred grove is real regardless of the cause. 

The next step is to understand that anything beyond those sensations is not knowable in its true nature.  Dying nerve cells are not the pain. Yes they are correlated with the pain but they are logically something of a different order than the pain. When one talks about pain one does not talk about cells. 

Seeing a red car is a sensation but it is not a red car. We say that the red car causes the sensation but all we really know is the sensation. We postulate that different wavelengths of light are reflected from the car causing it to look red. But that is just the appearance that our brains see, just as pain is created by our bodies internally.

Again this is precisely what they Rorty quote below says.

Hopefully it makes all that a little clearer.

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by mfbukowski

[Analytics]

17 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

In radical Empiricism meaning and regulation is part of the experience. That means context is included in the experience itself. You say and do things that act differently a church perhaps that do you do in other places.

So the guy would have to have forgotten that he lost his finger, your scenario to work.

Regardless it would be a real pain.

Whatever sensation it was it would be a real sensation.

Ask anybody who has neuropathy if their pain is real.

And yes it is pedestrian.

In fact it is a well-known logical fallacy called appeal to the stone.

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

It's weird that you think I was somehow making an "appeal to the stone" fallacy.

My point is simply that practically all atheists believe that there are spiritual experiences, that people have a conscience, and so forth, You didn't catch Hitchens making some grand or inadvertent concession on this point. The difference between you and Hitchens is that you feel a spiritual something-or-another and say, "I just felt God! I know God exists!" Hitchens feels a spiritual something-or-another and says, "I felt something. Feelings exist."

The question isn't whether or not people perceive things. And the question isn't whether or not these perceptions are internal, external, or a combination of both. The question is what do the perceptions imply about the nature of reality? 

[mfbukowski]

29 minutes ago, Analytics said:

The question is what do the perceptions imply about the nature of reality?

Maybe you're starting to get it.

These perceptions ARE the only reality we can know.

You insist on making a distinction between perception and reality. Why do you do that?

To believe there is anything beyond perception is to believe in a non perceptible world.

There are no facts there are only interpretations of perceptions.

The philosophical word that describes a hypothetical world beyond perception is "transempirical".

All we can know is empirical reality and interpret it.

All we can know is perceptions and interpret them

I interpret those perceptions you mentioned as God.

if you have those perceptions and decide not to call them God that is your decision.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by mfbukowski

[Analytics]

26 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Maybe you're starting to get it.

These perceptions ARE the only reality we can know.

You insist on making a distinction between perception and reality. Why do you do that?

I'm open to the idea that "perceptions are the only reality we can know," but I'm not convinced that is the right question. 

I believe there is a real world out there beyond my perceptions that will keep on existing whether I'm perceiving it or not. I might not ever "know" it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I'm the kind of guy who believes that if a tree falls in a forest that it does in fact make a sound.

[USU78]

27 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I'm open to the idea that "perceptions are the only reality we can know," but I'm not convinced that is the right question. 

I believe there is a real world out there beyond my perceptions that will keep on existing whether I'm perceiving it or not. I might not ever "know" it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I'm the kind of guy who believes that if a tree falls in a forest that it does in fact make a sound.

May I offer this:  Philosophers and pseudophilosophers like myself call the "real world out there" that which G-d knows or G-d perceives.  We poor critters can't know or perceive the world as He knows it and He perceives it.  He has a "G-d's eye view" of the "real world out there."  We only have what we have.  

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, USU78 said:

May I offer this:  Philosophers and pseudophilosophers like myself call the "real world out there" that which G-d knows or G-d perceives.  We poor critters can't know or perceive the world as He knows it and He perceives it.  He has a "G-d's eye view" of the "real world out there."  We only have what we have.  

Agreed, now through a glass darkly, but then face to face.

That is so profound. The glass is a mirror and then mirror our perceptions. We look out at the world and we see ourselves looking back at us. All we can see is our own perceptions. But then it will be face-to-face, and we will see the swirling quarks or whatever it is.

Now we only see chairs and tables, cars and buildings. Wouldn't it be amazing to see all those whatever they are's doing whatever they do?

To be free of human perception and see it all as it is?

Wow!

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

I'm open to the idea that "perceptions are the only reality we can know," but I'm not convinced that is the right question. 

I believe there is a real world out there beyond my perceptions that will keep on existing whether I'm perceiving it or not. I might not ever "know" it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I'm the kind of guy who believes that if a tree falls in a forest that it does in fact make a sound.

YES- I agree with that entirely as well- no problem.

Again we get back to Rorty.   I pick Rorty because of all the explanations I have seen for this way of seeing the world, his is the most lucid and he is called the "lucid philosopher"

I will take it line by line- from my siggy- which contains the attribution if anyone cares.

Rorty:

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.

This is precisely what you just said!! 

You:

"I believe there is a real world out there beyond my perceptions that will keep on existing whether I'm perceiving it or not."

YES there is a real world out there beyond our perceptions - which are the EFFECTS of CAUSES which we did NOT CREATE.

SOMETHING is out there causing our perceptions but we can't ever get outside our perceptions to find out what it is!!

You also said:

"I'm the kind of guy who believes that if a tree falls in a forest that it does in fact make a sound."

I will agree with you forever that if what we perceive and call a "tree" moves in such a way as to qualify as a "fall" in the real world, those causes cause some kind of effect- that our ears PERCEIVE as a "sound".   We think they vibrations in the air.  Fine- let's go with that but remember that is HUMAN TALK for the EFFECTS of causes we cannot know!!

But if no one perceives what we will call "vibrations" - are they a "sound" or are "sounds" something heard by a person?

It doesn't matter what you think just as long as you know there is a distinction there.  Is something red "in the unseeable world" if red is something that is a human mental state ??  It's the same kind of question.

Now let's take Rorty one step further- he is actually talking next about your precise point with the tree in the forest- but in very general terms, and more abstract that your example- he is CONTRASTING ALL instances of perceptions with unknowable causes and how we SPEAK about them

Rorty:

Quote

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.

 

So when you talk about the tree in the forest making a "sound"- what is that word "sound"?   Is it a tree? NO.  Is it a perception? NO.  It is a NAME of a type of perception that we, in human language call a "sound". 

Are human languages human creations?  I think that is indisputable.

So speaking about sound is speaking in a humanly created language ABOUT a specific type of human perception.  We are not talking about the "world out there" we are talking about human perceptions in human languages!

No humans, no languages, no word "sound".  No human perceptions- just unknowable causes independent of our perceptions duking it out as causes of our perceptions - but still we cannot get outside of our perceptions!

Back to Rorty: 

Quote

   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.

So supposedly forever, "truth" has been seen as a description "corresponding to the real world" but now philosophers realize that we can NEVER SEE THE REAL WORLD IF IT IS OUTSIDE OF HUMAN PERCEPTIONS

So pick any sentence we would say is "true"- "There car is red" (and suppose the car IS red)  Any reasonable human would agree knowing what a car is and what the color is - that the car is red.

But wait- is that a statement about the unseeable world beyond perception or is it only a statement in human language about human perceptions?   It is the latter- clearly.   We know what a "car" is and we perceive "red".

But what is it in the world "out there"?  the perceptions are the effects of causes beyond perception and beyond language because both of those are human creations.  So we cannot say anything "true" about the world "out there"- but only about our perceptions of it.

And so truth exists within human contexts and is not about the "world out there" at all!

It's true if humans agree it is because every element of it is based on human intellect from the raw perception itself to the sentence which is also a human creation.

 

[member10_1]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

All we can see is our own perceptions. But then it will be face-to-face, and we will see the swirling quarks or whatever it is.

Won’t “whatever it is” still be our perception of whatever it is? 

 

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, member10_1 said:

Won’t “whatever it is” still be our perception of whatever it is? 

 

I can say with absolute certainty that I haven't a clue. 

It will either be a wonderful time to reevaluate everything or it won't. Either the heaven paradigm will have predictive value or it won't. The story goes we are here to exercise Faith anyway right?

Of that I am absolutely certain.

All I know is that a lot of words have been written about what it will be like, if it happens, to not have words.

How can words describe what will be wordless by their own assumptions?

And of course everyone else speak English anyway, unless our immediate requirement is to go directly to "Heavenese 101".

It's a little hard to see without eyes and speak without a mouth.

 

Edited April 27, 2019 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

On 4/25/2019 at 11:04 AM, USU78 said:

somatosensors

At first glance I was positive that said "tomato sensors".

That's what happens when you read too fast.  I must have been hungry.

Edited April 28, 2019 by mfbukowski

[SteveO]

On 4/26/2019 at 2:41 PM, mfbukowski said:

YES- I agree with that entirely as well- no problem.

Again we get back to Rorty.   I pick Rorty because of all the explanations I have seen for this way of seeing the world, his is the most lucid and he is called the "lucid philosopher"

I will take it line by line- from my siggy- which contains the attribution if anyone cares.

Rorty:

This is precisely what you just said!! 

You:

"I believe there is a real world out there beyond my perceptions that will keep on existing whether I'm perceiving it or not."

YES there is a real world out there beyond our perceptions - which are the EFFECTS of CAUSES which we did NOT CREATE.

SOMETHING is out there causing our perceptions but we can't ever get outside our perceptions to find out what it is!!

You also said:

"I'm the kind of guy who believes that if a tree falls in a forest that it does in fact make a sound."

I will agree with you forever that if what we perceive and call a "tree" moves in such a way as to qualify as a "fall" in the real world, those causes cause some kind of effect- that our ears PERCEIVE as a "sound".   We think they vibrations in the air.  Fine- let's go with that but remember that is HUMAN TALK for the EFFECTS of causes we cannot know!!

But if no one perceives what we will call "vibrations" - are they a "sound" or are "sounds" something heard by a person?

It doesn't matter what you think just as long as you know there is a distinction there.  Is something red "in the unseeable world" if red is something that is a human mental state ??  It's the same kind of question.

Now let's take Rorty one step further- he is actually talking next about your precise point with the tree in the forest- but in very general terms, and more abstract that your example- he is CONTRASTING ALL instances of perceptions with unknowable causes and how we SPEAK about them

Rorty:

So when you talk about the tree in the forest making a "sound"- what is that word "sound"?   Is it a tree? NO.  Is it a perception? NO.  It is a NAME of a type of perception that we, in human language call a "sound". 

Are human languages human creations?  I think that is indisputable.

So speaking about sound is speaking in a humanly created language ABOUT a specific type of human perception.  We are not talking about the "world out there" we are talking about human perceptions in human languages!

No humans, no languages, no word "sound".  No human perceptions- just unknowable causes independent of our perceptions duking it out as causes of our perceptions - but still we cannot get outside of our perceptions!

Back to Rorty: 

So supposedly forever, "truth" has been seen as a description "corresponding to the real world" but now philosophers realize that we can NEVER SEE THE REAL WORLD IF IT IS OUTSIDE OF HUMAN PERCEPTIONS

So pick any sentence we would say is "true"- "There car is red" (and suppose the car IS red)  Any reasonable human would agree knowing what a car is and what the color is - that the car is red.

But wait- is that a statement about the unseeable world beyond perception or is it only a statement in human language about human perceptions?   It is the latter- clearly.   We know what a "car" is and we perceive "red".

But what is it in the world "out there"?  the perceptions are the effects of causes beyond perception and beyond language because both of those are human creations.  So we cannot say anything "true" about the world "out there"- but only about our perceptions of it.

And so truth exists within human contexts and is not about the "world out there" at all!

It's true if humans agree it is because every element of it is based on human intellect from the raw perception itself to the sentence which is also a human creation.

 

I’m curious what you think about people’s experience with psychedelics?  I was listening to Joe Rogan a few days ago, and he was discussing his experiences.  He’s not religious and probably identifies as agnostic—but he claims he definitely has had “life altering” spiritual experiences, as a number of other users claim.  

I thought it interesting how Arthur Kane from the rock band “New York Dolls” converted to the church.  He said the spiritual witness he received was like a trip, just without the drugs.

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18 minutes ago, SteveO said:

I’m curious what you think about people’s experience with psychedelics?  I was listening to Joe Rogan a few days ago, and he was discussing his experiences.  He’s not religious and probably identifies as agnostic—but he claims he definitely has had “life altering” spiritual experiences, as a number of other users claim.  

I thought it interesting how Arthur Kane from the rock band “New York Dolls” converted to the church.  He said the spiritual witness he received was like a trip, just without the drugs.

Not sure if you have read up on the studies by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins(?); if not you may be interested. It’s fascinating stuff (one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5772431/)

He has also given a number of interviews and presentations on his findings: Spiritual practice (including proper set and setting) + psilocybin leads to some of the most meaningful and life altering experiences of the participants’ lives.