Oh I was thinking about the relationship between science and history and religion, and the place of scientism -- I can see how there's something related there, but it's not clear enough yet.

For one, we use "scientism" differently but from similar resources. And I'm still puzzling through that one. For two you prefer to start on the ontological side where my habit is to start on the methodological side.

This relates because the Bible, if we take it from the perspective of the writers, is written before "Science" was really a genre at all, or at least not recognizably so. So things like method and ontology are devices we're bringing to the text to make sense of it more than what the writers were thinking about in writing.

But that takes it up a level of abstraction and out of the more down-to-earth arguments you're dealing with here. It also makes it less philosophy of religion and goes back to philosophy of knowledge, more.

Hegel's a trip. :D

But I suspect he's basically a rationalist crank, at bottom. A very good one with great points, but as you ascertained I am a skeptic :D

My relationship w/ Hegel is love-hate.

Well, technically speaking, it wouldn't be a belief either. It would be a divine revelation — Arcane Sandwich

Or, on the other hand, a preference I have: an opinion that I care about.

Because we like to has satisfactory stories that make sense to us.

It's a just-so story which goes alongside the divine just-so story. Why do we find religion everywhere? Well, in one just-so story it's because there's a divinity within us all. In another it's because those are the social organisms which survived the process of primitive accumulation.

The work of putting together the science or the history is something which no individual can do by themselves -- it's already a collective effort by the many who have come before. But I still have to live my life and in that process I tend to acquire beliefs and answer questions even if I can't attend to those at the level of scientific or historical discourse.

I just don't then go on to say that the belief is scientific or historical.

Yes, they do. Catholics love Tolkien. Priests even compare Jesus to Gandalf. What Church people in general don't like, is Dungeons and Dragons (they think it's Satanic). But they like Tolkien. — Arcane Sandwich

Do they treat it as the same as the Bible?

We can use another book because the point I'm making is it's not really the text but the reader. I thought you were saying "He's Catholic" as in to say "Look, no one will treat Tolkien like Mathew, because he's Catholic"

Yes, the story has a Catholic allegory to it. So suppose 2000 years in the future the Bible is destroyed and all we have is The Lord of the Rings. In that scenario I could see people treating The Lord of the Rings in the same manner -- it's got stories and allegories and all the rest of his beliefs interwoven into a compelling narrative of sacrifice.

There are even other texts after scattered all throughout our culture that mimic the tropes of The Lord of the Rings. Today we call it Fantasy Literature, but tomorrow we could compose an anthology of such literature by different authors and treat it exactly as we treat the Bible today.

I think this explains why there are so many religions with competing visions -- there's a basic human need to feel more than what one is, and these rituals are the means by which this is achieved.

Is it? Yes or no? — Arcane Sandwich

No. I don't believe it is. I'd say it's lesser than the Bible or Qu'ran or various other practices and more on par with L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology. It's entirely made up for the purpose of manipulating people.

But to them? It absolutely is. And the lessons serve the same -- basically it's origin is irrelevant to its function. The literal truth of the Book of Mormon, by my lights, is it was written by a con artist who liked being in charge of others.

But that was 200 years ago. Today? Totally irrelevant to the meaning of the text when it's read in Church by a believer.

But when it's read by me? Yeah, I tend to think of it at the L. Ron Hubbard level rather than the Biblical level.

Ok, you're a skeptic then. — Arcane Sandwich

Always :). A skeptic and a realist, though -- and thereby atheist. But this gets back to another point we haven't worked out and is way off topic from what is threatening to derail a good conversation I've been reading along with. Sorry about that, I just meant to answer the one question and then we got into a back and forth.

It would be a scientific problem to investigate. — Arcane Sandwich

And that would be your scientific hypothesis.

Can you prove it? — Arcane Sandwich

If at the level of science? No, certainly not. Not even at the level of history, except for pointing to a handful of examples I'm sure we're both familiar with. And I wouldn't even expect conquest to be the main mechanism of transfer, I'm only offering one possible alternative to the existence of the divine in human beings.

I'm a little uncertain that any of this will ever be able to be cached out in terms scientific or historical.

Please try to understand it. — Arcane Sandwich

Mkay. I'll refrain from posting until then. Good exchange.

Only to the extent that human imagination has a divine nature, not a physical nature. The imagination of the res cogitans is only the secular version of the imagination of the res divina. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not sure about that. What if the reason people adopt a text has more to do with who controls the grain? Seems common that religions spread with conquest.

The awe of what, if not the divine? The Cartesian res divina, instead of the res cogitans or the res extensa. — Arcane Sandwich

Awe of us imagining what it was like then, of relating to a person thousands of years distant from you through writing and getting a sense for an entirely different lived world that is, somehow, still something we come to understand.

Who cares? The Catholic church is just an institution. It's a human construct. Divinity is not. — Arcane Sandwich

I mean that people would not dismiss Tolkien's works as a story only because he was a Catholic. The text can be read as an allegory and treated as the sacred texts are. People today wouldn't treat them like that. But the phenomena has happened as recently as the early 1800's when Joseph Smith wrote The Book of Mormon and created a religion -- the book reads like the fan fiction of the Bible that it is.

And yet, people derive meaning for their entire lives from it and connect to the Divine.

What's different there? The lack of a spokesperson for the text as divine, for one -- Tolkien does not say his text is divine. But you can surely see how if not Tolkien some work of fiction, today, could become a sacred text tomorrow because that's already happened before.

Then you haven't understood Ibn Arabi's ↪point, then. — Arcane Sandwich

Fair.

It's talking about a memory as ancient as the Paleolithic, when everyone was a nomadic hunter-gatherer. This makes it more ancient than anything anyone else has to say. Bring your favorite poets to this discussion, quote Emily D. for all I care. I believe what Pslam 22:1, part 21 says: There was a time when lions were our natural predators, there was a time when the wild oxen could kill us when we were just minding our own business. — Arcane Sandwich

Right! I agree with this perspective. That's part of the awe.

But you know that's not all that's in there. There's more to it than the Psalms. There are histories, mythologies, family trees, -- it's the very stuff of human imagination and care.

I don't know what that means. — Arcane Sandwich

It means that how we read a book makes the meaning different, and the reader is where I'd be inclined to pinpoint the difference.

No, Tolkien was a Catholic. — Arcane Sandwich

Does that mean some 2000 years later people couldn't read his work in awe of the imagination of the people of the 21'st century? Say the Catholic church dissipates in that time.

If only I had a very good distinction, then I'd have started there.

Tolkien I'd be inclined to call "just literature" -- a story for fun.

The difference as I see it is in how we approach the text. So in some future perhaps Tolkien's works could form the basis of a religion after the reality of the text's production are long forgotten.

Also I see value in trying to understand the past which we came from, so that alone makes the Bible more valuable -- it's one of the early documents. It sheds insight into human nature just by that fact.

But when we approach the Bible we approach it like it has some hidden wisdom within, and derive meaning from that reading. I think it's much the same as how we read poems and watch plays -- it's a deep interpretation between ourselves and the text. With Tolkien we treat the exercise in imagination as a game, but not so with the Bible.

Right! It's literature, not just literature.

I'm an atheist. Am I forced to agree with you? Do I have to "get along" with you, as you yourself say? — Arcane Sandwich

Nope, not at all.

Then it is worthy of worship, by the literal definition of the word "sacred". — Arcane Sandwich

Truth by definition?

No, I think it means it's what I care about, but no one else need to -- and many don't.

What's wrong with living in the clouds? — Arcane Sandwich

Absolutely nothing. It's where I see a meaningful life. But I think we have to look up to them, meaning staying grounded, and that's a lot of where I'm coming from in treating the sacred texts as literature.

It's not a move of denigration, but elevation. It's just not scientific truth, or historical truth as I see it.

With respect to the naturalistic fallacy -- "We have to get along" ought not be read as making a claim on moral truth. We certainly can, and will, go extinct.

But that general collective spirit is what I tend to think of in terms of what people want and do. People like to survive, and we can't do that by ourselves, so we have to get along insofar that we want to delay extinction.

You say that like there's something wrong with it. Is there? Philosophically speaking. — Arcane Sandwich

Only that it indicates to me that the point of the story isn't literal.

That is, to treat the text like its spelling out philosophical truths about God or Jesus seems erroneous to me. It's literature. It requires interpretation.

What would the atheist tell you? — Arcane Sandwich

No, we are not worthy of worship.

Who says that we have to get along? Creatures kill each other. We are creatures. Why should we not kill each other? — Arcane Sandwich

That's sort of the central bit I'd start with in talking about the divine: to me life is sacred, but we must kill eachother on this world. So, we live by an earthly ethic, even if individuals pursue heavenly aims like pacifism.

But that desire to be more than human? That's very human. And, as you can see from the state of the world, we don't even live up to that. "getting along" includes killing. It demands it. Those who ignore their duty to note kill are deluded, by this ethic, living in the clouds.

I'll tell you why: because it would be a naturalistic fallacy to suppose that creatures ought to do what creatures are.

Do you know who preached that truth, among other people?

Yeah. They call him "Jesus Christ".

They call him "Jesus Christ", sure. And they call Gandalf Gandalf.

The truths that are there aren't literal, if they are truths at all. I'd be more inclined to call Biblical truths so-called truths and the deeper meanings of Tolkien as somehow lesser, but in what way are they?

Even if he was a man his function in the story is to be a font of wisdom, right? So like the philosopher he's part-man, part-divine.

Are you not familiar with the the concept of the Passion of Jesus? — Arcane Sandwich

Which part of the wiki ought I look at for the specific concept? I'm surely familiar with the gospels. And in each one of them Jesus performs more miracles with each retelling. Almost like it's being told by a group of people who want to one-up eachother on just how holy Jesus was.

Why wouldn't they be? The word "pathetic" is etymologically rooted in the word "pathos", which means passion. — Arcane Sandwich

If he is then he's not worthy of worship, right?

We have to get along -- but it's an earthly existence, and not a heavenly one.

heh, prophets.

If so then the gods I see are a little bit pathetic ;)

Sure.

But I want to avoid speaking for the Muslim, or any other religious perspective. I've attended Islamic service and that's where my knowledge of Muhammed and Jesus both being profits in Islam comes from; since there's also theological disputes I append "generally"

So here I resort to what I see -- I grant the possibility, but religious claims often come back to this basic relationship of "seeing as": the point of the scripture is to help the reader see the world as such-and-such a person. The subject of the work isn't God as much as humanity.

From my perspective it's because performing miracles is a trope of the literature -- the Buddha also performed miracles in various stories. What it does is differentiate the character from the rest in the story so that you know you should listen to them as a font of special wisdom. Also I think these are features of the stories for the more literally minded who will shrug at doing virtue for its own reward, but when put in earthly terms like magic which fulfills desires and other earthly, human rewards then the more literally minded will understand.

I know that generally speaking Jesus is considered to be a prophet like Muhammed was a prophet -- so I'm inclined to read "We gave Jesus son of Mary the clear proofs" as saying he's on par with Muhammed, but not God.

Cool. And yes, the next step is the iterative and constructive aspect of language, allowing the construction of our social world. — Banno

Yes, there is something of the deflationary account in ↪Count Timothy von Icarus's reply. Although ""truth is the adequacy of thought to being" is pretty obtuse, and might look a bit like correspondence. — Banno

@Count Timothy von Icarus's account looks to me to be a correspondence theory.

The dog thinks, I think, and we can conform our thoughts to the world in our own way and when we do so we have some kind of truth.

I'm wondering if some of the conflict here is due to our preferences on whether we ought start on the side of metaphysics or whether we ought start on the side of epistemics.

I look forward to reading your contribution :)

I see. From my point of view, "nothing is really true tout court, but this varies by context," seems like a very consequential metaphysical position. It claims that most metaphysical outlooks (certainly historically, but also likely in contemporary thought) are crucially mistaken. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True! That's pretty much what I suspect -- I don't know if I believe it yet or not because I remain uncertain about how one justifies metaphysical beliefs.

These days I tend to think of the real as absurd -- "atoms and void" swerving about without any meaning. And the atoms need not be how we understand atoms today, though they can be. But it's an explicitly metaphysical belief rather than the science of chemistry. Chemistry will survive even if a metaphysics of the absurd -- atoms and void -- turns out false.

Likewise, what is the status of moral realism when the truth values of moral facts are allowed to vary based on "whim," as you put it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now I could turn you off entirely by admitting what I believe :D -- I'm still a moral nihilist in the sense that I don't think there are true "ought" statements. There's more to this based on what I see in the world and how human beings behave, but that's way off course.

But moral realism can work with what I'm proposing. Suppose we have a sentence like:

"Everyone ought take care of their parents in their old age because they took care of you in your young age"

We can say this is true. If it's true then it's a fact. (My belief on facts is that they are true sentences)

Now, as I think of facts that does not thereby mean there's a moral reality which secures our moral propositions or makes them true. But a moral realist would assert that just as we have objects in the world to which we're referring to there are also morals -- of some kind or other, that are hard to specify -- which "ought" statements can refer to. And they can be true or false on the basis of that reference (which, I take it, would be to possible acts we can take)

One can bracket the question of "what is truth," and investigate how the term is used in language, mathematics, etc. without having to commit to deflation however. I do not agree that it is a position that comes with fewer commitments. Agnosticism would be a position that comes with fewer commitments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the idea is to minimize, rather than eliminate, commitments. Else we run into problems of begging the question when we come to arguments about what is real. (though if we're truly agnostic, sure, that's fewer commitments -- but it doesn't say anything either)

Deflation is at least a position though, and I respect it for that. The only approach that really irks me is the methodology of trying to present every significant philosophical problem as a "pseudoproblem." Some problems are pseudoproblems of course, but these folks are like someone who thinks every problem must be a nail because they have discovered a hammer.

Oh, yes. I'm not one to reduce philosophical questions to pseudoproblems, except to say that they need not be solved to live a good life: I don't think people need to do philosophy to live fulfilling and happy lives.

But that doesn't mean they're pseudo-problems, from my perspective. And even if they were I don't mind investigating them for fun.

Makes sense.

I think what animals are doing is offer a contrast to what we're doing in order to understand language. The way I'm thinking about language the dog doesn't have the capacity to refer, though I suspect they can individuate -- food is different from bowl.

The animal is serving as a kind of "substitute" for our animal side in trying to separate out what makes human language different.

Or, on the other hand, it's a counter-example if we believe that the dog can refer or have true beliefs.

I think part of the motivation for deflation arises from the position that truth applies only to sentences. Such a position seems to lead down that path. Perhaps the idea that knowledge is just belief that happens to be justified and true also leads down this way. Earlier eras distinguished between many types of knowledge. Continental philosophy also tends to be more likely to differentiate many types of knowledge. Plato had four, Aristotle five (and arguably more). "Knowing how to ride a bike," sense knowledge, noeisis, etc. However, if knowledge, the grasp of truth, is always propositional, then it makes more sense for sentences to be the primary bearers of truth, and also for what is "known" or "true" to vary by language game.

Anyhow, an interesting consequence of sentences being true "of themselves" without relation to the intellect is that a random text generator "contains" all truths. There is some interesting stuff to unpack there. From an information theoretic perspective, a random text generator only provides information about its randomization process, the semantic meaning of any output being accidental (and highly unlikely). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see attraction to deflationary theories because I don't like to decide metaphysical questions on the epistemic side -- there's going to be implications no matter what, but the epistemic side is attempting to minimize the number of implications a given theory of truth will have. A correspondence theory will require a mind, a world, objects in the world, and something the mind does that's related to the world such that "correspondence" is real. A pragmatic theory of truth will imply that truth is something that arises from human activity and so we came up with this word "true" in order to help us do things in the world.

The deflationary account says there's nothing much to say about truth -- and can, in a way, accommodate both substantive theories by referring to a context -- this is the context of correspondence which is determined by the conversation we're participating in, and this is hte context of "I don't care what the real explanation is I just want to get the job done" so we adopt the pragmatic theory.

It allows us to choose a substantive theory of truth for the context we're in -- but that suggests that there's nothing really to truth.


I don't think that the LLM's we presently have contains truth in them because they're not people with desires and relationships but a toy. While I don't think there's much to the metaphysics of truth I do think that truth is a very human concern. Or, at least, something which we become concerned about because we're able to think about why I was wrong that one time and how can I make it better in the future.

Mostly to help us make sense of the Dog, I think. We are so accustomed to thinking in terms of belief that we have to interpret the dog as having them in order to understand their behavior, much as we do with other people.

And, us being animals, we really have some things in common with them -- like what mentions in this post: Frustration, confusion, error, correction all seem to happen.

But since they're not doing math or using money or making laws we can tell they're different.

Truth is determined by whims? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Pretty much.

We desire to know the truth for -- what reason?

Some people desire to know the truth so that they might be able to predict the future.

Some people desire to know the truth so that they know where they came from.

Sometimes it's out of curiosity. Sometimes out of wonder. Sometimes out of love. Sometimes out of hate.

The number of desires which lead a person to desire truth is myriad. And desires are what drive us to seek out truth. We want to be able to say "Thought conforms to being" -- but couldn't say that without language, or even think it without language.

But sometimes we want to be able to say "My perception corresponds to an object" -- here pointing out that we can us "...is true" for more than sentences, albeit still being a meta-lingual predicate. Why would we do such a thing?

Because we like truth. We want to be certain. We want the airplane to fly or to know what is good.

What doesn't matter is how we theorize truth -- we'll still want it to do pretty much what it's been doing the entire time. It's just gets complicated when we try to theorize it, and generally it's easier to say "I know you know what truth is, and we don't need to define it at all if we want to seek it out"

Note how the T-Sentence has a similar form to your notion of truth, it's just using a smaller vocabulary.

"P" is true if and only if P. So we have language, or thought, on the left hand side and the sentence which is being used in a context on the right-hand side -- or Being.

The same form as you have is there, it's just trying to assume less about truth.

And it's worth noting that truth and reference are separate topics. At least to my mind -- I don't see the relationship between truth and reference until we're talking about whole sentences, at least.

It's debatable if deflationary theories of truth "do not say there are no truths." They say that truth is just how we use the token "true" in speech and thought, as the post you quoted points out, so it was clear what was being discussed. And if one affirms that one selects logics and "ways of speaking" based on what is useful, it follows that truth will determined by usefulness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's determined by the individual's whim more than even usefulness.

The thing is, we like truth. It's something we seek for its own sake. But a theory of truth cannot tell us what is true, except perhaps for what is true about truth.

I prefer deflationary theories of truth if we have to say anything about truth at all, but usually I think it's best to understand truth as something very simple, which is part of why it escapes our theorizing. The deflationary theory is there to try and escape some of the criticisms of the substantive theories of truth, but for the most part I take it that truth is embedded in language -- it's a meta-lingual predicate which talks about sentences and the properties we attribute to sentences. Our changing a theory of truth won't change truth, but it's really only because we like truth -- attribute truth to sentences -- that we wonder about and theorize about truth.

But the theory of truth is not the phenomena, truth.

And I think we can separate out theories of truth from theories of reference -- one does not decide the other.

Davidson took language perhaps too seriously, holding that a dog for example could not believe that there was food in its bowl becasue it could not form the sentence "There is food in my bowl".

For my part, I have argued that the dog does not need to form the sentence, but that we can form the sentence may be sufficient for us to ascribe the belief to the dog.

And further, the belief is not a thing in the mind of the dog, but is attributed to the dog by those with language. And in the case of human belief, one is able to attribute belief to oneself. Attributing a belief to itself is not something a dog can do. — Banno

That's pretty close to how I think of language -- the dog has a kind of animla-belief, but doesn't believe the English sentence "The kibble is in my bowl"

A dog will mark its territory and defend it, but it won't appeal to a bigger dog to enforce some agreed upon social rules. It may try to get friends, but it won't make an appeal to a law.

Heh, yes -- Kind of asking if "Sky Father" is a pejorative in the same sense. I don't think it is, and will keep it in mind for the future.

Fair enough. I've been pinned to the matt on that one.

How do you feel about 's term?

Well, when you say "Pejorative" I agree.

It's pejorative, though I didn't think of it as a slur -- not in the way people use racial terms, for instance.

But pejorative in the sense that it's meant to indicate we don't believe that's the case, yes.

And insulting -- I can see that. Better words can be chosen if we want open communication, that's for sure.

What's the better way to refer to God when speaking about people who believe that God is above us, in a literal sense, and male, and providing us guidance?

Between two atheists who walked into the bar?

It's a public board, but he was responding to me -- I get the slogan. "Sky Daddy" need not be the word, and I wouldn't use it towards a believer because anyone who bothers talking about this stuff probably doesn't believe in a sky daddy at all -- it's more sophisticated than that.

I think it's important to note how many people believe in literal interpretations of scripture, though.

They resort to slurs like "sky daddy" because they are too dumb to mount a coherent argument. — Leontiskos

I want to say -- while "sky daddy" is something which any philosophically inclined person would think of as false, it's not hard to see that people really do believe in a sky daddy. Or something along those lines.

It's not a slur because there are people who literally believe in that. Demons walk earth, God floats above, Hell is underneath the earth -- the whole bit. I know this because I've had people claim things to me like "Dark magic exists" or "I've seen a demon, I know they are real" or "The Bible says giants existed, therefore they exist" or, or or or or -- so many claims. We need not say "sky daddy", but we could say "wrestling warrior", since Israel gained his name by wrestling God down. In the literal sense.

It's not trolling so much as pointing out that many people really do believe these things.

That they accept and move on with life doesn't mean that they are not awed by thunder or enraptured by a sunrise. — Banno

I agree with you here. I often struggle in making a distinction between human beings and our close cousins, but it really still seems to me that language is what differentiates us from those species.

But problems happen when folk think they can prove that their sky daddy exists using the ontological argument, and so that anyone who says otherwise is anathema. — Banno

Yeah.

And before that, really. "This land is my land, not your land..."

I'll show you!


(EDIT: Silly joke that popped to mind immediately and I had to say it)

I agree with that distinction. That makes sense to me.

It's a human desire. It doesn't seem to be the case that other animals share that same desire. So how could it be natural? Unless such a desire is part of human nature. But we humans are not just humans. — Arcane Sandwich

"Natural" as in "understandable" -- and I do tend to think of human beings as animals, and that insofar that a human being can conceive of something more than the basic life process they will, naturally, come to want more than a biological existence.

That is, I don't think there's a God in the external world, though there may be one in someone's internal life. And maybe we could visit him through the spiritual rituals. Though in keeping with dropping internal/external, I would simply say "Even though God exists, there will not be an afterlife, and there is no knowledge of goodness. God exists to sooth the human soul, not to create the world"

So the God which mystics speak about, how they mean it, would not exist for all that. They mean it a bit more literally than I tend to think of these things.

By 'ineffable' I mean our experience cannot be adequately described. Every experience is unique, and giving word to it only generalizes something which is profoundly particular. It is the particularity of experience which is ineffable. — Janus

Sometimes I feel like I do know what other people mean and feel, though -- it takes a long-term relationship of care, and we'll never be one another, but we're able to communicate our experiences just fine.

Now, if there is no relationship there or something then I'd say my experience is ineffable -- language doesn't magically give the ability to communicate.

But I do think there are conditions in which we can describe our experiences to one another and that language enables us to do that (not all by itself, but it enables).

It seems to me that language enables much more than mere "species' reproduction"—language is not even really needed for that, although of course humans use it for that purpose.

O I agree with you here. I think it's our niche, but much "came along with" basically -- things unrelated to what language does for us in terms of our biological niche.

The thing with religious experiences (speaking only from my own personal experiences) is that they sort of impose themselves upon you, whether you're an atheist or not. Granted, I've only had them under the influence of psychoactive drugs. — Arcane Sandwich

Heh. I would call some of my experiences mystical, at least -- reveries or communions or a dissolution of the self. Much of life is not explicable in terms of scientific knowledge. I grew up in a church and noticed how the feelings which are evoked to persuade people into belief are frequently evoked everywhere in order to maintain beliefs. So it wasn't God, exactly, but us who cared about all these various things and human beings being human beings. From my perspective the desire for the mystical and God is about as human as human comes -- it's a natural desire to want more than to eat, shit, sleep, fuck, and die.

For my part I also see value in keeping science out of mystical experiences for the sake of the science -- I've often found it very interesting how people of competing faiths can nevertheless find common ground in producing knowledge. It hints at, to me, that metaphysics are entirely disconnected from the sciences -- whether we are material or spiritual we can still know things about the world.

But the moment you start talking about what the science ultimately means, in some philosophical sense, then the same people who can work together in producing knowledge will wildly disagree.

But this is just a theory, it could be false, and it probably is. — Arcane Sandwich

Oh I think it's definitely a worthy theory! It's possible!

I certainly don't think that my just-so story is even a theory -- just a way to answer the question so I can then say "But I don't know" without feeling completely lost.

Are they really that different? — Arcane Sandwich

At the level of function they're not -- but conscious experience has no function, as far as I can tell. There is no point to it.

But mostly I'm meaning that as a reductio that what we are is our brain since we do experience a similar world and are even able to determine that our brains are similar.

Sure. And perhaps the similarities of our brains are, in part, responsible for that shared world. That's another way to think about it. We both speak English, but we also have similar brains, at least anatomically, and I'd argue that their neurochemistry is similar as well. — Arcane Sandwich

It's possible, but I don't think it's true. I think it takes much more than a brain -- a body, a community, and language all seem to be a part of conscious experience to me.

Maybe Reality (with a capital "R") is like a multi-faceted crystal, such that each mystic perceives one facet at a time. It's not that one of them is right and the other one is wrong, maybe each of them perceives just a small part of what ↪Wayfarer (and I) call "the great perfection". — Arcane Sandwich

That's basically what I think, but not crystalline.

But I can tell that the mystic means something different than this -- by visiting God they are taken away from this world, this world is somehow lesser, or the divine is somehow greater.

Whereas for me, while I believe the mystic I don't think that the mystic has scientific knowledge, and going back to the "if forced to choose" thing I simply don't believe that such experiences are anything more than a deeply human need that not everyone has.

Basically I think about it in terms of psychology and anthropology rather than what the mystic often means. I can tell that we don't believe the same thing because even if I had the experience I would be skeptical of God's existence -- mystical experience may satisfy the need for meaning, but it does not provide a basis for scientific discovery.

Notice that there's also something else that seems to remain invariant: religious experiences seem to be distributed worldwide. There are tribes in the Amazon rainforest that have never had any contact with tribes in West Africa. Yet both tribes have their own religions, with their corresponding religious experiences. And we could also mention native Australian tribes, which have never had any contact with the Amazonian or the African tribes. And they have religious experiences as well. How is that even possible? What is the explanation for this phenomenon? Is it just a coincidence? — Arcane Sandwich

I tie it to language -- with the ability to know comes the ability to crave more than the animals. We can conceive of things which are impossible to satisfy. We have fears which cannot be assuaged. In a way the acquisition of language, looked at metaphorically, is The Fall as portrayed in the Bible. Before the ape lived an animal life, and after new desires were born.

Insatiable desires are what religion seeks to satisfy.

But this is very "Anthropologist sitting in a chair looking back" wondering -- it's not something I really believe I know an explanation for. It's part of why these arguments are interesting to me; but at the end of the day I know I'm more like an anthropologist of religion than a true believer. (I just don't claim that this is based on rationality) -- and I definitely think that science has nothing to say on the matter, for or against. The psychology or anthropology of religion just isn't treating the phenomena the same as the mystic is.

True, it's not what's being claimed, but is that the only (or the main) reason why you're hesitant to say that it's just something going on in the brain? — Arcane Sandwich

First thing that pops to mind is the problem of consciousness and the problem of other minds: brains all by themselves are as dumb as a pile of guts.

In terms of the mystic it's sort of undermining to attribute their philosophical or religious belief to a brain-event. If I were to utilize that same reasoning I'd have to be consistent and note that my own belief is also the result of my brain-events, and furthermore, since our brains are different, I would have to conclude that their brain-events are not like my brain-events, and therefore, I would have no real way to disbelieve the mystic.

Since all of our brains are different we all live in our own worlds and the mystics claim is probably true in his world, though not in mine.

But I really don't believe we are in our brain or our experiences are in the brain like that. I think we have a shared world, and the mystic saw a different part of it than I did. Which part of the world we seek out depends much on what we want in the first place -- if we're building a bridge we want predictable repetition to hold it sturdy.

But if we're seeking meaning in life then visiting God probably is a bit better at that.

I just don't really think these experiences secure scientific justification. There's no science which will tell us which mystic is right -- and while there is some overlap in their feelings when it comes to more concrete claims and descriptions there's a lot of divergence too. Sometimes people come away from mystical experience with a deeper appreciation for life, and some people prefer that there's a strict list of rules by which to judge oneself and others and so seek out the mystical experience, and some people are just born poets and so don't have to jump through all those hoops to appreciate the beauty of the world.

But for all of these people the sciences will remain relatively invariant. They'll have different takes or develop things in different directions and find different flaws because of that, but the justifications there demand more intersubjective agreement than what the mystics provide.

Which is kind of a naturalized, bastardized Kant -- there may be mystical knowledge which helps us live pragmatic lives, but it won't be a proper scientific knowledge.

↪Moliere I think we are always already back there—and that's the ineffable part of our experience our words cannot capture. Poetry, literature, perhaps come closest. — Janus

I'm less certain of ineffability (at least, in principle ineffability), though I can see how inscrutability could dove-tail into that.

I think of becoming-enlanguaged in analogy to a baptism: before language there is experience, after language the experience becomes effable, but also changes entirely such that most of the time our perceptions will be guided by our linguistic abilities. And I think of this is an enhancement of experience, where we are able to do more than follow our biological imperatives and wonder about things that no one wondered about before -- and be correct.

I don't think ants are curious like this, though they have their own ways of communicating -- and "ant-language" if we want to call it that. And closer to home it doesn't seem that Bonobos and orangutangs wonder about what reality is fundamentally made of.

There are clearly some examples of animals acting human-like, but my suspicion is that our language is kind of what forged an evolutionary niche for us, but that it's capable of doing much more than aiding the species' reproduction.