...might be loathe to admit it... — Gnomon

Though I appreciate you trying to use a possibly archaic word I recently used on the forum, I have to call a language foul. There are two different words, "loath" and "loathe".

You might say, "might be loath to admit it"
or, "might loathe admitting it"
but "might be loathe to admit it" is right out.

I suspect the lion’s share of those intuitions are formed by early adulthood , which may explain why philosophers like Heidegger, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were able to generate profound psychological insights while living essentially monastic lives. — Joshs

Perhaps. I have only a superficial view of those three.

I tend to find both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard rather overwrought, and not to my taste. Still, I can see how both express things that I can understand others to find psychologically liberating, even if I don't much relate.

I found it pleasant enough, even compelling at times, for many years. — BC

A wonderful renditions of what was my favorite song when I was seven years old:

Egads. Mormons would constitute 0.61% of Christians and UU would constitute 1% of Mormons. You are talking about tiny outliers here. — Leontiskos

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the presence of UU churches in the US is strongly correlated with the location of academic institutions.

Now the only Church leader who will say, "Oh okay, I agree that you are already Christian and require no baptism or initiation before joining our community," would be a Mormon leader. So you can go on claiming that Mormons are Christians, so long as it is admitted that 99% of Christians disagree with you. — Leontiskos

I can't say I have spent a lot of time in Unitarian Universalist Churches, but I wouldn't be surprised if a large percentage of UU leaders would be untroubled by such a claim by a Mormon. It seems more a matter of a church leader's ability to see past a tribalistic mindset, to me.

But I do value his attempt to order the world in such a way, even if it is ultimately missing something or wrong. By seeing his logic of synthesis of various fields, it might provide some insights into other things along the way, even if simply thinking of contrary perspectives to its totalizing tendency. — schopenhauer1

Agreed. :up:

Just like the Multiverse, "Information" seems to be a "catchall" for the "ground of being". apokrisis for example, will have a grand Peircean version of this consisting of a triadic grouping that must always be in the equation... — schopenhauer1

:rofl:

I think "Procrustean" would fit as well as "Peircean" a lot of the time.

In another thread I recently had a similar discussion where I got all hard-ass and philosophical about what a belief really is. — T Clark

Are you sure it wasn't this thread? :cool:

"endless forms most beautiful" that Darwin saw in Nature, and attributed to an unspecified "creator"*3. — Gnomon

You seem to be promoting misinformation, given the title of the book being On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

At least the link you provided corrects the record:

In March, 1863, Darwin wrote about this inclusion of the three significant words ~ by the Creator ~ to his friend and scientific confidante Joseph Hooker:-

"I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter."

This opens up a huge debate. Bringing up good citizens (let's suppose that this society is at least on some winding pathway towards civilization.) is a complicated and messy business. Formal education, as we understand it, is an important part of that. Don't think that I'm trying to disparage it. But play-time and parenting are important parts as well. Beyond that, I'm very confused. — Ludwig V

I just want to say, that I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

The suffering wouldn’t be from being isolated, but rather it would be discussed communally without being gaslit, distracted from it, or ignoring it, facing it and recognizing it communally. — schopenhauer1

Long ago I was fortunate to be part of a community along such lines, although these days I get such needs met through talking with individual friends. Anyway, I'll PM you, because a public forum isn't a very good place for discussing such things.

It is the extreme I am against. If someone believes they have an idea that can alter society 'at large' then they are peddling some form of ideology. I do not care how good the outcome they are hoping for is I just know it will not come to fruition how they expect.

No one is a prophet, they just play at being a prophet. Just because we remember those whose faulty predictions seem to have played out roughly as they said they would, this does not discount the hundreds of others who appeared to have had equally valid arguments but whose forecasts turned out to be completely wrong.

There is no 'Social Science' in anything but name. When people forget this horrific things happen. — I like sushi

I couldn't agree that there is no social science, although I'd likely agree that there is a 'fuzziness' to the 'objects' of social science, which is considerably different than the fuzziness of objects studied in physics. It seems to me that consideration of social science (or at least pseudo social science) plays a big role in philosophy. Of course social science on its own is a huge area of study, and we can't really expect anyone to have a complete understanding of all the subjects involved.

In any case it seems that you are opposed to is something I would think better labeled as social engineering.

The word used was "encourages" not demands or implores. Rather, if one is feeling isolated, lonely, and the only one suffering, it may be best to communicate this in a communal way with others feeling the same way. — schopenhauer1

So what if participation in such a community results in someone no longer feeling isolated, lonely, and as being the only one suffering? Would that person still be able to contribute to the community or would they need to persist in seeing themselves as the only one suffering to be recognzed as a member of such a community?

Changing society at large ... Have you already managed to pull off one, single change to society, no matter how small?
— Tarskian

I warned against anyone trying to do so and am against anyone trying to do so. — I like sushi

This seems a bit extreme to me. I see education as something that changes society, but I'm not against education.

Philosophical pessimism, as I have laid it out, encourages the development of communities based on real understanding and support, rather than superficial optimism. — schopenhauer1

And then calls doing so malignantly useless?

Modern Unitarians are as Christian as Mormons, which are not. Ancient unitarians are something else, which why we don't simply call them "Christian", but a modifier comes before. — Lionino

I'm inclined to leave arguing about who is truly a Christian, to those who want to call themselves Christians. It's not as if there exists some essence of True Christian.

But even if the answer to our initial question, “Can human behavior be studied scientifically,” is yes, that doesn’t imply it can be studied easily.

So you have gone from it being sheerly impossible to experimentally test human behavior to not easy.

FWIW, I just experimentally tested your behavior, and found that you were capable of going from making a ridiculously hyperbolic claim, to something more reasonable. It seemed like a pretty easy experiment to conduct to me.

The problem is rather that it is sheer impossible to experimentally test human behavior. — Tarskian

Why do you think that?

, are you familiar with the sort of psychological conditions associated with black and white thinking?

The Journey uses music. Isn't that a kind of universal language? — Amity

I'd have to say, that a more useful language for the companions is dancing. :grin:

But there is no theory of 'how brains generate consciousness'... — Wayfarer

You are thinking in black and white terms.

First off, we should be talking about a theory of minds, rather than mind.

Secondly, I certainly have a rough working hypothesis that has a lot of predictive strengths. Of course, it is certainly not anything like a complete theory. There is an enormous amount still to be learned, and good reason to doubt that any human could actually grasp what might (on some unknown criteria) be considered a finished theory of minds.

Thirdly, the fact that you don't have much of a working hypothesis yourself, seems like something that you might want to correct.

So, I have very little other than my own opinions of my ideas as a check on whether they are right or not. — Brendan Golledge

Perhaps this is a problem with considering a monastic life to be conducive to developing psychological insight? Considered from a neuroscientific perspective, a monastic life could be considered to be starving one's brain of the input that comes with interacting with diverse people in diverse situations. It doesn't seem to me like a monastic life would be very conducive to developing robust intuitons regarding human psychology.

To take it back to Christianity, do you think the diversity of people who Jesus is purported to have associated with might have been relevant to Jesus being particularly psychologically insightful?

Sam mentions the idea of the body as a 'receiver' or 'transmitter' akin to a television. Why is that necessarily a daft idea? — Wayfarer

It's not necessarily daft. However, in light of modern scientific understanding of the nature of brains, and the sort of information processing that can occur in neural networks, it's unparsimonious. I.e. "I have no need of that hypothesis."

:sparkle:

Thanks for sharing :sparkle: — Amity

Something Journey related I posted in another thread recently, that I think will give you a sense of how deeply affecting the game can be:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/924182

I gave a definition of "belief" in a previous post - "attitudes about the world which can be either true or false." You must be using a different definition, which makes fruitful discussion impossible. How can a picture or video be true or false? — T Clark

I was thinking about a mental model of an electronic circuit, with "picture" or "video" being words used to try to roughly convey a sense of what it is like for me subjectively to consider such a mental model.

By "true" in this case I mean that my mental model has a correspondence (or isomorphism) with what is going on within the physical system being mentally modeled. That correspondence (or lack thereof in the case of my mental model being false) is not dependent on whether I have attempted to convey my mental model using language.

Not to be cute, but since saying things uses words, how can you say you know things that aren't expressed in words. That's a serious question. — T Clark

Well knowing something about an electronics design I'm considering is often for me a matter of pictures or maybe something somewhat analogous to videos. (Although probably better to just substitute the more ambiguous term "mental model" for "video", because I wouldn't say that it is literally like a video.)

In any case, saying I know something is a different matter than expressing what it is that I know. I'm not likely to be able to express my knowledge of something without resorting to words in a lot of cases. Though I imagine that in some cases I could communicate things in pictures and without resorting to words, if I were attempting to communicate with someone with relevant background knowledge, who was aware of the somewhat strange communication game being played.

In fact the video game Journey is an example of such a strange communication game, as it doesn't provide for language use between players, but it certainly allows for teaching aspects of Journey-world physics via a sort of monkey-see/monkey-do mechanism. It tends to involve a bit of repetitive doing, until the other player develops recognition of a pattern to what is going on in our interactions, and the other player realizes that they can do something that they didn't previously realize that they could do.

So, can you have a belief that is not expressed in words? I think maybe the answer is "no," but I'm not sure. — T Clark

I find it interesting, in light of your career as an engineer, that you question having beliefs that are not expressed in words. I often believe, and I'd say know things, without the belief being expressed in words. For me putting my beliefs into words is often obviously secondary to having the belief itself.

You mentioned once, funneling facts into your head and engineering solutions arising later as a result. If you don't mind me asking, were the results that arose from this process results in the form of words?

But keeping it simple, supposing one has a general duty of care to one's fellow beings, one who is bent on harming his fellows thereby forfeits his own right to be cared for. — unenlightened

l think in a very practical sense of, 'this is the way things go among humans', I would have to agree with something like that. More idealistically I'd hope for caring for everyone, even knowing it's an ideal I can't come close to living up to.

It certainly is relevant to my having taken a chunk of brass rod to what I was afraid could turn into a gun fight. The guy with the gun was a coworker at my first job out of college, and it's really a story about a fucked up year in four people's lives.

I guess I was hoping mentioning having such an experience myself might motivate someone else to give an account of a relevant experience of their own, and spare me from feeling I should go into more detail. It's a story I would have to get out between bouts of tears and I'm awfully ambivalent about trying to condense it to reasonable post length.

I thought the claim to have acted in self defence was the way one justified an act of harm. You want a justification of the justification? — unenlightened

Maybe there is a difference between justifying to society and justifying to oneself that is relevant here?

The point is that having a religious background doesn't correlate all that well with people having psychological insight.

Perhaps you can provide an example of one of the horror stories. — T Clark

My father, shortly before he entered seminary, spanked me until I was black and blue when I was six months old because I wouldn't stop crying, and my mother stayed with him.

You say the validity of the psychological understanding expressed by religious beliefs is somehow invalid because of the consequences of actions by religious institutions. — T Clark

No, I didn't say anything about actions by religious institutions.

:grin:

I detest behaviourism. — Wayfarer

It is clear you have a negative attachment to behaviorism. That's why I found it ironic that you sounded like a behaviorist.

First, there is no way of knowing, or of testing, whether animals have emotional states. — Wayfarer

You sound like a behaviorist. Have you ever spent much time around animals?

The world of science and technology is full of its own horror stories. — T Clark

Granted, but not clearly relevant to what I was interested in discussing with .

I think religious traditions are a mixture of good psychology, bad science, and lots of random circumstances... — Brendan Golledge

Considering that psychology is a science, your statement there seems a bit incoherent.

I think we could reasonably say, that history shows religious traditions disseminate passable folk-psychologies, as evidenced by the fact that there are societies still maintaining those traditions.

However, to suggest that religious traditions result in good understanding of psychology, seems rather naive to me. Not to say that consideration of religious perspectives doesn't contribute to psychological insight, but I could tell you horror stories about the results of a strongly religion based 'understanding' of psychology.

It seems worth adding, that in the case of a vaccination, there only some probability of the vaccinated individual receiving any benefit. After all, the vaccinated person might never encounter the pathogen. targeted by the vaccine.

Once a person knows and understands their options in a moral situation, they cannot stop being a part of the equation by simply 'doing nothing'. In the end, their 'inaction' to alter a situation is fully within the choices that are being judged. — Philosophim

:up: