Are there people that are otherwise logical but drop their skepticism when it comes to religion? How do they consolidate those 2 sides of themselves?
Are there people that are otherwise logical but drop their skepticism when it comes to religion? How do they consolidate those 2 sides of themselves?
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What if I were to propose to you that there's no way to prove that matter comes before consciousness? For all you know, everything exists inside consciousness but most people believe matter is the prior condition. This is pure logic. But when it's brought up to science minded people, they tend to get very uppity about it.
Beliefs be like that.
To me, that's a rather pointless thought experiment, similar to the conspiracy theory that we're in a big simulation. Like, yeah, there's no way to disprove this idea, but if it were the case, then we still gotta work within the constraints that we're given. It's not like you can be conscious differently or escape the simulation or whatever.
Science-minded folks might dismiss that idea perhaps less favorably as "unscientific", but that's basically saying the same thing. If there's no way to prove or disprove an idea, then we call it "unscientific", which is kind of just means there's no point in spending time thinking about it. This is also taking into account that it would be provable or disprovable, if it had an impact on our reality. Theoretically something could have an impact on our reality and then trick us into believing that it does not, but yeah, at that point we need quite a lot of unproven theories stacked on top of each other and there's still nothing we can do about it...
i’d say it’s less that people “get very uppity about it” and more that it’s not something that’s particularly relevant. we have no evidence for or against, and the outcome doesn’t really change how we interact with the world
likewise the universe could be entirely chaos and everything that exists in this instant: your memories and understanding of the universe and everything to back it up could just be the current arrangement of things and will be torn apart in the very next instant
but it’s not really a useful position to form conjectures from: if it is, it doesn’t matter what you do; if it isn’t, then you should act as if the universe will be here and that your memories are valid
we have no evidence for or against, and the outcome doesn’t really change how we interact with the world
I've heard it described as "flying spaghetti monster for the religious" because, much like FSM, it's a useful allegory to frame the point, but not very interesting beyond that.
I see where you're drawing the correlation because we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of higher powers the same as I can't tell you whether you are a brain floating in amniotic fluid running through a simulation or not. People approaching philosophical questions usually reach an impasse because that is the nature of philosophy.
But a religious person would be more akin to someone telling you that they know we are in fact floating brains powering an AI civilization. They can't provide you with solid proof but you are incorrect if you think otherwise.
No but the latter is what science-minded people do. They insist that matter comes before consciousness without being able to prove it, though what's extremely obvious in everyone's direct experience is that consciousness is needed before anything else is said about the world. It's a false status quo.
There is a prevelant theory but it's still an unanswered philosophical question that noone truly intelligent would tell you they knew definitively. Anyone asserting that matter 100% comes before conciousness is on the same wavelength as someone telling you there is 100% a god controlling everything.
So we can at least agree that people who are confident in something unproveable are objectively unintelligent.
I wouldn't say unintelligent, I would say untrained to think beyond certain constraints. We break through one barrier, then another.
A big part of intelligence is understanding when you don't know something. You'll find that there are a lot of people who will make things up as they go because they don't want to admit they don't know something, which is unwise. So being confident in something that noone can know is not typically an intelligent thing to do.
Most people can be taught knowledge but your intelligence potential is mostly genetic, set at birth based on how well your processes run. Environmental factors will affect how much of your potential you will achieve.
On the face, it seems reasonable, but I'm not so sure. I'll think about that.
I think you may be taking the word unintelligent as an insult, which it of course can be used as one but in this context I'm not using it as an insult.
They mentioned that science minded people will confidently say matter comes before conciousness as proof that logical people are confident in unproveable things as well. That statement was false to begin with because it was based on that science minded person being logical.
Being confident in something unproven is not the logical or intelligent thing to do so I was explaining why that example doesn't work as the example they gave was not of a logical intelligent thinker that I was asking about in my title.
Lol. That's... Quite a stretch. I do not consider this context as being insulting. I said I'm doing this between chores, and I need to think about it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'm clarifying why I said unintelligent because I think this is your second time pointing out the word in separate comments so it comes off as you having an issue with the word
How are your chores going?
You're wiggling a bit but let's go with that and get to your original question.
Based on your responses, you probably hold a core belief that matter comes before consciousness. You're smart enough to admit it's not a certainty but you've probably lived your whole life fairly assured it's the case. You speak English well so you have at least been exposed to western culture - which is very materialistic (religious or no, Christianity is also functionally materialistic), and so the core belief both serves you well, and is positively reinforced.
Any new information you get is subconsciously aligned to this core belief. Any decision you make is informed by it. You have a network of data in your head and it all connects to this and some other core beliefs. The same way a religious person can be highly logical but they hold a different core belief and so subtly, everything they know aligns to that belief. The more irrational the core belief, the more convoluted the links are of course but it makes sense to them - they just may not be able to represent it to you with the symbols that is language. And sometimes you'll just get them doing the loading screen face when they try to rationalize their views - then it just becomes a question of which core VALUE is deeper for them; rationality or their religious view.
If rationality is more valuable, it necessarily demolishes the religious view. It demolishes a core belief to which they have aligned all their knowledge about the world. Which is a hell of a trip, and can be very scary. Which is also why rationality often loses.
Maybe some hold both in esteem and sort ideas accordingly holding all is a bit of the whole.
Sure, many people do that kind of a dance or compartmentalization. But that only lasts as long as nothing severe comes to challenge it. Sudden death of a loved one is a cliche but commonly forces people to conclude something.
Death is a certainty. That's what it leads me to conclude. Idk what happened after death. I do know sweating it isn't benefitting me or my loved ones. What does benefit all of us is loving each other and doing what we can for each other with the time we have.
Born and raised in north america, went to a baptist church as a kid so I'm fairly familiar with the bible as well as different types of religious people you'll meet.
As an agnostic now, my only core belief is I know that I don't know. That's something I apply to any philosophical question so it's alien to me that some people can separate logic and religion.
For me, I get that logic too is just models that predict things. Backwards or forwards. But it doesn't answer what anything is. You can only EXPERIENCE what something is, but you can never accurately represent it. Because the moment you try to represent an experience, it's not the experience itself, just a representation. So logical conclusion is that the only way to know something for sure, is to experience it as it is before any representation.
People with religious experiences may get to the ineffable truth but then they get enamored by their own attempts to represent it. They focus on the representation, instead of the experience, and they start to insist that their representation is the bestest and most correctest - because everything in their head aligns to it. Then it just becomes a matter of who has the most charismatic foghorns and the most appealing representation. Which has a very reasonable logic of it's own, as far as it goes.
Logic is reasoning based on proveable facts so no it's not going to tell you what something is, just how probable something is.
That wouldn't be the logical conclusion because we are limited as humans. We make mistakes, we don't understand everything, we misremember, we can even gaslight ourselves such as the mandela effect. If 50 people told me they experienced an alien abduction, that doesn't make it logically true, now if they were to show me proveable facts of the abduction then I would be more inclined to believe.
I'm not sure what you mean with the last paragraph, you are clearly describing illogical subjective experiences but calling them "very reasonable logic of it's own". What you are describing isn't logic, what you're describing is the opposite of logic. Someone claiming something they believe is true but can't provide validity.
You said that you don't know for sure if it's matter or consciousness that comes first but everything you're saying hinges on you very firmly believing that matter is prior.
If you had genuine uncertainty about it, you would be much more careful about how you go about asking for proof. If you weren't sure that matter is prior, it would occur to you to question what "objective" and "subjective" means. I could also ask you, can you step outside consciousness and objectively prove to me that your matter exists? If not, why do you value objective over subjective so much?
So to round back to your initial question: you can intellectually acknowledge the difficulty of proving matter vs. consciousness, yet if we probe it, clearly you hold a firm belief about it despite not being able to rationally prove your belief. So you can ask your initial question from yourself now. Despite your reasoning skill, why aren't you more skeptical about the materialist view AND it's implications?
Can you point out what specifically makes you think I believe that? If it will clear things up I will give you my opinion about the subject outright, I would say it depends on whether there is a creator or not, does this creator have a physical form, where did they come from, what allows them to create life, and many more questions. This question can't be answered with our knowledge and it is built on other unanswerable concepts so any answer is just a guess.
Could you explain what that has to do with understanding objective and subjective means? I cannot prove to you that anything exists, I can't even prove to you that we live in the same reality, or that you are a sentient being and not a figment of my imagination. "I think, therefore I am", I can observe my reality but I can neither prove my existence nor confirm my observations are correct. The only conclusion that leaves me with is, I know that I don't know.
I don't value objectivity over subjectivity unless we're talking about logic because logic is about overcoming subjective beliefs to find the objective truth, so it should follow that I hold your logic to the rigidity that it's defined by no?
And again, you are making assumptions about me with no truth behind them.
Every time you're challenged on your beliefs, you claim to not know, but when you're challenging other people's beliefs you use words like "irrational" and "illogical".
You don't behave like someone who is calmly on the fence at all.
I worry that your debating position and your actual beliefs are out of alignment and I'm not sure whether you're misleading us or yourself.
Unintelligent? Maybe. Maybe the rest have had the power of imagination constrained so long, it's atrophied. But exercise may restore a degree of it.
Your intelligence is your ability to learn, It would be hard to argue that someone is very good at learning if they are confident in things they can't prove. If Neil degrasse told me he knew exactly what happened after death then I would reconsider anything I've learned from him.
I'm not so sure about that. Anyway I can only speak for myself. I'm not ”100% confident” in my personal beliefs. I
believewhat I put out in thought, word and deed eventually comes back around, although perhaps not in the exact way or form, from the same venues, that I put it out there. Can I prove it? No and that's why it's "faith" and "belief.” I'm not trying to convince anyone, but am open to discussion, when I've time and inclination, and feel it's in good faith.Are you otherwise a very logical person in other aspects of life? Because it sounds like you may not be the type of person I'm talking about.
Imo, things can affect logic, like mood, nutrition, health, how much people have happening at once. So yes, I like to think I'm fairly logical, certainly a lot less emotional as I age. But I'm not wedded to it, because I have faith I'll wake up tomorrow, but know there's a possibility I won't. That seems logical.
You might be thinking of a personal definition of logic. Mood, nutrition, and health can affect a person's ability to use logic, it does not affect logic itself. Having faith that you'll wake up tomorrow and understanding there is a possibility you won't is not an example of logic, that is an example of understanding mortality.
Okay
But a religious person would be more akin to someone telling you that they know we are in fact floating brains powering an AI civilization. They can't provide you with solid proof but you are incorrect if you think otherwise.
Some do. The loud/belligerent don't necessarily make a majority. The rest know that faith is exactly that, and know the difference between faith and belief and proven facts.