(July 5, 2010 at 8:12 am)Godhead Wrote: Oh yes I agree that feelings and intuition can be inaccurate.

No, feelings are entirely unrelated to the truth of a proposition, they come after the fact. Intuition is useful only in dealing with familiar environments, however when contemplating the nature of reality, using intuition is completely asinine.

Quote: But it's like a skill, or using a muscle. If you know how to use it, it can be extremely accurate.

You can get better at detecting emotions, but that is all you can get better at. There is absolutely no demonstrable relationship between the feelings you have towards a proposition and the truth of that proposition.

Assessing ideas in this way is inherently fallacious, you are expressing positive belief in a proposition based on your own feelings while discounting the emotional beliefs of others. Either you believe everything that is believed for emotional reasons because hey, it meets your own criteria, or you resort to special pleading, giving your own emotional conclusions more weight than those of others.

Quote: If you don't, it isn't. Unfortunately, when it isn't, the side effect is that one gets the wrong impression and assumes that feelings and intuition have no use.

Feelings and intuition have uses in a very specific and narrow field of inquiry, to use emotions to asses the truth of non personal/interpersonal issues is ridiculous.

Quote: I'm not that good at football, but that says more about my level of ability than it does about the game.

Yes, i agree, Being shit at football ≠ Football is shit

But it is also true that: Emotions/Instincts are reliable in some areas of inquiry ≠ Emotions/Instincts are good in all areas of inquiry.

Quote: It may seem to you that I don't care about the truth, but in actual fact to know the truth requires using a balanced combination of "what you see is what you get" & feelings / intuition.

Utter bullshit, please demonstrate how your feelings on a proposition have any bearing what-so-ever on the truth of said proposition.

Quote: Some call that the whole-brain approach, call it what you will.

I call it bullshit.

Quote: Everything you're describing about feelings is what happens when someone is not in control of them. The trouble is, you're ascribing that to all cases, when in fact that's not the case.

No numbnuts, what I am saying is that your feelings are unrelated to the truth and offer you absolutely no insight into anything non-emotional. All your feelings can tell you about any given proposition is how you feel about the proposition. Beyond that little sphere of relevance, using emotion to assess truth claims is blatantly stupid.

(July 5, 2010 at 8:55 am)theVOID Wrote: No, feelings are entirely unrelated to the truth of a proposition, they come after the fact. Intuition is useful only in dealing with familiar environments, however when contemplating the nature of reality, using intuition is completely asinine.

So the proposition, "I love this person" is totally unrelated to feelings?
Sure, I suppose you use a calculator on that one.

So god is everything.

This keyboard is god I stubbed my toe on a bit of god one of my kids left on the floor yesterday.

Pretty shit god youve got there.

I prefer thor, available for all your thundering needs.

Purple Rabbit -

That's a good example. I think it's generally a very western view to consider emotions and intuition as being insignificant when in fact they're far from it. Humans have the capacity for reason and logic and observation of the material, but we also have the capacity to make sense of things by intuition. It's like they say, when you know, you know. I don't know if the general view here is that there's no such thing as left brain and right brain thinking, but regardless, I'm going to use the terms and you can take them figuratively if you like but an important point need to be made and those terms are useful in making them. With left brain thinking, the emphasis is on confirmation through external observation, whereas in right brain thinking, the emphasis is on intuitively / subconsciously knowing more than you consciously know. This is why, if you're good at it (like I said before it's like a muscle or a skill, it needs developing) you can pose a question or dilemma or challenge to yourself before going to sleep and wake up with the answer. Artists, scientists, many different types of people have done and still do this. It works because the subconscious mind and one's intuition is there to soak up everything you experience and it is able to form answers at speeds which are much faster than conventional "working it out". The information that the subconscious and intuition deals with is just as real as what you might observe when you're consciously trying to figure something out, the difference is that the conscious mind, which I liken to the tip of a huge iceberg (the subcon being the rest of the iceberg) misses an awful lot simply by virtue of being in the mode of trying. The truth is that the human mind / intuition is a lot more powerful than is acknowledged. We actually do know, instinctively and intuitively, a lot more than the conscious / right brain is able to process. Another way of looking at it is comparing someone who paints by numbers and just filling in the gaps where the diagram tells them to paint which colour, and an artist who already has the full picture and then creates it from scratch. The end result is a much better picture, which takes into account much more than the painted-by-numbers picture does, which only deals in one "dimension", namely what colour goes where, and there's not a lot of actual creativity going on. The artist however is also thinking about perspective, light and shade, form, etc etc all simultaneously. That's what the right brain / intuition does. The traditional western mind-centred approach is very limited and rigid and in many cases doesn't really 'get it". But it's good at what it does, however when it deals in areas which it's not good at dealing with (at least not without the guidance of the right brain approach) it always fails. So the best approach is a collaboration between both sides, rather than one side trying to do something it simply can't.

[quote='Purple Rabbit' pid='78340' dateline='1278355567']
[quote='theVOID' pid='78314' dateline='1278334537']
No, feelings are entirely unrelated to the truth of a proposition, they come after the fact. Intuition is useful only in dealing with familiar environments, however when contemplating the nature of reality, using intuition is completely asinine.
[/quote]
So the proposition, "I love this person" is totally unrelated to feelings?
Sure, I suppose you use a calculator on that one.
[/quote]

Hey genius, If you'd read the rest of the post you'd see i covered that. In fact i've covered that in about 3 posts so far in this thread, but don't that get in the way of your little objection.

---

[quote='Godhead' pid='78370' dateline='1278363469']

Responding indirectly? Aww...

[quote]
That's a good example. I think it's generally a very western view to consider emotions and intuition as being insignificant when in fact they're far from it.[/quote]

They're only good in emotional issues, your feelings can only ever tell you how you 'feel' about an issue. You are yet to even attempt to demonstrate why your feelings about a proposition are necessarily linked to the truth of that proposition. Like I have said several times already, when assessing the truth of a proposition, your feelings are only relevant in a very very narrow section of all propositions, the ones that are emotional propositions.

[quote]
Humans have the capacity for reason and logic and observation of the material, but we also have the capacity to make sense of things by intuition. It's like they say, when you know, you know.[/quote]

But you don't actually 'know' in this situation, you have taken an emotionally driven guess at the answer. Just because you are certain that you know something is absolutely no guarantee that you were correct.

[quote]
I don't know if the general view here is that there's no such thing as left brain and right brain thinking, but regardless, I'm going to use the terms and you can take them figuratively if you like but an important point need to be made and those terms are useful in making them. With left brain thinking, the emphasis is on confirmation through external observation, whereas in right brain thinking, the emphasis is on intuitively / subconsciously knowing more than you consciously know.[/quote]

And you get from this to 'my feelings tell me that god is a conscious universe we are all part of so i am going to believe it as fact' how?

[quote]
This is why, if you're good at it (like I said before it's like a muscle or a skill, it needs developing) you can pose a question or dilemma or challenge to yourself before going to sleep and wake up with the answer.[/quote]

Yeah with brainteasers especially, sleeping on it, or focusing on something else, can give your brain a chance to mull over the problem using different processes - however in the case of a brain teaser you already have every single iota of information required to solve the problem, in the case of your assertion that 'we are the universe/god' you don't have squat in terms of information, regardless of what your feelings tell you.

[quote]
Artists, scientists, many different types of people have done and still do this. It works because the subconscious mind and one's intuition is there to soak up everything you experience and it is able to form answers at speeds which are much faster than conventional "working it out".[/quote]

That is only relevant if you already know the information required for solving the problem, in the case of knowing the nature of existence you haven't got this information, all you have is a comfortable guess that you have irrationally clung to.

You missed the part "much faster than conventional "working it out" * but with absolutely no guarantee of accuracy*".

[quote]
We actually do know, instinctively and intuitively, a lot more than the conscious / right brain is able to process.[/quote]

Because it has already been experienced.

And once again, intuition is not necessarily accurate. In fact when it comes to the real mechanism behind reality it is found that intuition fails consistently, until the new framework is absorbed and can be called upon 'intuitively'.

Point being: You need the information FIRST.

[quote]
Another way of looking at it is comparing someone who paints by numbers and just filling in the gaps where the diagram tells them to paint which colour, and an artist who already has the full picture and then creates it from scratch. The end result is a much better picture, which takes into account much more than the painted-by-numbers picture does, which only deals in one "dimension", namely what colour goes where, and there's not a lot of actual creativity going on. The artist however is also thinking about perspective, light and shade, form, etc etc all simultaneously.[/quote]

You left out another massive portion of this analogy (as usual) and that is the fact that the artist has trained in and become familiar with the information and techniques that allow him to paint intuitively. You get two non-artists, ask one to paint by intuition and one to paint by numbers and i'd pretty much guarantee that the paint-by-numbers canvas will look better every time. (See what i did there, I used intuition!... but it was based on existing information)

[quote]
That's what the right brain / intuition does. The traditional western mind-centred approach is very limited and rigid and in many cases doesn't really 'get it".

Of course, the eastern way is soooo much better, i mean it's not like entire continents are moving towards westernisation in order to improve their lives, education and productivity.... Oh wait...

[quote]
But it's good at what it does, however when it deals in areas which it's not good at dealing with (at least not without the guidance of the right brain approach) it always fails. So the best approach is a collaboration between both sides, rather than one side trying to do something it simply can't.
[/quote]

And after all that you have still avoided demonstrating how your feelings are necessarily related to the truth of the proposition you are evaluating. I call that an epic failure.

Void -

I kind of agree with a lot of what you're saying, you certainly do need the information first. What I'm saying is that I believe we already have that, and that emotion and intuition are already in touch with it. However, as I say it's like a muscle and needs developing.

(July 5, 2010 at 9:56 pm)Godhead Wrote: Void -

I kind of agree with a lot of what you're saying, you certainly do need the information first. What I'm saying is that I believe we already have that, and that emotion and intuition are already in touch with it. However, as I say it's like a muscle and needs developing.

Them are fighting words boy, especially considering your also whole 'my emotions are more buff than yours' vibe (which has also been merely asserted) , so lets put you to the test

1. What is the information you have that leads you to believe you can determine the nature of existence?

2. Can you demonstrate your that intuitions about the given proposition are necessarily correct? Why are they necessarily correct?

3. Is it just you that has this 'information' necessary to determine the nature of existence?

4. Is it just your emotions and intuitions that are accurate?

5. By what thought do you discount the 'information' and 'intuitions/emotions' of individuals that arrive at contradictory and incompatible conclusions from your own? If you do not discount their conclusions then by what reason do you feel it is rational to hold a positive belief in the proposition "universe=god=us"?

Void -

I'm not talking about determining or somehow deciding the nature of existence, rather sensing it. I'm sure there is more than my emotions and intuition that are accurate. As for other people's personal take on life, life is very subjective and some people are aware of things which others may not be aware of. I believe that universe=god=us because to me, that's exactly how it feels. And obviously I can't demonstrate anything to you over the internet.

(July 5, 2010 at 11:04 pm)Godhead Wrote: Void -

I'm not talking about determining or somehow deciding the nature of existence, rather sensing it.

So are a whole bunch of other people, Christians, Muslims, FSM advocates... billions of people around the world believe they "sense" their preferred God, so what makes you think that yours "senses" are worth believing?

Also, considering the fact that these different incompatible conclusions are reached billions of times over and the fact that there is no way at all of determining the validity of one individuals senses over another, why do you believe it is in any way rational to to hold a positive belief in something based on what you 'sense' alone?

Quote: I'm sure there is more than my emotions and intuition that are accurate.

How can they both be accurate yet arrive at conclusions that are contradictory? Or is it only the people who believe the same as you that are ultimately accurate? And by what right to you make that determination?

Quote: As for other people's personal take on life, life is very subjective and some people are aware of things which others may not be aware of.

And you are aware of the truth that "god=universe=us", because you count feelings/intuition as accurate, but every other contradictory conclusion that was reached using the same criteria (feelings/intuitions are sufficient for determining truth) you do not believe?

It comes down to this:

You believe that your emotions/intuitions are better than those of every single individual who arrives at a contradictory conclusion, and are thus sufficient enough to reach a conclusion that you actually believe to be true.

OR

You know your criteria for determining truth (emotions and intuitions) are insufficient as they lead to a potentially unlimited number of contradictory non-falsifiable conclusions, but you don't care, because you don't actually give a shit about the truth.

Which is it?

Neither. I believe that what my intuition tells me is different to what the next person's intuition tells them, not better.