Theistic Inclinations

[Edwardo Piet]

What does that even mean?

[brewer]

Hello all,

I would like to inform all that I have theistic inclinations. When I apply rationalism, I am clearly an atheist. When I let go of rationalism and let my emotions run, I feel lightened up with thoughts about god.

Regardless whether god exists or not, it is good to live with imagination at times. These times, my imagination includes god.

Deliberate rationality leaves me depressed and feeling empty. Ideally, I'll limit use rationality to only times when I am handling scientific issues, addressing humanitarian issues and dealing with the reality.

I hope that this can spark a good discussion,

Regards

They way to see God is through love. 

We do this with our parents, we do this with ourselves, we do this with our friends.

It's how we relate to people.

Love itself at whatever level, is a descent from the divine.

It's language manifests the highest reality, and manifests us who are linked to that reality.

If you wish to see God, you must come with a passion to see God. 
 
Atheists may say love doesn't make you see anything, yet, their stance against racism for example, is seen through the language of love.

All moral issues are seen with the language of love.

Love is the vision of the spiritual truths if you love the beloved, you will see the beloved.

Were you formerly known as Cat Stevens?

[Neo-Scholastic]

External experiences are useful for verifying external phenomenon. Internal experiences are useful for verifying internal phenomenon. You're using internal experience for verifying external phenomenon. That simply doesn't work. All you can learn from internal experiences is your common psychology. Anything else is wildly prone to error and misattribution.

It looks like you responded quickly and perhaps oversimplified you point(s) in favor of expediency. Also, I do not understand what qualifies as either an “external experience” or an “internal” phenomenon; since those are unusual pairings. So pardon me if I misinterpret what you are trying to say.

You seem to be suggesting that knowledge of allthird-person phenomena is necessarily more reliable than all first-person conscious experience and also that these are parallel and distinct. Personally, I find both stances representative of a prior commitment to a picture of reality (physicalism?) that is not immediately obvious.

What is obvious is that conscious experience is existentially primary and all knowledge of the phenomenal world is mediated by conscious experience. As such, knowledge gained by reasoning from first principles is of the highest order (examples: mathematics and deductive reasoning) and that application of those principles to external phenomena produces second order knowledge (examples: inductive reasoning and the natural sciences). So going back to your critique, I agree that I am indeed using internal experience to verify external phenomena. It not only works; it is the only way it can work. The physical world and all its processes are ultimately inferred from conscious experience. Unlike our perceptions of physical objects, mathematical objects are immune to misattribution. Unlike natural laws, the laws of thought are self-evident and indispensable.

People who say that math and logic are merely descriptions seem to have reversed that order. Someone can do math without physics but no one can do physics without math. I would not call first-principles, like the principle of non-contradiction or deductions like the Pythagorean theorem “wildly prone to error.” None of this first-order knowledge would fall under the category of “common psychology”.

Having said all that, my earlier comments concerned the empirical value of meditation and contemplative prayer. These practices are nothing short of a technology of consciousness refined by trial and error over centuries to separate individual “ego” psychology from direct apprehension of essential being, in which first-person and third-person collapse into one reality. To my mind, this rings true since human reason so readily corresponds with a rationally ordered phenomenal world.

[Amarok]

Deepak Chopra  time

Each of us belongs to the progressive expansion of abstract beauty. But your desire is rooted in mortal molecules. Because of course orderliness creates subtle images. In conclusion. The universe is the continuity of the expansion of sensations. Take that you godless heathens !

[WinterHold]

What does that even mean?

Imagine yourself in an environment where everything literally has no meaning. Even you. You're just there as an observer; a guest.

A creator has to make the void. The vaccum that engulfs everything. Then the meanings of things, from contradiction to pain to pleasure. As he pleases.

A small sample for that is computers. BTW the DOS screen is not black by accident, your computer desktop is also there because somebody made it. Before it all made the electrical current that transfer byts and bytes over, to create a hardware enough to power up the software that makes your desktop.

Imagine it on a cosmic scale.

Who defined contradiction? ice and fire, gold and brass...etc

[chimp3]

When I let my imagination conjure up imaginary beings it usually conjures up Groucho Marx. Groucho usually  cheers me up and sets me on the true path.

I thought groucho Marx was real! or was "duck soup" just a fever dream.

He was real. I am referring to my own personal Groucho.

[Edwardo Piet]

A creator has to make the void. The vaccum that engulfs everything. Then the meanings of things, from contradiction to pain to pleasure. As he pleases.

No he doesn't.

A small sample for that is computers. BTW the DOS screen is not black by accident, your computer desktop is also there because somebody made it. Before it all made the electrical current that transfer byts and bytes over, to create a hardware enough to power up the software that makes your desktop.

This sounds like the argument from design

Imagine it on a cosmic scale.

Who defined contradiction? ice and fire, gold and brass...etc

We did on a global scale. No one did on cosmic scale. Holy shit you're dumb.

[Angrboda]

External experiences are useful for verifying external phenomenon.  Internal experiences are useful for verifying internal phenomenon.  You're using internal experience for verifying external phenomenon.  That simply doesn't work.  All you can learn from internal experiences is your common psychology.  Anything else is wildly prone to error and misattribution.

It looks like you responded quickly and perhaps oversimplified you point(s) in favor of expediency. Also, I do not understand what qualifies as either an “external experience” or an “internal” phenomenon; since those are unusual pairings. So pardon me if I misinterpret what you are trying to say.

You seem to be suggesting that knowledge of allthird-person phenomena is necessarily more reliable than all first-person conscious experience and also that these are parallel and distinct. Personally, I find both stances representative of a prior commitment to a picture of reality (physicalism?) that is not immediately obvious.

No, I'm saying that each has their own domain and that the domain of internal experiences is the world of our shared psychology.

What is obvious is that conscious experience is existentially primary and all knowledge of the phenomenal world is mediated by conscious experience.  As such, knowledge gained by reasoning from first principles is of the highest order (examples: mathematics and deductive reasoning) and that application of those principles to external phenomena produces second order knowledge (examples: inductive reasoning and the natural sciences). So going back to your critique, I agree that I am indeed using internal experience to verify external phenomena. It not only works; it is the only way it can work. The physical world and all its processes are ultimately inferred from conscious experience. Unlike our perceptions of physical objects, mathematical objects are immune to misattribution. Unlike natural laws, the laws of thought are self-evident and indispensable.

Math and logic do not verify the external world. You've created a straw man.

The internal world of math and logic is mapped to the external world. That's taking a piece of math or logic and using it to model the external world. That is using math and logic as descriptors. You won't find math or logic themselves in the external world.

People who say that math and logic are merely descriptions seem to have reversed that order. Someone can do math without physics but no one can do physics without math. I would not call first-principles, like the principle of non-contradiction or deductions like the Pythagorean theorem “wildly prone to error.” None of this first-order knowledge would fall under the category of “common psychology”.

By common psychology I am simply emphasizing that which we have in common. How do you know that math and logic aren't a part of our common psychology?

Having said all that, my earlier comments concerned the empirical value of meditation and contemplative prayer. These practices are nothing short of a technology of consciousness refined by trial and error over centuries to separate individual “ego” psychology from direct apprehension of essential being, in which first-person and third-person collapse into one reality. To my mind, this rings true since human reason so readily corresponds with a rationally ordered phenomenal world.

And I feel that you're applying insight from one domain into a domain it has a track record of error within. It may "ring true" to you, but the multiplicity of incompatible first person insights into the divine suggest that it is highly unreliable, as well as our knowledge of how error prone the mind is on its own.

[TheoneandonlytrueGod]

When I let my imagination conjure up imaginary beings it usually conjures up Groucho Marx. Groucho usually  cheers me up and sets me on the true path.

I thought groucho Marx was real! or was "duck soup" just a fever dream.

Oh he was real OK and "Duck Soup" was a movie he and his brothers stared in.

[Neo-Scholastic]

… I'm saying that each has their own domain and that the domain of internal experiences is the world of our shared psychology… The internal world of math and logic is mapped to the external world. That's taking a piece of math or logic and using it to model the external world. That is using math and logic as descriptors. You won't find math or logic themselves in the external world…How do you know that math and logic aren't a part of our common psychology?

First there is a danger of falling into a semantic argument about the meaning and scope of psychology. If you mean a science that studies the qualities and characteristics of the human mind then we are in agreement at least as far as that goes. But the topic is deeper than mere psychology in the same way that the study of being-as-such is a more fundamental inquiry than the study of particular beings – not individual features of minds but the nature of mind itself. The attempt to reduce everything to psychology ignores the vital distinction between the essence of cognition, its intentionality (in the Brentano/Sartre sense), and the various contents of that intentionality.

In part we seem destined to talk past one another. You seem to believe mathematical and logical truths only manipulate symbols according to rules devoid of reference to any actual objects. I say, if math and logic have no objects then they are essentially meaningless curiosities. To my mind, your kind of post-Fregean approach cannot in any way account for the central mystery of mathematics which is how consistently abstract principles model external phenomena. If math and logic do in fact describe phenomena then what is it about reality that they are describing? I do not have a full answer but neither will I ignore the question.

My rudimentary thinking on the matter is that logic and mathematics are indeed symbolic systems but that those symbols passively describe actual prescriptive principles that actively impose order. Such appear necessary to bridge the link between first-person conscious experience and third-person phenomena. For example, the Principle of Non-Contradiction is the antidote to solipsism since it is self-evidently true that whatever the PNC encodes linguistically would govern reality even in the absence of any finite minds to contemplate it. As such at least one immaterial object apparently exists apart from the mind that conceives it. My guess is that a radical skeptic could argue that what seems self-evident may not be so to which I would reply with respect to the PNC that position is self-defeating.

…And I feel that you're applying insight from one domain into a domain it has a track record of error within. It may "ring true" to you, but the multiplicity of incompatible first person insights into the divine suggest that it is highly unreliable, as well as our knowledge of how error prone the mind is on its own.

The mind-body problem is all about gaining insight about the relationship between the two domains. If you say that it is inappropriate to find areas of overlap then you have closed off all possible solutions. I agree there are differences between various first-person accounts when it comes to the contents of consciousness. However, focusing on the contents of consciousness and not its essential intentionality is the grand mistake of reductive monism, be it idealist or materialist. We should not look to the areas of mental experience that are prone to error; but, rather those acts of cognition that have proven impervious to it and the objects they reveal.