RE: Justification for Foundational Belief
August 7, 2012 at 4:50 pm
(This post was last modified: August 7, 2012 at 5:06 pm by genkaus.)
(August 6, 2012 at 8:32 pm)jonb Wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0
What I am saying is the categories you use to divide, box and deliver knowledge, are so tightly tied into our emotions they still have not been unpicked. I can see why many academics would wish to set up a hierarchy from, reflexes, through emotions to the intellect, but these categories are to my mind imposed, and cannot be set with distinct boundaries. If you think that is so much nonsense, these categories must be true, as so much has been built up from them, look at colour, everyone knows there are seven colours in a rainbow, it is just that everybody is wrong.
That is the part that you haven't established - or even offered arguments for. The example of the McGurk effect has nothing to emotions affecting the perceptions and neither does the color perception of the rainbow.
(August 6, 2012 at 9:14 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Fair enough Genk. I have to point out that your ruling out emotion as a foundational belief due to a perception of functionality at this point (or a lack thereof, in this case). Emotion "doesn't work". Weren't we trying to avoid the implication that "functionality" and not "truth" is what we're actually after (or that functionality is actually what we mean by truth in the first place) ?
I wholeheartedly agree with you that there are problems with leveraging emotion as a foundational belief upon which a system of knowledge could be built. Problems also exist with our other offerings. I don't mind choosing between one or the other based on functionality alone. I was under the impression that you did. Or perhaps I just don't understand where the distinction lies (maybe I missed a post?).
The functionality in question is the functionality as a foundational belief. For emotions to be considered foundational, not only must they be axiomatic in nature, they must also not lead to contradictory deductions.
As for "truth" and "functionality", I consider the latter to be the necessary consequence of the former (though not necessarily the other way around). If a system of beliefs or ideas is true then the deductions made upon it would work in the real world. If it seems logical and doesn't work, then either something is wrong or something is missing. If it seems irrational and still works, then there is a rational explanation as yet unknown. My point is, I don't see a necessary distinction between truth and functionality because I consider functionality to be a necessary consequence of the truth of the principle and therefore a reliable (though not flawless) indicator of it.
