(September 21, 2012 at 8:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: I think, at least under this defintion, that most of personal experiences fall into this category.
I disagree. Personal experiences won't fall into these categories unless used to gain understanding or knowledge. Cognitive faculties are not only identified by description (referring to specific actions of the mind), but also through prescription (what those actions are to accomplish).
(September 21, 2012 at 8:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: Emotions would probably at least one aspect of personal experience that would not be considered cognitive, but understanding and analyzing our emotions would be under cognitive faculties.
But if the understanding and analysis is missing, would it still be under cognitive faculties.
(September 21, 2012 at 8:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: I think the experience of god does fall under cognivitve, because under the defintion you provided cognition is knowledge gained through the senses. Any experience of god would need to be perceived, thus being filtered through the senses.
But it's not an actual experience of god, is it? The theist is experiencing something. I'm saying that if he had used his cognitive faculties to analyze the situation, he'd have come to a different conclusion.
(September 21, 2012 at 8:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: Even if the actual experience is not cognitive, I still see what the theist takes away from that experience as a failure of those cognitive abilites and not simply a failure to utilize them. Take for example the theist I mentioned before. He was actively asking people what a natural explanation for his experiences could have been, but when given different scenarios, he dismissed everything, choosing to believe it was god. I think most people, regardless of religious affiliation, will eventually consider the nature of their experiences, which is where, at the very least, they engage their cognitive faculties.
I think we're going around in circles here. I'll try to state my case once more and you can point out where do you think I went wrong.
1. We have a constant stream of experience (perception) going into our minds. Sights, sounds, smells, feelings etc. This is just raw data that we get.
2. We then analyze and think about this experiences, once we are capable of it. We try to understand and categorize them.
3. Based on our memory and what we've already learned, this process can have different outcomes.
a) We can understand which category the particular experience falls into. We can then go on to understand the causal relationships with other experiences.
b) We can see that the content of our current experience is at odds with some of the concepts we already hold. Thus we can go on to question both the current experience and the ones that we hold.
c) We see that the current experience does not qualify for any of the known categories and put it in unknown or not-understood.
4. What we've experienced and analyzed then becomes a part of our body of knowledge.
The steps 2, 3 and 4 representing the body of our cognitive process. Now, this is how I see the process applied to theists you mentioned.
Scenario 1: Assume, a person A has never known the concept of god.
1. As per point 1 and 2, he has some novel experience and attempts to classify it.
2. As per point 3, since there are no existing categories, that experience is put into the category of unknown.
3. This could trigger another response in form of an emotion, such as the desire to know or the discomfort at not knowing.
4. This is the point at which, I think, there is a failure of application of the cognitive process. Instead of analyzing and trying to understand this new input, the person may instinctively create a new category. This category would not be from memory or existing knowledge and it can be given any name - god, angel, devil, karma etc.
5. Once that is done, the cognitive process kicks back in and the new category is then adorned with other attributes based on memory and existing knowledge, such as power, invisibility, greatness etc.
Scenario 2: A person B has never known of a concept of god and his cognitive faculties are not well-developed either. Such as a child.
Event 1: The person is taught the concept of god by another person, such as a parent or a teacher.
Event 2: The person has an experience that, due to undeveloped cognitive faculties, he cannot understand nor can he classify it as unknown.
These two events can take place in any order. And since the person's cognitive faculties are not developed, the existence of inexplicable experiences (for him) is not an issue.
1. Upon being taught the concept of god, the person accepts it at face value and creates the said category in his mind without understanding the concept itself. This is not a failure of cognitive faculties, bit simply the result of absence of them.
2. Later on, upon development, the cognitive faculties kick in and the inexplicable experiences, now or of the past, get classified into that category and he refers to the experience as experiencing god.
3. Upon experiencing something that contradicts the said category, he'd question and examine the experience (which is an application of cognitive process), but not question the existing "knowledge" (which is a failure to apply cognition).
I think that a combination of these two scenarios is often sufficient to explain why any type of theist believes in god. However, as I see it, the creation of that category is the result of failure to apply the cognitive process - by necessity or by choice - and not that of the process itself.
Retaining the category when there is no reason to question it, does not, in my opinion, indict the cognitive process itself. For example, compare the cognitive process to that of a computer. There is raw input data in both cases, there is processing based on the concepts that have been hard-coded and then there is the conclusion. Now, if the encoded software contains an error, that would lead to wrong conclusions, but the fault lies not with the process itself, since it was not involved in that particular input.
