(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.
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