Does the head follow the heart in matters of truth?

[The Grand Nudger]

The former would be a formal fallacy, the latter an informal fallacy.  Your link and quote mine is not arguing what I just explained to you, what you quoted and responded to. I think you really could understand this if you followed through on the assertion you made..and claimed was not a fallacy so long as you granted x- but it's going to require your engagement, lol.

-The invitation isn't limited ofc, anyone can offer any answer to the central assertion..that people believe because evidence.

[John V]

Here's another: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tool...mon-Belief

Exception: Sometimes there are good reasons to think that the common belief is held by people who do have good evidence for believing.

Yeah, like, maybe, when you've granted that people believe based on evidence. 

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you, then, grant that people believe based upon evidence?

(I don't have any problem with the assertion at all, I can grant it with ease...it;s just nice to make sure we're working with some sort of shared baseline)

[John V]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Dude, you better go edit wiki, they have ad populum listed as an informal fallacy!

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Do you, then, grant that people believe based upon evidence?

No. You're apparently trolling and haven't even read the thread. 

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I mean, seriously, the very first thing in the thread is a quote of me saying that people believe based on emotion, and then use logic/evidence to try to justify the desired belief.

[The Grand Nudger]

Thanks for the correction in designation.  Whether a given  fallacy is formal or informal is often conflated, and I'm no different than anyone else in that regard.  Now that we share -that- baseline would it be accurate to suggest that you think this statement..a statement in which you would not grant the listed assertion..would be an informal fallacy, then?

[emjay]

Just saw this thread. A post I made in the other seems applicable here as well.

It always amazes me how you can see something and yet not see it at the same time.

"Most likely they do them anyway but feel really guilty about them."

You see it, but you don't. 

People generally don't enjoy feeling guilty.

Guilt can be viewed as cognitive dissonance between an action, and a belief that the action is immoral. 

The two most obvious ways to relieve such cognitive dissonance are:
- stop the behavior, or
- remove the belief that the behavior is immoral.

I'm saying the latter - removing the belief in God, and so removing the belief certain behaviors are immoral - is a dynamic present in unbelief.

We can test that idea. Christianity is the main religion in America, and Christianity largely condemns homosexual behavior. If I'm right, we'd expect gays to be more likely to be atheists and less likely to be Christians. If you guys are right that people believe just based on the merits of the evidence, we shouldn't see a difference, as gays and straights have access to the same evidence. Here's a study on that:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/201...iliations/

Atheist and agnostic make up 17% of gays, but only 7% of straights. Christianity makes up 72% of straights, but only 48% of gays. It's clear that people's desired behavior influences belief.

Plus, you guys should want to agree with me. You too often make a knee-jerk opposition to something I say without thinking it through. If people believe or not based on evidence, than the fact that most people have been theists of some sort shows that there's strong evidence for a creator god. So, you guys should readily agree that there are emotional influences on belief. (If you claim that unbelievers are unemotional in assessing evidence, but believers are emotional, you'll be called out for special pleading.)

Also, it's interesting how some people have somewhat different views on the topic, depending on which thread they're in. As wrong as Tiz is, he at least gets props for being consistent.

My only question is, having said all that, do you accept that emotionally influenced beliefs are less reliable in the search for truth? Forget finger-pointing for a second... do you recognise the existence of confirmation bias etc, and see how it could apply in your own life? If you do recognise that, do you still consider whatever may result from it reliable evidence? I'm just talking about internally here, within yourself, for your own sake.

Despite what you may think, I have never claimed to be, nor would I want to be, Spock. I'm well aware of the power of belief and the psychological effects on it and of it, and struggle with it all the time; I'm a very neurotic and emotional person and have my fair share of irrational and/or maladaptive beliefs... that I'm aware of... and probably many more that I'm not. But from my perspective, the important thing is that once I do become aware of these processes, I should recognise their conclusions as unreliable, and likewise not willfully enter into anything that I know from the outset will lead to those processes, if I'm looking for truth... especially in the most important questions in life. Would you bet your life on mafia theory? I know I wouldn't, but I really don't know about you, hence my question in the first paragraph.

Our argument before was regrettable... but it did lead to insight. There is indeed bias in my materialistic worldview, not least an anti-spiritual bias, and there certainly is in my anti-theism when that comes out. But nonetheless we ended up arguing creationism vs evolution when that was not the point I was making (or trying to). Whatever I may think about creationism, it wasn't what I was referring to as having no credibility to me... because I was referring to a process, not a conclusion... ie there's nothing about creationism per se, or any other conclusion, that suggests from the outset that it will lead to confirmation bias etc. People naturally get more emotionally attached to theories as time wears on, and thus bias can creep in, and that happens for everyone, atheist and theist alike... I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about things like horoscopes... where, in my opinion, their entire effect is reliant from the outset on the effects of bias and confirmation bias... ie it only works because of that; the suggestion... such as 'you will meet a tall, dark, stranger' primes/biases the mind to look for, interpret, and perceive input in that light, and where the vaguer the suggestion, the easier it is for the mind to gap-fill an answer. My point was that that has zero credibility to me as a means of reaching reliable conclusions. And where theism is concerned, I see the A/S/K process as essentially equivalent to a horoscope and thus would not consider its conclusions reliable either. That's the only point I was trying to make... that those approaches to finding truth have no credibility to me and as such I will not willfully enter into them expecting to find truth... so to the extent that someone says to me 'just look for the signs, then you'll believe' the only thing I can reply is basically 'no shit, Sherlock, but that doesn't make those conclusions reliable'. That's all I was saying, and all I was objecting to.

At the end of the day, as you said, we're all emotional beings, and thus we all have to contend with bias and its effects. But my ideal world is just one where everyone is aware of that and factors it into their decisions and conclusions or tries to. We can't eliminate bias totally but we can at least try to be aware of it, minimise it, and not willfully enter into it. Of course it's an uphill struggle, given how emotional a species we are, but we can at least try.

[Mystic]

When it comes to analyzing what you appreciate and value in appreciation, is it a this or that?

You need both reason as far as it's analytical approach as well as the emotional beauty assessment, both the logical and artistic side.

To choose one with the other, is destruction. Choose the emotional without ground logical reason, and you get chaotic and invest your emotions illogically.

And if just thinks thing pragmatically and logically, you lose your sense of purpose, and your fuel. It becomes an almost meaningless trivial action or state of being.

I was told by the psychologist I saw last summer, I have the sweet spot between the two, and they really believed I had the "wise mind" sweet spot in the middle.

I am not sure though, but I am thankful if that is my state.

[The Grand Nudger]

We've long been accustomed to thinking of the two separately, but that's probably an effect of our ignorance rather than a binding proclamations.  The "head and heart" inform each other, and in point of fact..it's the head and the head. The brain is producing both.

We consider conclusions lacking in one or the other..well...lacking....

[AFTT47]

I think the quote in the OP is totally true.  However, some people's hearts are filled with a lust for truth.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

We have a winner.

Like it or not, we ALL lead from the heart because that is the way our brains are wired. But some of us have an emotional attachment to logic, reason and science - as contradictory as that may seem. Even so, we still are plagued by bias which is why peer review is such an important part of the system of doing science.

I encourage everybody who is interested in this topic to read a book by David J Linden called The Accidental Mind. It was a big eye-opener for me. It is written in a very non-technical style that I believe just about anybody can understand.

[Mystic]

How to properly use reason, logic, and science is a huge debate of humans, just as how to approach spirituality is. Appeal to authority is the go to for some and everyone claims they reflected properly over what their authority figures teach, and that is why they recommend to learn from them.  Everyone choose their idols and who they want to rely on to think for them.

All I can suggest is see the double standards that everyone does, and don't the same.

No seeker of knowledge believes in blindly following anyone, but almost ever claimer of seeker of knowledge relies on so few people at the top for their path to knowledge.

But we can't but error, and so we have to work with our errors and learn from people who reflected the issue already (no need to invent the wheel so to speak), right?

There is the pragmatic world (we need to learn from experts for skills) and there is the outlook views which love is to be guided by.

Humans don't go to fight over what is better way to program a program or we don't fight wars over software disputes on what is the best way to approach a problem in programming. This is why as hard as computer science is I find it therapeutically.

But to let go of attachments, attachments we have made in love based on falsehoods we erred in, that is no easy task.  

The issue you get little attachment to change in field in programming, but to change the ways of humans, and to change their ways of love,  yes, people have attachments.

Richard Dawkins is perhaps one of the most irrational human beings but most cunning, the way the ancients define intelligence, I would not say he is, but I would say he is a fast brain, is cunning, and has charisma.

And that is another thing,  we are moving away from a lot of parameters of language, we've equated words together that were distinct in the past, and we are becoming clumsy with words and then assessing the past with redefining words.