Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[EgoDeath]

Exactly. He's also quite good at changing the subject, or clouding the issue in such ambiguity that you're no longer even talking about the original issue... Bel is quite a slippery one. I'm glad someone else sees it and is finally willing to admit it publicly. Most shots I've seen fired at Bel have been in private conversations I've had with other users, who don't call him out on his nonsense because they think it's not worth the trouble, or they don't want to rock the boat. Silly.

Oh i make no bones about calling him being a wordy pretentious windbag

I appreciate you calling it how you see it. I'm personally damn near convinced that he's a Christian. He probably gets talking points from one of the many christian forums somewhere online.. probably ChristianForums.com, as they keep most parts of their site closed to anyone who isn't Christian. Funny stuff. Talk about gatekeeping, eh?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Oh i make no bones about calling him being a wordy pretentious windbag

I appreciate you calling it how you see it. I'm personally damn near convinced that he's a Christian. He probably gets talking points from one of the many christian forums somewhere online.. probably ChristianForums.com, as they keep most parts of their site closed to anyone who isn't Christian. Funny stuff. Talk about gatekeeping, eh?

Indeed

[Belacqua]

When we imagine, we are selectively rearranging things we've previously perceived into a new combination that does not exist in reality.  Even if I were to imagine something that exists, like a Pear, the product of that process is not an abstraction but the mental equivalent of a concrete.  I'm unable to imagine an abstract pear.  I've got to give my imaginary pear specific measurements.  It has a specific size, shape, color.  If there's no measurement ommission, then there's no abstraction.  If there's no abstraction then there's no definition.  Instead there is a description.  My imaginary pear is 6 inches long, has yellowish green skin with a red blush on one side. It tastes sweet and slightly tart and it has a grainy texture.  I am unable to imagine a Pear with no specific color, weight, size, etc.

I suspect there may be intermediate stages in what we imagine. The pear you describe is imagined in detail, but that doesn't mean that everybody always does it that way. 

For example, if you ask someone to draw a cat, some people can draw one very accurately from memory, meaning they have "in storage" a detailed picture of a cat. More often people will draw something stylized and cartoonish -- sort of a symbol of a cat. (And the ability to draw something, I'm sure, doesn't depend on manual skill but on the clarity with which one sees it.) If we say to someone "imagine a cat," I'm not sure that they will specify in their mental image whether the cat is male or female, calico or gray, etc. 

I can't speak about your own mental images -- maybe everything you picture is complete in every detail. But I'm skeptical that people generally work this way. 

Here's how you can tell if something is imaginary vs. real.  When you think of an imaginary thing being different, then it's different.  Now it is red or purple because I imagined that it changed color.  But when I think of something real changing to something else, it remains exactly what it is.  

Doesn't this just indicate that your imagination is limited? Like I think that Obama is a real person. If I use my imagination, I can picture him getting fat or going bald. But that doesn't mean that he's not real. Of course in real life real Obama hasn't changed due to my imagination -- but we're talking about mental pictures, here, right? I didn't say anything about imagination influencing reality.

This is exactly what happens with a god.  If I imagine it as an old man then God is an old man.  If I imagine it as a cloud of energy, then it's a cloud of energy.  If I imagine it being omniscient, then it's omniscient. That's because if I want to apprehend God, then I have no alternative but to use my imagination.  One can can ascribe any quality or characteristic to something that is imaginary including the quality that some things about it are unknowable. And this is why there are thousands upon thousands and even millions of "definitions" of God.

Well, if you imagine God as an old man, then you have a mental picture of God as an old man. It's a mental picture. This leaves all the hard work still to do: is your mental picture at all related to reality? If God is really an old man, then we should be able to show that without reference to people's fantasies. 

Yes, there are lots of definitions of God (pace what Rahn127 was saying). And all of them may be pure fantasy, or one of them may be in line with reality, or some of them may be partially true, or any number of other combinations. 

Imagining something is necessary but not sufficient if we're talking about the real world. First you imagine a hypothesis, then you use logic and empirical evidence to check your imagined thing against the world. 

The fact that people have imagined different things doesn't change whether one of those things is right or not.

[Abaddon_ire]

Thn insist he's given  you an answer

Exactly. He's also quite good at changing the subject, or clouding the issue in such ambiguity that you're no longer even talking about the original issue... Bel is quite a slippery one. I'm glad someone else sees it and is finally willing to admit it publicly. Most shots I've seen fired at Bel have been in private conversations I've had with other users, who don't call him out on his nonsense because they think it's not worth the trouble, or they don't want to rock the boat. Silly.

Called it long ago and was shot down for being judgmental of a new member. Now we all know.

[Belacqua]

Sorry, perhaps I’m misunderstanding you. You said:

If people's logic seems wrong to us, then we either point to the empirical world as a rebuttal, or show that the logic is wrong. But our knowledge of the empirical world is often flawed. And our logic is often wrong as well. So it's an ongoing problem to use them in dialectic to improve out thinking.

I guess it’s the phrase “ongoing problem” that caught me off guard. Yes, we are erroneous in our execution of logic and reason, and in our understanding of the empirical world, but I don’t think it necessarily follows to say that because we sometimes miss the mark, and fall short of these objective standards, the standards themselves are in intrinsically problematic, or obstructing our attempts to improve accuracy. I mean, they’re the tools we use to identify when we’ve used them wrong. Without sound and valid reasoning, and a method for interpreting the material world, we would be lost at sea in terms of a consistently reliable way to understand reality.

Oops, I didn't mean to imply that our methods are an ongoing problem. 

Logic and empirical evidence are the best we have, and obviously can lead to great success. The only problem I meant to refer to is just our limited human nature, and the fact that no matter how well we think we've done, there is always the real possibility that we've missed something. I mean "ongoing problem" just in the sense that we don't get to be smug, and assume we've got it all licked. 

Personally, I think millions of people claiming to experience revelations in accordance with an internally consistent, but mostly unverifiable or demonstrable framework, built over centuries, is far more dangerous than one individual thinking they a have a magical unicorn in their basement. 

Understood. I was thinking earlier about "revealed theology" and the role that revelation plays in developing systems of thought. If I write a letter to the church and claim that God has revealed something to me, my letter will be met with extreme skepticism, as it should be. 

But you're right that there are probably lots of people running around thinking that they've had revelations. And in their cases nobody is testing them to see if they make sense relative to anything else. Millions of people working this way would be dangerous. 

I don't think I've ever met someone claiming to have had a revelation. When I lived in America though I remember people saying that something or other was "God's will." And not even inevitable stuff like a death in the family. I think my high school biology lab partner claimed it was God's will that she go to Oklahoma and move in with a guy she'd met two days before. In such cases, it's just another example of what is probably a human being's most skillful thought process: finding "reasons" to do what we've already decided we're going to do anyway. 

So, I agree with you that personal revelation, and people using that as justification for their actions, is a bad way to go about things. As with any other truth-claim, it needs to be scrutinized. And (I'll say this just to annoy certain people on this forum) we have to be fair to the official church structure: they don't accept claims of revelation casually. They even believe the devil can trick us with fake revelations.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Exactly. He's also quite good at changing the subject, or clouding the issue in such ambiguity that you're no longer even talking about the original issue... Bel is quite a slippery one. I'm glad someone else sees it and is finally willing to admit it publicly. Most shots I've seen fired at Bel have been in private conversations I've had with other users, who don't call him out on his nonsense because they think it's not worth the trouble, or they don't want to rock the boat. Silly.

Called it long ago and was shot down for being judgmental of a new member. Now we all know.

Yes we do

[Belacqua]

the beliefs we feel the surest about are certainly the ones that demand the most scrutiny.

Maybe it makes sense to look at a history of revelation. 

(And my classroom is shut today due to the coronavirus, so I'm free to annoy everyone with history.)

The ancient Greeks had no concept of the subconscious mind. For them, if a new idea popped into your head the only way to explain it was to say that it came in from outside. There were a number of entities which could give you an idea. The most common was the daemon. In those days daemons weren't necessarily evil, as English-language "demons" are. They were just intermediary messengers between us and the higher world. 

If your daemon gave you good ideas, you were lucky. Socrates' daemon, famously, warned him when he was about to do something stupid. The common Greek word for "happiness" is "eudaemonia," which just means "having a good daemon." 

Artists might also be given ideas by muses, and important people could hear straight from the gods.

The Latin translation of "daemon" is "genius." A genius used to be an intermediate spirit giving us ideas. This survives in the English usage "he has a genius for getting into trouble." 

As far as I can tell, the earliest conception of a subconscious mind comes in Plotinus. For him, it is possible for us to know things when we don't know that we know them. He arrives at this conclusion because he believes that the whole world is the One. The real world, the deepest (or highest) metaphysical level, is total unity. We don't see this clearly while we are in our material bodies, just because we have to divide things mentally to understand them. But the separations are imposed by our minds -- reality is one. 

This means that we don't need separate spirits to give us messages. We are integrated into the whole of reality, and the whole of knowledge, but don't currently see it because of our imposed limitations. The limitations are necessary to function in society, but not necessarily permanent or essential to our being. For Plotinus, revelation isn't a message received from "outside" but a sudden unexpected access to a truth we are already connected to. It's like waking up in the night and realizing something that had been staring you in the face all along. 

Plotinus' thought is incorporated into Christianity early on -- at least with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. For theologians, God is also One, immanent in his entirety in every particle of the universe. (This is what Blake means when he writes about "the world in a grain of sand.") There is no "two" with God. So the image of God "out there" sending a messenger to little me over here is just an analogy. Revelation is an access to a truth which is already present.

Freud, of course, had a classical education and read the Greek texts in the original language. His system was more scientific than that of Plotinus, but the inspiration is clear. For Freud, the individual person is more than the conscious mind -- it is also the unconscious (which is in some way also the body), and all kinds of sense-impressions which haven't yet been incorporated into our conscious structures. But in Freud as in Plotinus, "revelation" could occur unexpectedly, by the sudden access of something which was there all along. 

So as usual there is a two-tier system in modern Christianity. For literalists and those who use myth as analogy, revelation is the angel Gabriel delivering messages. (The English word "angel" comes from the Greek word for "messenger.") More philosophical theologians, and educated poets like Blake and Coleridge, see God as in no way separate from people, and therefore not in need of envoys. Revelation, for them, is more like sudden insight for Freud. 

I enjoy this sort of history, so it's fun for me to type it out. I understand it's not everyone's idea of a good time......

[EgoDeath]

Exactly. He's also quite good at changing the subject, or clouding the issue in such ambiguity that you're no longer even talking about the original issue... Bel is quite a slippery one. I'm glad someone else sees it and is finally willing to admit it publicly. Most shots I've seen fired at Bel have been in private conversations I've had with other users, who don't call him out on his nonsense because they think it's not worth the trouble, or they don't want to rock the boat. Silly.

Called it long ago and was shot down for being judgmental of a new member. Now we all know.

That's honestly laughable, considering how rude I've seen some longtime members here be toward new members who were maybe a bit eccentric, but not in the least bit mean-spirited. I remember one new member sending me private messages and he/she seemed to be legitimately distressed about the harshly cold welcome he got from people here on the board. I think, as smart as the community is here (most folks on AF are much smarter than myself, and that is part of what keeps me coming here), people fall victim to their own biases just like any other group of individuals... No one is above human nature - I've seen people here fall victim to that nature many a time, smart as they may be outside of those instances.

However... Thanks for chiming in though, Abaddon. I will continue to call Bel out where I see fit... but it's often an effort in futility, because he will just ignore you when you criticize him, and continue to interact with the people who tend to put up with his slippery ways.

[Belacqua]

When we imagine, we are selectively rearranging things we've previously perceived into a new combination that does not exist in reality.  Even if I were to imagine something that exists, like a Pear, the product of that process is not an abstraction but the mental equivalent of a concrete.  I'm unable to imagine an abstract pear.  I've got to give my imaginary pear specific measurements.  It has a specific size, shape, color.  If there's no measurement ommission, then there's no abstraction.  If there's no abstraction then there's no definition.  Instead there is a description.  My imaginary pear is 6 inches long, has yellowish green skin with a red blush on one side. It tastes sweet and slightly tart and it has a grainy texture.  I am unable to imagine a Pear with no specific color, weight, size, etc.

Something else occurred to me while I was walking around on the mountain just now.

Philosophers have generally distinguished between two different forms of imagination. 

All these guys realized that when we look at an object there is not just a straightforward mirroring of that object in our minds. They suggested that we have a mental faculty which takes in and assembles the various sense impressions to make a coherent mental image. Since the product is an image, this faculty was called imagination. Different writers used various terms. Often it's called imagio. 

The second type of imagination is the one we've been calling imagination on this thread. It is the type which assembles remembered sense-impressions into new combinations. This was often called phantasia. 

Obviously this all took a step forward when Galileo and Newton introduced their new metaphysical views. As you know, they asserted that all the qualities we perceive in our mental images are not present in the object itself. So if we take your example of the pear, they say it is not green. It reflects light of a certain wavelength, which somehow the mind represents to itself as green. But the color is "inside" the mind, not "outside" with the pear. Likewise the flavor. The pear itself has no flavor, only chemicals. The flavor is a product of the mind. 

So Kant, following these scientists, gave an even greater role to the image-making function. It not only assembles and preserves the appearance, it actually creates the qualities which are not present in the world. He called this Einbildungskraft, which is just translated as "imagination." (Literally it's more like on-forming-power.)

The key here is that what you're calling the "mental image of a concrete" is in fact a kind of abstraction. It is a creation of the mind. Even if you're looking right at the pear, what you're getting in your mind is not the noumenal pear, not the pear-in-itself, but an interpretation created by the image-making faculty. If Galileo and Newton are correct, it means that when you imagine (in phantasia) a pear-like fruit that you have never seen in reality, what you are rearranging are things which were created by your imagination in the first place. 

So when you say you're unable to imagine an abstract pear, I think this may not be correct. Because the image we have of any pear is in its way an abstraction. Can the original sense-image, assembled from the wavelengths of light and the chemicals, be given a definition? I think it can. The definition is that it's a pear. Can a mental image of a pear, recalled from memory, be given a definition? I think it can -- again, it's a pear. Can a mental image assembled from various memories to construct a pear-like imaginary fruit be given a definition? I don't see why not. Call it a "peareach," because it looks like a pear but tastes like a peach. I define it in this way.

So I think we can give definitions to imaginary abstract things.

[Peebothuhlu]

So... Short reply belaqua. (In hindisght, maybe a not so short reply... )

Yes, I too agree that we can give defiitions to imagenary abstract (As wel as imagenary AND abstract) things.

That said, our imagenary ideas can't push back 'Directly' into reality.

We can't transplant Unicorns directly from our thoughts into reality.

On an aside, I would point out two reasonably well known artists.

H.R. Geiger and M.C. Escher.

The maths behind Escher's cretions is rather profound yet the images 'Came' to him with no education of maths.

Geiger's creations are also intrinsically 'Unique'.

I would haverd to make the point that the subtle differences in how Human brains 'Wire' themselve during development effect how such creative processes 'Work'.

Sorry for the obtuse possibly ramble.

It's been a stressful day at work and am venting ideas possibly as a way of decompressing the stress.

Much cheers to all.

Not at work.