DRFseven

Depends upon what you mean by choice. What's a choice but an elimination of alternatives? What do you think is the mechanism by which those alternatives are eliminated?

Of course no reasons "come to us" outside of experience. Do you imagine an imperceptible ghost jotting down notes on a white board to supply us with thoughts (this is the homunculus theory, and then you're left with having to explain how the homunculus gets ITS thoughts)? Experience and the memories of experience are all that is available to us out of which to build thoughts and construct models of reality.

Why do you assume our experiences lead us to irrational thoughts? They CAN be irrational, but needn't be. And it is not irrational for a child to believe in Santa Claus, is it? Don't children believe other things presented to them by authority figures and doesn't that often turn out to be rewarding to the child? A four-year-old's truth-detector mostly has to do with trust in the conveyer of the information, not the information, itself. They will accept almost anything that comes down the pike from their parents, and much from other adults, as well. It is only after they've had a chance to experience life for a while, and after they've made a few cognitive connections that can begin to understand that sometimes people say things that turn out not to be so.

Why do you say "nothing more"; experience encompasses quite a lot; everything in fact. What more could you wish your thoughts to be made of?

Why on earth would it mean that? The more creative you are, the more associations between what to most others are unrelated memories of information. When people suddenly realize an association that connects previous unconnected sets of information, they have an epiphany; an "aha!" experience (like the story of Newton and the apple).

excreationist

ManM:
(In reply to your posts to others)
You are assuming your senses are accurate. How is this a logically necessary assumption?
It isn't necessary, but it is important if you want to stay out of a mental ward. I mean - let's pretend that it isn't necessary to assume that our senses are (reasonably) accurate...
Let's say you are driving a car and you see the road turn to the right... if you didn't trust your senses you could just drive ahead - into a house.
Or maybe you feel very hungry and your memories tell you that if you don't eat you'll eventually die... would it be wise to just forget about your hunger pains because it is conceivable that your senses are somehow mistaken?

How does experience dictate its own interpretation?
I'll just assume you mean something like "How does experience lead to a particular world-view?"
Well during our life, we'd be in the habit of maintaining a world-view (internal framework/model of reality). We'd use this world-view to work out how to interact with the world in order to bring about the outcome we want. e.g. if we are driving a car and the road appears to turn to the right, we would probably want to stay alive and using our world-view we'd decide that turning right would be the best thing to do. If our world-views don't correspond with the actual reality very well (i.e. we are deluded) then we can end up doing very dangerous things that could injure or kill us - or we could sent to mental wards. But some delusions are fairly neutral... e.g. religious beliefs. Though on the other hand, religious beliefs can be dangerous as well - e.g. in the case of suicide bombers that believe they will receive a special reward in the afterlife.
For modern society to work properly, many people need to make sure their world-views correspond quite closely with actual reality. If scientists didn't then we wouldn't make scientific progress since they wouldn't be concerned about having good theories.
Maybe I didn't answer that properly...
Another way of answering it is like this... we develop beliefs about how the world works through experience. If those beliefs aren't accurate, we might suffer painful consequences which causes us to avoid that belief. e.g. if you're a toddler you might go into a shop and might believe that a good way of relieving boredom is to rip up some books. Then you'd probably be disciplined - discouraging that pattern of behaviour (and preceeding thoughts). And "good" beliefs are rewarded. e.g. your parents might ask "what's 1 + 1?" and if you gave the correct response, they'd say "good!!!" which will result in an emotional reward, reinforcing your belief (or response) about addition. On the other hand, parents can also encourage the belief in things like Santa, etc, but generally they help you develop a fairly accurate model/framework of the world (world-view).

excreationist

ManM:

About solipsism:

I have experienced the joys of debating with solipsists before, and it is quite futile. You should try it sometime. In fact, that was one of the major factors which led me to critically examine blind faith in reason.

Where can I find those people? (I really want to know!) I think I would be able to make quite a bit of progress. I think they would admit that there is a separateness between the part of them that constructs the physical world and the part that experiences it. If there wasn't, then they would be able to create their own experiences - e.g. walk through walls when they feel like it, etc.

ManM

Pompous Bastard,
Now how is naturalism any less a value judgment than solipsism? In other words, how is it more rational? I think you can only say it is more intuitive. Reason only leads to consistency, but does that mean our only criteria of truth is consistency? Can we not conceive of multiple consistent worldviews? Don't we have a choice at that point?

ex-preacher,
We both agree that we experience something, try to make sense of it, then try to fit in new experiences to our framework. However, I would say that fitting new experiences into our framework is nothing more than creativity tempered by reason. If something doesn't fit we have two options: interpret our experience differently or change our framework. But what happens once we have two sufficiently refined frameworks that both provide consistent interpretations of the world? Don't we have a choice at that point?

DRFseven,
Can multiple concepts of reality be constructed to explain a given set of experiences? Or is there only one possible reasonable explanation for things?

I am not trying to deny experience here. Experience provides the set of data we have to work with. I'm just interested in what we do with that set of data.

excreationist,
I think we are on the same page now. What differentiates between worldviews is not a matter of carefully constructed arguments, but something much deeper. Hence reason isn't the judge of worldviews.

ex-preacher

If the two frameworks were perfectly "tied" in terms of explaining reality. In that case, the choice would be completely arbitrary. In my case, the Christian worldview fell apart under the wieght of its own inconsistencies and failure to match reality. I did not go in search of a new framework, but simply extended the framework (naturalism) which I was already using in real life. I would contend that you too use naturalism to make every daily decision unrelated to your faith. It is the back-up system for all functioning humans and other animals.

DRFseven

Even then, I wouldn't call the choice arbitrary. I'd say it was directed by subconscious memory and visceral reactions (like how we decide when to let go of the dice, or which card to draw). When the choice seems very important and we can't discern which has the advantage, we often agonize and even become paralyzed with indecision; that's how bound to interpretation of "the best" we are.

Pomp

ManM,

Now how is naturalism any less a value judgment than solipsism? In other words, how is it more rational?

Given the observation that the world around me does not alter itself on my whim, I am left with two possibilities: either that world operates under rules of its own or else my subconscious mind creates that world according to rules which create the impression that the world is operating under rules of its own. In either case, the option left to me is naturalism, whether real, in the first case, or de facto in the second. This basic of "naturalism," of course, is open to a number of different interpretations, from strict metaphysical naturalism to theistic supernaturalism.

The only real value judgement that comes into play is the judgement that the possibility, in the second case, that I am "really" a solipsist discovering the rules by which my own mind operates instead of a naturalist discovering the rules by which an external world operates, is not important. Of course, this judgement is made on pragmatic grounds. The two possibilities are indistinguishable and, thus, I judge that it is not worth my time to worry about them, whereas pure rationality cannot tell me whether or not I should sorry about the distinction.

All this, of course, is something of a sideshow, as my primary point is that we all believe in a rough form of naturalism prerationally. The preceding argument is, IMO, a fairly good case for warranted belief in non-solipsism, but it is still the case that most of us, due to our primary sensory experience, hold a prerational belief in non-solipsism and cannot simply choose to discard that belief.

Reason only leads to consistency, but does that mean our only criteria of truth is consistency? Can we not conceive of multiple consistent worldviews? Don't we have a choice at that point?

Sure, we can conceive of multiple consistent worldviews, bt that doesn't mean that we have a choice in which of them to believe. Try it at home. Go ahead and try to become a solipsist for half an hour.

DRFseven

As discussed in the last few posts, we often have multiple schemes going (that I think of as filed under "maybe", "not likely", "probably", etc.). Sometimes we will experience something that blows some of the schemes away (most of us hold direct sensory detection "seeing is believing" in the highest esteem). Or we can experience something that suddenly ties several propositional schemes together in one of those "Aha!" epiphanies that we love to experience and we literally bask in the dopamine. But, as I posted in response to ex, if we can't find an advantage, we can become paralyzed with indecision (think of Sophie's Choice where she had to choose between sacrificing her son or her daughter - the story worked because we can hardly bear to even contemplate such a decision). Since we rely on the "reward response" for motivation to make a decision, people who are clinically depressed and suffer from lowered levels of dopamine, often have terrible problems making even the simplest decision (crying for an hour due to being unable to decide which shoes to wear to a counseling appointment is typical).

[ July 31, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>

DRFseven

67 posts later, my original frustration still stands. Of all who profess that we CAN freely choose what to believe, NONE have, so far, been able to decide to believe in elves, even for just a little while. If the mechanism of belief is free choice, why not?

Jamie_L

Maybe it does. I haven't thought this through all the way, but isn't "truth" really just a measure of how consistent something is with reality?

Take the statement: "My wife is cheating on me."

If that statement is consistent with the reality of my wife's actions, then it is a true statment.

If that statement is inconsistent with the reality of my wife's actions, then it is not a true statement.

Most of us feel there is no truth to the statement "elves exist." Why? Because we conclude that this notion is inconsistent with the reality of our universe.

Jamie