How much evidence does it take to believe or to know?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
NameRemoved
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Post by NameRemoved »

I doubt materialists and determinists can be salvaged intellectually on this matter..I also hope so.
boagie #180 thanx from proving my point. :wink:
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Keith Russell
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Post by Keith Russell »

boagie wrote:If the science community is delusional please enlighten us on their delusional natures. As to the statement on Bohm's work on plasma, it was Bohm himself who made the analogy. I am I going to jump through any circles for you, no. Just as you are no going to prove the scientific community is delusional. If you are not a faith head, I wonder at your motivations around this topic.
You talkin' to me?
boagie
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Post by boagie »

You talkin' to me?[/quote]

You've been watching taxi again haven't you. Should I take it then that I am misunderstanding you in a rather big way? This is a rather easy medium for that to occur in, if that is the case, you have my apology.
Nothing in the world in and of itself has meaning, but only in relation to a biological subject. Boagie
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Keith Russell
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Post by Keith Russell »

boagie wrote:You talkin' to me?
You've been watching taxi again haven't you. Should I take it then that I am misunderstanding you in a rather big way? This is a rather easy medium for that to occur in, if that is the case, you have my apology.
Are

You

Talking

To

Me?
Skull

Pramanas

Post by Skull »

If this subject has been mentioned already, I apologize, I am too old and lazy to read all 13 pages.

I cannot post links yet, so just google "pramanas" and see how much of the Orient handles evidence. They ask not, "how much," but what are acceptable forms of evidence and which are best.

Pramana (Skt) means form or type of evidence.
boagie
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Post by boagie »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramana

Hi Skull,

No matter what the methodology of acquiring knowledge/meaning is, it is in the end biological interpretation. Meaning/knowledge belongs only to the subject, and arises through the subject's relation to its object. PS: I have not as yet read on this Pramana, but I will, in the meantime I am assumeing it a method/mode of inquiry.

EDIT: After reading this, I do not really see how it differs from our western understanding, meaning is necessarily the relation between subject and object, and always the property of the subject, for it is the effect of object upon the subject biology which is perception, the evaluation thereof/perception being meaning.
Nothing in the world in and of itself has meaning, but only in relation to a biological subject. Boagie
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Keith Russell
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Post by Keith Russell »

Boagie:

I believe that there is no such thing as "inherent" (objective) meaning. (I think that's what you mean when you state that "meaning belongs only to the subject".)

Let me know if you agree...

Thanks!
boagie wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramana

Hi Skull,

No matter what the methodology of acquiring knowledge/meaning is, it is in the end biological interpretation. Meaning/knowledge belongs only to the subject, and arises through the subject's relation to its object. PS: I have not as yet read on this Pramana, but I will, in the meantime I am assumeing it a method/mode of inquiry.

EDIT: After reading this, I do not really see how it differs from our western understanding, meaning is necessarily the relation between subject and object, and always the property of the subject, for it is the effect of object upon the subject biology which is perception, the evaluation thereof/perception being meaning.
boagie
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Post by boagie »

"believe that there is no such thing as "inherent" (objective) meaning. (I think that's what you mean when you state that "meaning belongs only to the subject".)

Let me know if you agree...

Thanks!"

Keith Russell,

Yes, we have the same understanding, this understanding though seems to upset some people.
Nothing in the world in and of itself has meaning, but only in relation to a biological subject. Boagie
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Keith Russell
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Post by Keith Russell »

boagie wrote:"believe that there is no such thing as "inherent" (objective) meaning. (I think that's what you mean when you state that "meaning belongs only to the subject".)

Let me know if you agree...

Thanks!"

Keith Russell,

Yes, we have the same understanding, this understanding though seems to upset some people.
Yes. (Quite a few of my ideas seem to have that effect...)
OTavern
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Post by OTavern »

boagie wrote:"believe that there is no such thing as "inherent" (objective) meaning. (I think that's what you mean when you state that "meaning belongs only to the subject".)

Let me know if you agree...

Thanks!"

Keith Russell,

Yes, we have the same understanding, this understanding though seems to upset some people.

....No matter what the methodology of acquiring knowledge/meaning is, it is in the end biological interpretation. Meaning/knowledge belongs only to the subject, and arises through the subject's relation to its object.
If you repeat that mantra over and over you will come to believe it is true regardless of what other thoughts enter your head. After a hundred or so repetitions you will become impervious to all other contrary beliefs. If Mr. Russell slowly repeats it and emphasizes the words he will soon be under its spell, too. Nice to see cultish practices still have not lost their potency even in science.
boagie
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Post by boagie »

O'Tavern,

Negativity is the easiest form of expression requiring no thought whatsoever, lets here your reasoned argument against it. Pouting just does not count for much.
Nothing in the world in and of itself has meaning, but only in relation to a biological subject. Boagie
NameRemoved
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Post by NameRemoved »

O`Tavern wrote
If you repeat that mantra over and over you will come to believe it is true regardless of what other thoughts enter your head. After a hundred or so repetitions you will become impervious to all other contrary beliefs. If Mr. Russell slowly repeats it and emphasizes the words he will soon be under its spell, too. Nice to see cultish practices still have not lost their potency even in science.
I agree with this observation cultish practices are not just theistic, they are atheistic and even asthetic in philosophy teachings.
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Keith Russell
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Post by Keith Russell »

OTavern wrote:
boagie wrote:"believe that there is no such thing as "inherent" (objective) meaning. (I think that's what you mean when you state that "meaning belongs only to the subject".)

Let me know if you agree...

Thanks!"

Keith Russell,

Yes, we have the same understanding, this understanding though seems to upset some people.

....No matter what the methodology of acquiring knowledge/meaning is, it is in the end biological interpretation. Meaning/knowledge belongs only to the subject, and arises through the subject's relation to its object.
If you repeat that mantra--
What mantra? This?

"No matter what the methodology of acquiring knowledge/meaning is, it is in the end biological interpretation. Meaning/knowledge belongs only to the subject, and arises through the subject's relation to its object."
--over and over you will come to believe it is true regardless of what other thoughts enter your head. After a hundred or so repetitions you will become impervious to all other contrary beliefs. If Mr. Russell slowly repeats it and emphasizes the words he will soon be under its spell, too. Nice to see cultish practices still have not lost their potency even in science.
OTavern
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Post by OTavern »

boagie wrote:O'Tavern,

Negativity is the easiest form of expression requiring no thought whatsoever, lets here your reasoned argument against it. Pouting just does not count for much.
Your position rests on a larger concept that meaning starts with the subject and is applied to the object. But where, exactly, did the subject get this ability to apply meaning? From the dead objective world around it? How could it be possible for a dead objective world to bring about a subject with the capacity to apply meaning onto the world?
boagie wrote:[In post #186]After reading this, I do not really see how it differs from our western understanding, meaning is necessarily the relation between subject and object, and always the property of the subject, for it is the effect of object upon the subject biology which is perception, the evaluation thereof/perception being meaning.
This entire view is based upon a larger myth about the way the cosmos functions. CS Lewis addressed it in "The Funeral of a Great Myth" from Christian Reflections pp. 88-90
The basic idea of the Myth – that small or chaotic or feeble things perpetually turn themselves into large, strong, ordered things –may, at first sight, seem a very odd one. We have never actually seen a pile of rubble turning itself into a house. But this idea commends itself to the imagination by the help of what seem to be two instances of it within everyone's knowledge. Everyone has seen individual organisms doing it. Acorns become oaks, grubs become insects, eggs become birds, every man was once an embryo. And secondly – which weighs very much in the popular mind during the machine age – everyone has seen Evolution really happening in the history of machines. We all remember when locomotives were smaller and less efficient than they are now. These two apparent instances are quite enough to convince the imagination that Evolution in a cosmic sense is the most natural thing in the world. [But]

...reason cannot here agree with imagination. These apparent instances are not really instances of Evolution at all. The oak comes indeed from the acorn, but then the acorn was dropped by an earlier oak. Every man begins with the union of an ovum and a spermatozoon, but the ovum and the spermatozoon came from two fully developed human beings. The modern express engine came from the Rocket: but the Rocket came, not from something more elementary than itself, but from something much more developed and highly organized – the mind of a man, and a man of genius.
To follow this line of thought, one can, I suppose, rest so confidently on the Great Myth described by Lewis, as to become self-assured in the belief that meaning somehow spontaneously generates in the mind of a subject, oblivious to the fact that the mind of the subject was previously generated in a cosmos with the capacity to order events and bring about the minds of subjects. The cosmos, therefore, must have sufficient "meaning" generating properties as to facilitate the possibility of meaning in the minds of the human subjects.

CS Lewis again:
The myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is a product of the irrational - if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel – how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution?
To paraphrase: The only reason, you as subject, can bring "meaning" to the cosmos is precisely because the meaning behind the cosmos made it possible for you to do so. Therefore: "meaning is ... always the property of the subject" is clearly not true. The only reason meaning can be a property of the subject is precisely because the subject is part of a meaningful environment - the cosmos that brought the subject into being.

Your position seems to be the metaphysical equivalent of Piaget's concrete operational stage of psychological development where the process of conservation has not been realized. The next stage, following Piaget, would be the formal operational stage where you realize that meaning and truth exist in a transcendent, formal way independent of your perspective. Of course to achieve this stage a thinker must shed egocentrism, where meaning hinges upon perspective, to an understanding that meaning could arise from other and even transcendent perspectives, and perhaps (God forbid!) be a property of the cosmos itself in a formal way (Platonic as that may sound.)

I hope the above doesn't come across as "pouting" to you :cry: :wink:
Belinda
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Post by Belinda »

OTavern wrote
Your position rests on a larger concept that meaning starts with the subject and is applied to the object. But where, exactly, did the subject get this ability to apply meaning? From the dead objective world around it? How could it be possible for a dead objective world to bring about a subject with the capacity to apply meaning onto the world?


The modern, post-scientific enlightenment view is that meaning is a continuum which has been naturally selected for in homo sapiens, the 'subject'.As I said, a continuum. The 'dead objective world' is in a continuum, through the more brainy mammals, with the meaningful world of human beings at the other extreme from 'the dead objective world' extreme.

The dead objective world is within the circle of love and necessity along with homo sapiens.The dead objective world is also part of the system of nature.Every hair of your head is numbered.

The way in which this continuum produced man with his intellectual and symbolism capacities is explained by natural selection.
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