Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Belinda]

Pattern-chaser,
I reckon reasoning and feeling are best balanced so that neither predominates.

[Pattern-chaser]

Pattern-chaser,
I reckon reasoning and feeling are best balanced so that neither predominates.

You write as though we can employ these qualities as our conscious minds dictate. In the case of reason, that is at least partly true. But feelings? They control the conscious mind, not the other way round. We cannot "balance" our feelings, except perhaps by 'counselling' or something like personal brainwashing (NLP).

Our feelings "balance" us, I think?

[Sy Borg]

I suspect there IS something spookier going on than just "brain states". There might not be, but there are too many poorly explained gaps in rationalist paradigms.

It is certainly true that there are still gaps in our understanding. But scientific explanations are the only way to fill such gaps, which is what science has been increasingly doing for the last couple of centuries. And the more we understand, the less need there is for spooky, supernatural explanations. Supernatural explanations are merely just-so stories and not really explanations at all.

I am not convinced this is true. What if our scientific inquiries are akin to Bacteroides believing that the human gut is the entire universe? What if the scale and complexity of reality is beyond the capacity of human endeavour? In that case, all that can be done is to "shut up and calculate" because it works on a practical level.

Our rationalist societies claim to have all the answers to the important questions, with only arcane details left. Yet this view strikes me as superficial, as are the societies that rationalism builds. It seems to me that a blend of religiosity and rationalism builds better societies than either in isolation.

I think religiosity and rationality are difficult to reconcile. Far from claiming to know everything, science, unlike religion, humbly acknowledges that it will never reach an end to the search for better explanations. There will always be more to find out.

I think they are ontically easy to reconcile, due to the possible limits of human inquiry, as described above.

However, they are indeed politically impossible to reconcile because each side tends to be so narrow-minded, self-entitled and corrupt, beholden to commercial and political interests. Each seems to be more interested in saying what they think is needed to elicit a desired response in a listener than to genuinely aim for maximal truthfulness. Discourse is increasingly politicised and strategic nowadays, rather than earnest and straightforward.

It seems to me that life forces us to reduce everything to "icons" to survive, and our lives involve the manipulation of those icons that we use to pigeonhole and mentally stultify reality into manageable chunks. My life seems to have always been a matter of bouncing from icon to icon, while rarely, if ever, actually appreciating the depth and nature of each thing.

I guess that is the best we can do because no one person can know everything that is known. A single brain is not big enough or powerful enough for that. But with our ability to specialise and record knowledge in retrievable form across generations, humanity has developed a sort of “hive-mind”, the contents of which, both scientific and artistic, is vast and impressive. Individually, we cannot know it all and be good at everything – we have to specialize and aim for success in certain limited areas. The day of the “Renaissance-man” is long gone and we must be content to be participants in the hive-mind.

The human hive mind is indeed impressive, though its focus will always need to be on what works rather than what is. We either just accept the mysteries or create myths around them..

Of course, one could spend a lifetime trying to more deeply understand and appreciate the nature of, say, the shoe you are putting on - how shoes became shoes, the history of shoes, their significance, the combinations of physical attributes (chemistry, morphology) etc. However, if we did that we would either get nothing done, and the depth of that one inquiry would preclude the chance to more shallowly deal with the rest of the world.

LOL. Yes. Most of us are content to leave shoes to cobblers and fashion designers. Life is short and there are much more interesting things to think about. If civilisation were to end and we had to survive alone in the wild I guess most of us could figure out how to cobble together some sort of footwear.

Is there anything inherently more interesting than a shoe? Or a PC, an orange, a roach ... any of these could be studied for a lifetime without ever reaching the end of possible learning about them.

[Thomyum2]

From a materialist metaphysical standpoint it is easy to distinguish. Whilst we may only be able to sense and measure certain aspects of ultimate reality via our limited senses and our technological extensions thereof, we can detect something. We can detect and measure mass and temperature for example. And we can detect and measure the mass and temperature of physical objects like rocks and human bodies. It is therefore reasonable to regard these properties and objects as, in some sense real, if not fully resolved, aspects of the universe. If they did not have some measure of reality we could not detect them.

However, we never detect gods, ghosts, disembodied spirits and the like. It is therefore reasonable to disregard such make-believe supernatural entities because there is not a shred of evidence to support their existence. As far as we can tell, a person who say things like "I have seen ghosts" is either mistaken, deluded or lying. In the past, before the advent of science, notions of supernatural entities and causes were not entirely unreasonable - humans would rather some explanation for the workings of the universe than none at all. We now have better explanations.

Of course, it could be argued that gods, ghosts, disembodied spirits etcetera might still exist but that we have not yet been able to detect them. But that strikes me as rather woolly and wishful thinking. We could argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster also exists but that we haven't yet been able to detect it. Using that line of argument, we can argue for the existence of anything no matter how silly. And yet people continue to use that line of argument like in support of for supernatural entities.

I'm a little confused about how you would define spirituality because you seem to using the term in more than one sense.

In your previous post, in speaking 'non-religious spirituality' you said:

...an ultimate reality which we, with our limited sensorium and technological extensions thereof, are unable to experience, and that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.

I happen to agree with this definition of the spiritual, that its essence involves an awareness of a reality beyond what the physical senses tell us or cultivating an understanding that our own nature and existence go beyond just the physical and/or material.

Yet here, you're now saying that we should be able distinguish spirituality from other religious beliefs based on whether or not it can be detected. In my mind, something that we can't 'experience' with our physical senses or instruments is the same thing as something we can't 'detect'. So here you seem to be suggesting a form of spirituality that is purely materialistic, in contrast with your original question about a spirituality that is atheistic, which I think it a very different question.

I think that it's much easier to reconcile spirituality with atheism, as this thread question was initially asked, than it is to make it compatible with materialism, which is where you seem to be taking the discussion now. There are certainly many faith traditions that exclude belief in God or gods but still maintain a belief in the underlying 'spiritual' (i.e. non-physical) nature of man. But I think that if you maintain a strict materialist philosophy that discounts a belief in the existence of anything that cannot be known via the physical senses or derived from matter, then all that's left to talk about is how we feel about the world we perceive and 'spirituality' just becomes a form or psychology or a therapeutic activity dealing with feelings and not addressing the nature of our existence or any 'ultimate' reality.

But to take a slightly different angle on this, I'd suggest that many people who do believe in gods, spirits, demons, and so forth, would tell you they are in fact able to 'detect' them, but that a materialist philosophy in a sense has already, a priori, disqualified this possibility or this form of detection from consideration. So, for example, if your philosophy holds, as a premise, that there is nothing outside of the 'natural', then no phenomenon you experience can ever be classified as a miracle, regardless of whether or not you are able to supply a physical explanation for it. For that reason, I see materialism as intrinsically opposed to spirituality, at least under the definitions with which I understand it.

[Good_Egg]

I'm reminded of Arthur C Clarke's aphorism that "a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Magic, I'd suggest, is a concept that many (?all?) cultures have. It refers to acts that are awesome because they are impossible according to our current understanding of how things work.

A desire for "the numinous" - the awe of magic - is incompatible with a dogmatic assertion that there is no magic, that there exists nothing beyond our current understanding.

Sure, science is always a work in progress. But at any given moment we have some sort of vision of what it is progressing towards.

Humility is not just to say that we don't quite yet understand all the details of how everything in that vision works. Humility is saying that there may be stuff that is way outside that vision.

Hubris says "there is no evidence for ghosts" when what it really means is "I can see no way that anything like ghosts could work within our current understanding".

[Lagayascienza]

I suspect there IS something spookier going on than just "brain states". There might not be, but there are too many poorly explained gaps in rationalist paradigms.

It is certainly true that there are still gaps in our understanding. But scientific explanations are the only way to fill such gaps, which is what science has been increasingly doing for the last couple of centuries. And the more we understand, the less need there is for spooky, supernatural explanations. Supernatural explanations are merely just-so stories and not really explanations at all.

I am not convinced this is true. What if our scientific inquiries are akin to Bacteroides believing that the human gut is the entire universe? What if the scale and complexity of reality is beyond the capacity of human endeavour? In that case, all that can be done is to "shut up and calculate" because it works on a practical level.

Yes, the sheer scale and complexity of the universe, from quarks to life to the cosmic horizon, will ensure that there will always be more for us to find out. But, unlike bacteria, which are capable of knowing very little, if anything, knowledge acquisition is open ended for us. We can keep devising new ways to find out more and more, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe we will find ways of probing down at the Planck scale and out beyond the cosmic horizon.

Our rationalist societies claim to have all the answers to the important questions, with only arcane details left. Yet this view strikes me as superficial, as are the societies that rationalism builds. It seems to me that a blend of religiosity and rationalism builds better societies than either in isolation.

I think religiosity and rationality are difficult to reconcile. Far from claiming to know everything, science, unlike religion, humbly acknowledges that it will never reach an end to the search for better explanations. There will always be more to find out.

I think they are ontically easy to reconcile, due to the possible limits of human inquiry, as described above.

However, they are indeed politically impossible to reconcile because each side tends to be so narrow-minded, self-entitled and corrupt, beholden to commercial and political interests. Each seems to be more interested in saying what they think is needed to elicit a desired response in a listener than to genuinely aim for maximal truthfulness. Discourse is increasingly politicised and strategic nowadays, rather than earnest and straightforward.

Yes, we can only try our best. I have been trying to avoid political discussions here for exactly that reason – people don’t seem interested in truth or facts. They just seem interested in rooting for their team. But in human affairs, things are never black and white.

It seems to me that life forces us to reduce everything to "icons" to survive, and our lives involve the manipulation of those icons that we use to pigeonhole and mentally stultify reality into manageable chunks. My life seems to have always been a matter of bouncing from icon to icon, while rarely, if ever, actually appreciating the depth and nature of each thing.

I guess that is the best we can do because no one person can know everything that is known. A single brain is not big enough or powerful enough for that. But with our ability to specialise and record knowledge in retrievable form across generations, humanity has developed a sort of “hive-mind”, the contents of which, both scientific and artistic, is vast and impressive. Individually, we cannot know it all and be good at everything – we have to specialize and aim for success in certain limited areas. The day of the “Renaissance-man” is long gone and we must be content to be participants in the hive-mind.

The human hive mind is indeed impressive, though its focus will always need to be on what works rather than what is. We either just accept the mysteries or create myths around them.

There will always be gaps in our knowledge. But, if it is knowledge about the universe and its workings are what we are after, the only way to fill those gasps is with science. For example, if we want to know what dark matter is, then we are going to have to use science. There is no other way of finding out. In fact, I don’t think there are other ways of knowing anything factual.

Of course, one could spend a lifetime trying to more deeply understand and appreciate the nature of, say, the shoe you are putting on - how shoes became shoes, the history of shoes, their significance, the combinations of physical attributes (chemistry, morphology) etc. However, if we did that we would either get nothing done, and the depth of that one inquiry would preclude the chance to more shallowly deal with the rest of the world.

LOL. Yes. Most of us are content to leave shoes to cobblers and fashion designers. Life is short and there are much more interesting things to think about. If civilisation were to end and we had to survive alone in the wild I guess most of us could figure out how to cobble together some sort of footwear.

Is there anything inherently more interesting than a shoe? Or a PC, an orange, a roach ... any of these could be studied for a lifetime without ever reaching the end of possible learning about them.

Yes, I guess there will always be something more to learn about anything. You mentioned the roach - a real survivor who would probably do fine even if we trashed the joint completely for ourselves. I find them interesting also because they have fairly simple neural networks capable of producing interesting behaviours and so they might be good to emulate in the the development of simple autonomous robots as a stepping stone to building true AGI.

[Lagayascienza]

I'm reminded of Arthur C Clarke's aphorism that "a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Magic, I'd suggest, is a concept that many (?all?) cultures have. It refers to acts that are awesome because they are impossible according to our current understanding of how things work.

A desire for "the numinous" - the awe of magic - is incompatible with a dogmatic assertion that there is no magic, that there exists nothing beyond our current understanding.

Sure, science is always a work in progress. But at any given moment we have some sort of vision of what it is progressing towards.

Humility is not just to say that we don't quite yet understand all the details of how everything in that vision works. Humility is saying that there may be stuff that is way outside that vision.

Hubris says "there is no evidence for ghosts" when what it really means is "I can see no way that anything like ghosts could work within our current understanding".

Hubris is a bit like ghost - those who want to see it will find it even when when there is none. Hubris is a accusation often levelled at those who question cherished beliefs an superstitions.

As far as I have been able to ascertain there is no credible evidence for ghosts or magic. If anyone has any credible evidence for them then, of course, science would be open to it. The thing is, though, that every time science has investigated claims of the supernatural and magic nothing has been found. Except fraud or wishful thinking. And then the supernatural crowd turn around and say that there is something wrong with the science. You can't win. They are determined to have their ghosts and magic, too.

[Lagayascienza]

From a materialist metaphysical standpoint it is easy to distinguish. Whilst we may only be able to sense and measure certain aspects of ultimate reality via our limited senses and our technological extensions thereof, we can detect something. We can detect and measure mass and temperature for example. And we can detect and measure the mass and temperature of physical objects like rocks and human bodies. It is therefore reasonable to regard these properties and objects as, in some sense real, if not fully resolved, aspects of the universe. If they did not have some measure of reality we could not detect them.

However, we never detect gods, ghosts, disembodied spirits and the like. It is therefore reasonable to disregard such make-believe supernatural entities because there is not a shred of evidence to support their existence. As far as we can tell, a person who say things like "I have seen ghosts" is either mistaken, deluded or lying. In the past, before the advent of science, notions of supernatural entities and causes were not entirely unreasonable - humans would rather some explanation for the workings of the universe than none at all. We now have better explanations.

Of course, it could be argued that gods, ghosts, disembodied spirits etcetera might still exist but that we have not yet been able to detect them. But that strikes me as rather woolly and wishful thinking. We could argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster also exists but that we haven't yet been able to detect it. Using that line of argument, we can argue for the existence of anything no matter how silly. And yet people continue to use that line of argument like in support of for supernatural entities.

I'm a little confused about how you would define spirituality because you seem to using the term in more than one sense.

In your previous post, in speaking 'non-religious spirituality' you said:

...an ultimate reality which we, with our limited sensorium and technological extensions thereof, are unable to experience, and that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.

I happen to agree with this definition of the spiritual, that its essence involves an awareness of a reality beyond what the physical senses tell us or cultivating an understanding that our own nature and existence go beyond just the physical and/or material.

Yet here, you're now saying that we should be able distinguish spirituality from other religious beliefs based on whether or not it can be detected. In my mind, something that we can't 'experience' with our physical senses or instruments is the same thing as something we can't 'detect'. So here you seem to be suggesting a form of spirituality that is purely materialistic, in contrast with your original question about a spirituality that is atheistic, which I think it a very different question.

I think that it's much easier to reconcile spirituality with atheism, as this thread question was initially asked, than it is to make it compatible with materialism, which is where you seem to be taking the discussion now. There are certainly many faith traditions that exclude belief in God or gods but still maintain a belief in the underlying 'spiritual' (i.e. non-physical) nature of man. But I think that if you maintain a strict materialist philosophy that discounts a belief in the existence of anything that cannot be known via the physical senses or derived from matter, then all that's left to talk about is how we feel about the world we perceive and 'spirituality' just becomes a form or psychology or a therapeutic activity dealing with feelings and not addressing the nature of our existence or any 'ultimate' reality.

But to take a slightly different angle on this, I'd suggest that many people who do believe in gods, spirits, demons, and so forth, would tell you they are in fact able to 'detect' them, but that a materialist philosophy in a sense has already, a priori, disqualified this possibility or this form of detection from consideration. So, for example, if your philosophy holds, as a premise, that there is nothing outside of the 'natural', then no phenomenon you experience can ever be classified as a miracle, regardless of whether or not you are able to supply a physical explanation for it. For that reason, I see materialism as intrinsically opposed to spirituality, at least under the definitions with which I understand it.

Thanks for your interesting reply, thomyum2.
I did not mean to imply that there is anything in the universe other than matter and the physical laws that govern its interactions. However, there is no denying that we are not in a position to experience the physical/material universe in its entirety. We have only limited sense impressions of ultimate physical reality. For example, we cannot directly experience quarks or see out beyond the cosmic horizon from where light has not had time to reach us. And unlike bats we don’t have echolocation and we can’t see ultraviolet light like bees. We can only experience the world with our limited range of human senses and our technological extensions thereof. However, we have no reason to believe that there is anything “spooky” out there.
What we can sense is a partial or imprecise impression of an underlying reality governed by the laws of nature. We are part of that ultimate reality and governed by the same laws. As far as we can ascertain, here are no gods, ghosts, spirits, demons, etcetera. And no miracles. Everything that happens in the universe happens in accord with the laws of physics. There seems to be no other way that anything can happen.
To my mind, atheism and materialism go hand in hand. But atheism and materialism do not prevent us from experiencing the awe, wonder, humility and reverence at the universe insofar as we are able to perceive it. It is this awe, wonder and reverence which I equate with spirituality. It is a naturalistic spirituality that has no need for make-believe supernatural entities like gods, ghosts, demons and the like.

[Belinda]

Pattern-chaser,
I reckon reasoning and feeling are best balanced so that neither predominates.

You write as though we can employ these qualities as our conscious minds dictate. In the case of reason, that is at least partly true. But feelings? They control the conscious mind, not the other way round. We cannot "balance" our feelings, except perhaps by 'counselling' or something like personal brainwashing (NLP).

Our feelings "balance" us, I think?

Emotions are reactions before they have been subjected to learned inhibitions ,respect, reasoning,and conscience.Thereafter the emotions are changed into feelings many of which are conscious feelings. For instance jealousy, a feeling, is a combination of fear reaction and reasoning.
People who can't control their emotional reactions make trouble for themselves and others.
There have been occasions when pure emotional reaction is socially valued. For instance berserking and similarly bayonet training for soldiers. Romantics in Europe around the 18th -19th centuries valued emotions more than reason however Romantics were protected from their impulsivity by their social connections or their comparative affluence , otherwise they came to grief one way or another.

[Pattern-chaser]

Hubris says "there is no evidence for ghosts" when what it really means is "I can see no way that anything like ghosts could work within our current understanding".

What a joy it is to see flexible thinking expressed openly. It's a bit like meeting a socialist in America.

[Pattern-chaser]

You write as though we can employ these qualities as our conscious minds dictate. In the case of reason, that is at least partly true. But feelings? They control the conscious mind, not the other way round. We cannot "balance" our feelings, except perhaps by 'counselling' or something like personal brainwashing (NLP).

Our feelings "balance" us, I think?

Emotions are reactions before they have been subjected to learned inhibitions ,respect, reasoning,and conscience.Thereafter the emotions are changed into feelings many of which are conscious feelings. For instance jealousy, a feeling, is a combination of fear reaction and reasoning.
People who can't control their emotional reactions make trouble for themselves and others.
There have been occasions when pure emotional reaction is socially valued. For instance berserking and similarly bayonet training for soldiers. Romantics in Europe around the 18th -19th centuries valued emotions more than reason however Romantics were protected from their impulsivity by their social connections or their comparative affluence , otherwise they came to grief one way or another.

Many people use the terms “feeling” and “emotion” as synonyms, but they are not interchangeable. While they have similar elements, there is a marked difference between feelings and emotions.

Feelings. Both emotional experiences and physical sensations — such as hunger or pain — bring about feelings, according to Psychology Today. Feelings are a conscious experience, although not every conscious experience, such as seeing or believing, is a feeling, as explained in the article.

Emotions. According to Psychology Today, an emotion “can only ever be felt…through the emotional experiences it gives rise to, even though it might be discovered through its associated thoughts, beliefs, desires, and actions.” Emotions are not conscious but instead manifest in the unconscious mind. These emotions can be brought to the surface of the conscious state through extended psychotherapy.

A fundamental difference between feelings and emotions is that feelings are experienced consciously, while emotions manifest either consciously or subconsciously. Some people may spend years, or even a lifetime, not understanding the depths of their emotions.

Like you, I have not delved deeply into this, and habitually use (and consider) feelings and emotions to be much the same thing. But in a topic about spirituality, this is at the very edges of the topic, so I think we should leave it here, unless you (or anyone else) wants to start a topic about it?

[Belinda]

'Spirituality' is a really vague term '. The meaning of a word is its use. There is little use philosophising spirituality unless it be defined pro tem. Considering that 'emotions' and 'feelings' often occur in discussions of spirituality it's nice to know that at least emotions and feelings are separately defined by scientists.

[Fanman]

Pattern-chaser,
I reckon reasoning and feeling are best balanced so that neither predominates.

I’m inclined to agree with you here. As human beings, we don’t want to be so embedded in reason that we dismiss our feelings and what we intuit. And we don’t want to be so deep in our feelings that reason cannot reach us. The investigative powers of both are strong. Through feeling, we can deftly navigate complex social situations and understand the nuances of interactions. And through reason, we can investigate the world around us and how we relate to it, drawing on the knowledge and understanding we have acquired to reach justifiable conclusions. Since individually, they are such powerful tools, imagine if we had the skill and capability to use them in tandem, as a unified and balanced instrument for discovery and understanding. I recognize and endorse the capability of people to understand the world around them. So yes, as you say, they are best balanced, which is the case for most if not all of the aspects that comprise us.

[Pattern-chaser]

As human beings, we don’t want to be so embedded in reason that we dismiss our feelings and what we intuit.

Do you honestly think that's possible, even if we really did "want" to?

[Fanman]

As human beings, we don’t want to be so embedded in reason that we dismiss our feelings and what we intuit.

Do you honestly think that's possible, even if we really did "want" to?

Potentially, yes. There are fields of inquiry where human feelings and intuition have no influence; only empirical data is of consequence. I think it is reasonable to suggest that continued existence and endeavour within such fields could lead to a detachment or a perceived reduction in the validity of those aspects of being human in relation to their usefulness. Conversely, an empathic person, who is capable of navigating the complexities of life predominantly through their feelings, may not perceive usefulness in the application of reason and may dismiss their thoughts and conclusions that arise from the pure application of it. Our value systems are inextricably linked to usefulness, and if not that, then to how things make us feel. Based on that axis, I think some people can and will dismiss their feelings and intuitions in favour of reason and vice versa. I have done that before (dismissed my intuition and favored reason), and the result was disastrous. I tend to believe that the whole human being is valuable and collectively brilliant. So, although I apply my feelings, intuition, and reasoning in different ratios, it seems counterintuitive to dismiss either absolutely (which of course doesn’t mean that it cannot be done).