Quote from: dahangRight, we don
Right, we don
Yes. I feel like you are accusing me of dishonesty, as if I changed my entire initial post to reflect that of a religious experience. This is something I did not do. The edit was very minor and reflected something grammatical, which is why I specifically asked quadz to bring up the original post to prove you wrong.
Here
Quote from: DaHangBut you did outright say that I edited my initial post to convey the message of religious/spiritual experiences. That would be an accusation of dishonesty.Again, the post I referred to as being edited and showed you "clarified" "changed" however you want to put it can be found here: http://tastyspleen.net/quake/forums/index.php?topic=4240.msg62565#msg62565. Is this your post or not? Does it show you clarifying you meant? Was it edited by you? If it is yours and you did it, how is my referencing it an accusation of dishonesty?
But you did outright say that I edited my initial post to convey the message of religious/spiritual experiences. That would be an accusation of dishonesty.
I've no idea why you have taken such a tack but instead of dealing with each individual post I will go with this.Quote from: DaHanG on February 09, 2007, 09:57:28 AMYes. I feel like you are accusing me of dishonesty, as if I changed my entire initial post to reflect that of a religious experience. This is something I did not do. The edit was very minor and reflected something grammatical, which is why I specifically asked quadz to bring up the original post to prove you wrong. Why bother Quadz. Here's the link: http://tastyspleen.net/quake/forums/index.php?topic=4240.msg62527#msg62527
I would humbly suggest both sides might want to take a step back, and just let go any animosity that may have arisen from what appears to be an initial misunderstanding.
(And I can't help but observe that, we appear to have a nice case in point here, where personal experience, modified by interpretation--based on a misunderstanding--has resulted in an actual example of personal experiences proving nothing. )
Quote from: quadzI would humbly suggest both sides might want to take a step back, and just let go any animosity that may have arisen from what appears to be an initial misunderstanding.Done.
The evidence is far skewed on one side though. Although the comparison isn
While I believe I understand what you're getting at, I still feel an important distinction is being overlooked here, with regard to proof vis-a-vis science.Let's consider the color "red". Personal experience is involved, certainly, because people who are able to see color must first agree they know the color red when they see it. However, very little in the way of scientific proof can be drawn from the fact that most people seem to be able to agree that red is red. It is a vastly shared personal experience, to be sure, but it doesn't prove much in and of itself beyond implying most of our color perception circuitry is all wired about the same.But now consider the first person to discover that what we agree on as red light occupies a frequency band in the spectrum of visible light from about 625 - 740 nanometers. I would argue the discoverer's personal experience has no direct bearing at all on the provability of this discovery. Indeed, the spectral frequency band of the color we agree is called red was a pre-existing fact waiting to be discovered. The personal experience of the discoverer has no causality with respect to the discovery. Nor is the personal experience of the discoverer related to the scientific provability of the discovery.
Note that I have never taken the stance that personal experience proves nothing. However, from the standpoint of conscious phenomenology, I question whether personal experience can prove much of anything in and of itself beyond axiomatically that the person having the experience is alive. (An experience can't even be reflected upon without being subject to interpretation; more on that below.)
So maybe I'm still not sure whether we are using the same definition of the term proof.
Yes, I watched it. Thanks for the heads up in the shoutbox that it would be airing.
From what I've read of Hawking, I don't get the impression that he takes the tone of certainty. But again, I fail to see how his personal experiences are relevant to the science of his information loss theory. He had arrived at an elegant equation combining thermodynamics, relativity, and gravity; however whether that equation truly represented what goes on in a singularity was far from universally accepted among physicists. Indeed, what I got from the Discovery show and from the few things on the subject I've read since, was that of late it's largely been Hawking who has doggedly been trying to make sense of his own equation. As far as him changing his mind, what I understood was that he was able to come up with an alternate explanation to account for the apparent information loss implied by the equation, by considering the effect of multiple parallel universes, some of which would contain the black hole, and some of which wouldn't. But if I understood right, he was still saying: I believe my equation is correct; there would still be information loss if you only considered a singularity in the context of one universe; but there's a way around information loss if you consider multiple parallel universes.
But what I got from the Discovery show, other physicists were somewhat underwhelmed by Hawkings new idea, partly because the full details of his theory (which he is still developing) have not been made public yet, and also partly because of the the apparent difficulty in testing a theory involving other universes.
Which again, is back to the point of science vs. personal experience. Hawking may be respected, but his personal experiences don't matter to the other physicists. They want solid theory, and they want to be able to test it.
Simply because we, in our own personal experience haven't encountered a phenomenon in no way invalidates the personal experience of someone who has - regardless of what that experience is. While there is nothing wrong with investigation of the personal experience in question, (and they should be investigated) for us to start from the premise they must be wrong (and how do we arrive at the premise they're wrong? Because we haven't experienced it). This starting position blinds us and prevents us from objectively looking at a situation. Because we've already made up our minds they are wrong, our "evidence" gathering, our acceptance of personal experiences are going to be to support our position not to truly find out the truth.
Comparison of personal experiences is a far different realm from these experiences proving something to one another.
For instance, you may feel you've had a personal experience that implies God unquestionably exists. Whereas I may have had a personal experience that suggests something else, just as concretely.What are the possibilities? 1. I haven't had your experience, and you haven't had mine. 2. We've both had the same category of experience, but have interpreted the experience totally differently. 3. ... (?)
I tend to think deep personal experience is almost unavoidably colored by the interpretive process of trying to understand it--or even to resolve it into basic metaphors and ascribe any meaning to the experience; in essence a Heisenberg effect: The more we map an experience into analogies and metaphors we can understand in order to ascribe some meaning to it, the less of the original experience remains.
I would suggest the possibility that you and I could have the same category of experience, and that while you might make sense of it with God-centric metaphors, I might reflect on it differently.
You left one out: Man's presumption that a specific interpretation of a personal experience indicates that God undeniably exists may be just as blinding.
Quote from: dahangThe evidence is far skewed on one side though. Although the comparison isn
Is there truth apart from our perception of truth or is truth bound by our perception of what truth is? In other words, is there such a thing as absolute truth?
Things are either intrinsically moral, or they are not. God can
Quote from: quadzComparison of personal experiences is a far different realm from these experiences proving something to one another.Except to me, it's these comparisons and agreed on results can be the "proof" long before there is the "hard science" to understand how it's done.
I'm inclined to wonder if morality may be kind of a species-relative concept. If your species has a nervous system that can feel pain and pleasure, and has the ability to both conceptualize and feel empathy for other beings. . . . I'm thinking morality may arise largely out of empathy, and the ability to reason about or envision the cascade of implications stemming from that initial/particular precept.