Truth

[mitchellmckain]

I would respond that on the issue of determinism he seems to be as out of touch with reality as you obviously were.

I am delighted to hear that. Thank you.

Your God, eh?

I believe that our free will, like life itself, is a quantitative thing and neither absolute nor inviolable, but something that varies considerably -- depending on things like ones beliefs and ones awareness of the possibilites. And so our free will is something that can definitely be destroyed -- and I think has demonstrably been destroyed by such things as drugs -- just as Harris imagines his machine doing.

Sounds like you are saying that free will is determined by the environment of the brain. I couldn't agree more!

No, but it certainly plays a role. I think that the physical process of life is a necessary part of our free will and any physical process is subject to influence, interference and disruption by physical forces from the environment. But there are also mental and spiritual parts to it as well. By the mental I am refering to a physical process as well and thus that is also subject to influence by physical forces from the environment although a bit more indirectly much like the operation of software in a computer can be effected by things that interfere with the operation of the hardware in the computer. The spiritual component (assuming it exists) must be rather subtle and have a primarily epiphenomenal relationship to the physical. I think we need the self-organizing nature of the physical process of life in order to have free will choices but that it is these choices that provide the substance of our spiritual existence.

My experience of .. my wife do[es] not constitute anything like an objective proof [of her existence]

You're not really married, are you...?!

LOL Excellent! You have made my point exactly. My experiences of my wife and 3 sons are more than sufficient for MY knowledge of their existence but they certainly don't establish any such knowledge of their existence for you. For all you know I could be just making them up as part of an internet persona along with all the information in my profile. For all anyone here REALLY knows, I could be a 14 year old girl who lives in South Africa, right? Whether you actually have any reason to doubt my word on any of these things is another matter.

[Moonwood the Hare]

For the record, my posts have dropped way off because there's little point in arguing these issues with the same 6 people until the crack of doom. I'm not really the type to say things like, "I'm done here" or anything dopey dramatic like that, nor are others (like tirtlegrrl, who just faded away, sadly), so there's nothing particularly noteworthy about this. But as I do wean myself away from this slice of internetiquity, it's disheartening to see the same repetitive patterns from the same people over and over, in particular mitch and Rian.

On the other hand, Rian, I take it as a compliment, back-handed as your Christian charity deems to offer it, in that you would compare me to Yuri. He's goddamned impressive, and I only wish I had his degree of knowledge of these belief/knowledge structures, and it's been a pleasure to read his posts and be enlightened a bit more. It's also delightful that he has rattled Mitchell's cage so effectively, and I had to chuckle when my private bet with myself, shared with Yuri alone, came to pass within about 2 hours of my making it. (This is all an inside joke that Yuri understands and you aren't worth the effort of me explaining, but no worries, you wouldn't be interested anyway).

I'm sure you think this is nothing more than me just clapping myself on the back, which I implore you to keep believing. Its a compliment to me, he doesn't seem the least bit insulted by it, and sin you must in order to make your god's self-sacrifice a worthwhile effort.

I never for a moment thought Yuri was KTR. The style was different and several posts ago I asked KTR if he wanted to discuss some stuff about Jung. If he'd been familiar with Jung as Yuri is then I reckon he would have gone ahead with that discussion. Yuri seems at least 10 years younger than KTR. But on the down side Yuri does not engage to the extent KTR does. He uses this forum in effect to write essays though he has had a few tangles with Mitch who is also a bit of an essay writer (open for anyone to throw this back at me; occasionally I think I'm being enigmatic and I'd better spell my position out but I don't think I'm an online essayist). Anyway KTR I'm sorry you are pulling out. I've found our discussions engaging if sometimes frustrating.

Yuri - my question to you remains the same
Are you sure you have grasped the difference between thinking judgement and feeling judgement. With feeling being concerned not with true/false but with agreeable/disagreeable? If so this means belief as much as knowledge can arise from thinking at the point where we say I cannot prove this theory to be true but I judge it to be true, at least true enough to use. I would say this is exactly where we stand with any universal scientific theory. If I am judging rather than proving a theory true I am still, in Jung's sense, thinking and if Popper is correct then most scientific theories being universal cannot be proved true. Hence it makes total sense for a person to say I cannot prove the theory of evolution to be true but I believe it to be true without that implying that I have made some kind of illicit value judgement about the theory.

[Yuri]

I would define truth as "that which corresponds to reality."

While there is an objective reality out there, no one has objective or flawless access to that reality. We are always limited by our senses and our biases. Truth claims always involve judgment--we judge something to be true or false. We judge things to be consistent with reality as we have experienced it.

While I don't think "belief" and "truth" are the same thing, neither do I think you can separate them into different categories--"these are matters of truth, and these are matters of faith and belief."

Thanks for joining in Matt. When I talk about the different categories of information, truth, belief and knowledge, I mean to refer to them not as we think of them but as they really are. So, truth is that which is true, which is as you say that which corresponds to reality. Belief is a kind of information that we think is true but may be in reality true or false. Knowledge is a different kind of information, also which we think is true but may be in reality true or false.

Whilst we judge things to be true or false, whether they are true or false in reality is a different matter. Thus if I judge the existence of god to be true based on my trust of the bible, according to my theory of categorization of information the existence of god becomes my belief, which may or may not in reality be true.

By comparison, if I have an idea that a force of gravity is exterted between an apple and the earth, and I propose that the gravity force will cause the apple to accelerate at a rate independent of the mass of the apple, I design an experiment to test my proposition and find that its results confirm my proposition, then I know about gravity, specifically I have a theory of gravity. My knowledge of gravity, like my belief in god, may be true or false.

So, are you correct to say that I can't separate information into different categories? I hope you wont mind if I think not. As you can see, I have separated truth, belief and knowledge into 'sets' of information, which I have defined in an earlier post. I can define sets of anything I want. I can define sets of human beings with different coloured eyes if I want, and the fact that they're all the same species does not constitute a reason I can't do that. The fact that truth, knowledge and belief are all kinds of information does not constitute a reason I can't separate them however I want to. Whether or not you agree with my categorization is another matter all together. I have proposed this idea to people who claim that belief, faith and truth are one and the same. Some of them remain adamant that the word of the bible equals the word of god equals truth. I can't possibly argue with that proposal, because if they wish to categorize information in some way it would be hypocritical of me to say they can't do that, because I wish to categorize information in some way too.

My way is better though.

[Yuri]

My experiences of my wife and 3 sons are more than sufficient for MY knowledge of their existence but they certainly don't establish any such knowledge of their existence for you. For all you know I could be just making them up as part of an internet persona along with all the information in my profile. For all anyone here REALLY knows, I could be a 14 year old girl who lives in South Africa, right? Whether you actually have any reason to doubt my word on any of these things is another matter.

I think I get it. Objective proof is proof that is repeatable for anyone. So, an experiment to prove the acceleration of gravity can be done in one place by one person and repeated in another place by another person, and so constitutes objective proof. However, according to you, your experience of god is not objective but subjective, and thus can't be repeated by someone else in a different place to prove the existence of god. This is the reason you can't provide an objective proof of god's existence. Fair enough.

I am making an assumption that if I asked you your opinion of god, you might say,
"I believe in God."


Do you believe in your wife?

[Yuri]

Are you sure you have grasped the difference between thinking judgement and feeling judgement. With feeling being concerned not with true/false but with agreeable/disagreeable?

Thanks Moonwood, I think I see what you mean. Let's say Jung is right and the feeling function gives a judgement of agreeable or disagreeable, whereas the thinking function gives us a judgement of true or false. If that is so, then if feeling judgements give us information we call belief, then belief is not a kind of information that can be classified as true or false, so the information relationships diagram doesn't make sense. Instead, the feeling function should give us information we like / don't like, which has nothing to do with truth.

Hmmm...

If so this means belief as much as knowledge can arise from thinking at the point where we say I cannot prove this theory to be true but I judge it to be true, at least true enough to use. I would say this is exactly where we stand with any universal scientific theory. If I am judging rather than proving a theory true I am still, in Jung's sense, thinking and if Popper is correct then most scientific theories being universal cannot be proved true. Hence it makes total sense for a person to say I cannot prove the theory of evolution to be true but I believe it to be true without that implying that I have made some kind of illicit value judgement about the theory.

Yes yes yes. A good scientist knows that he can't know a theory to be true and is always looking for ways to disprove it. Thus he wouldn't say,
"I know evolution is true." He would be more likely to say,
"I believe evolution is true." He is making a value judgement on the quality of the theory using himself as the authority source, assessing himself to be a reliable source of knowledge, and thus permitting himself to believe that evolution is true. The word belief, unlike the word knowledge, implies that we accept it may be false even though we think it's probably true. Belief has a probability, it's a sliding-scale. Knowledge is yes/no.

[mitchellmckain]

I am making an assumption that if I asked you your opinion of god, you might say,
"I believe in God."

Do you believe in your wife?

Yes, I believe in God. I believe in my wife, and I believe that life is a process of self-organization. Of these three beliefs the latter is theoretical and the first two is a matter of first hand experience, so while I comparatively do not KNOW that life is a process of self-organization, I certainly do know that my wife exists and that God exists. I suppose we might actually be living in a dream world like the matrix where my wife and the God I have experienced are just programmed simulations and thus do not really exist at all. But as you have observed, that is a philosophically dead end sort of proposition that serves no real purpose in my life and so although I cannot prove that they really exist, I know that they exist as well as I know anything at all. To live under the assumption that they do exist is the most meaningful way of living my life and if it turns out that we really are in something like the matrix, I still cannot regret it, because they are too much a part of me and my life to ignore. Yes I love my wife as I love God but that really isn't the reason that I know that they exist -- that would be a backwards way of thinking. They don't exist because I love them. I love them because they exist and because of who they are.

I most certainly can entertain the idea that they do not exist. I have just done so in the previous paragraph. And because of this I can quite understand that not having experienced them as I have experienced them, you may not believe that they exist at all. I do not measure rationality by my own beliefs or knowledge, for rationality is a matter of logical consistency and so I see nothing logically inconsistent in the atheist position. I do not measure what is reasonable by my own beliefs or knowledge when they are based on personal experience alone and since I cannot demonstrate the truth of them to others , I see nothing unreasonable in the atheist position. Now however logically consistent a belief in physical determinism or young earth creationism may be and thus rational in that sense, the objective nature of the scientific evidence against them does make these beliefs unreasonable. Some people use the word "rational" in the sense that I have used the word reasonable, and that is ok, because I know what they mean, though I prefer to distinguish between these two criterion.

[mitchellmckain]

If so this means belief as much as knowledge can arise from thinking at the point where we say I cannot prove this theory to be true but I judge it to be true, at least true enough to use. I would say this is exactly where we stand with any universal scientific theory. If I am judging rather than proving a theory true I am still, in Jung's sense, thinking and if Popper is correct then most scientific theories being universal cannot be proved true. Hence it makes total sense for a person to say I cannot prove the theory of evolution to be true but I believe it to be true without that implying that I have made some kind of illicit value judgement about the theory.

Yes yes yes. A good scientist knows that he can't know a theory to be true and is always looking for ways to disprove it. Thus he wouldn't say,
"I know evolution is true." He would be more likely to say,
"I believe evolution is true." He is making a value judgement on the quality of the theory using himself as the authority source, assessing himself to be a reliable source of knowledge, and thus permitting himself to believe that evolution is true. The word belief, unlike the word knowledge, implies that we accept it may be false even though we think it's probably true. Belief has a probability, it's a sliding-scale. Knowledge is yes/no.

Yes, some scientists may indeed speak this way but I think it is misleading, because by such a standard there is no such thing as scientific knowledge at all, and that just isn't true. Since by my definition a belief is knowledge when it is what we live by, I think it is proper to classify a scientific theory as scientific knowledge when it has become a standard tool of scientific inquiry. This most certainly is the case for the theory of evolution as it is for the theory of relativity and quantum field theory. All of these are part of our scientific knowledge and it would be very misleading to say that any of these are just beliefs. The name of "theory" must not be confused with the designation of "hypothesis". The first, "theory" refers not to any uncertainty (as creationists often argue) but rather the fact that it provides a theoretical frameworld for understanding a broad spectrum of phenomenon and it is only the later, "hypothesis", that refers to something for which there is insufficient evidence. Evolution is scientific knowledge and not mere opinion or any other kind of belief that we are less certain of than other things.

[Yuri]

I believe in my wife

Faith is the inability to distinguish between belief and knowledge.

[mitchellmckain]

Faith is the inability to distinguish between belief and knowledge.

Incorrect. Faith is decision to live by a belief even though proof is impossible. Thus we have faith that mathematics is consistent even though it has been proven that a proof of the logical consistency of mathematics is impossible.

Intolerance is the insistence upon judging others by your own self serving made up definitons and undemonstrable beliefs (no matter what you pretend and decide to call them).

[Moonwood the Hare]

Are you sure you have grasped the difference between thinking judgement and feeling judgement. With feeling being concerned not with true/false but with agreeable/disagreeable?

Thanks Moonwood, I think I see what you mean. Let's say Jung is right and the feeling function gives a judgement of agreeable or disagreeable, whereas the thinking function gives us a judgement of true or false. If that is so, then if feeling judgements give us information we call belief, then belief is not a kind of information that can be classified as true or false, so the information relationships diagram doesn't make sense. Instead, the feeling function should give us information we like / don't like, which has nothing to do with truth.

Hmmm...

Well here's a short section from an assignment I wrote including quotes from Myers and Jung:

On the judging functions Myers notes, 'A basic difference in judgement arises from the existence of two . . . ways of coming to conclusions. One way is . . . thinking . . . a logical process, aimed at impersonal finding. The other is . . . feeling, that is, by appreciation – equally reasonable in its fashion – bestowing on things a personal, subjective value.'(Myers and Myers, 1980, p 3) and adds 'The child who prefers feeling becomes more adult in handling human relationships. The child who prefers thinking grows more adept in the organization of facts and ideas. (Myers and Myers, 1980, p4). Jung summarises the four functions. 'These four functional types correspond to the obvious means by which conciousness obtains its orientation to experience. Sensation (i.e. sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going.' (Jung, 1964, p61) . . .

Jung explains 'When I use the word “feeling” in contrast to “thinking,” I refer to a judgement of value – for instance, agreeable or disagreeable, good or bad, and so on. Feeling according to this definition is not an emotion (which as the word conveys is involuntary). Feeling as I mean it is (like thinking) a rational (i.e. ordering) function.' (Jung, 1964, p61)

Feeling corresponds to what Rogers would call valuing which Rogers sees as a function of the organismic whole whereas Jung sees it as a product of the rational ego. For Rogers one gets in touch with that greater whole by re-establishing contact with the organismic valuing process, that is with feeling.

The comparison with Jung and Rogers reveals I think a flaw in Jung's thinking. What ~Jung calls the ego (Rogers calls it the self which is confusing since Jung gives the word self a different meaning) anyway this ego emerges from the totality of psychic processes at a stage in a child's development and once an ego has emerged a child can begin to make thinking judgements. However feeling judgements occur prior to the emergence of an ego or self. For both Jung and Rogers psychological distress occurs when the conscious part (called ego by Jung, self by Rogers) is at odds with the rest of the person (called self by Jung, 'totality of organismic processes' by Rogers. I feel Rogers must be correct in seeing feeling or valuing judgements as having temporal priority over logical thinking judgements in the biography of any individual and as never being acts of the ego in the sense that thinking judgements are. Both Jung and Rogers feel that for psychological health the rational ego or self must move into harmony with the greater self and that harm ensues from trying to pull the greater self into harmony with the ego.

[Yuri]

Moonwood, MM, your help on this has been instrumental. One example - here is the current draft of the paragraph on "Belief":

Belief
Belief is information that we feel is true. It is quite distinct from knowledge. Are we free to believe what we want to believe, or are we a slave to the facts? Most people would probably say that by definition they must believe what they feel to be the truth. However, is that really so? A well-documented phenomenon called Motivated Reasoning informs us that people are likely to select beliefs that reinforce their other beliefs rather than accept beliefs according to the validity of the propositions presented. If the true validity of a proposition is unknown, then it is unimportant; it is the agreement or disagreement with a person’s other beliefs that determines the validity in their mind of any proposition. The source of the proposition is far more likely to determine its acceptability than the proposition itself. If a trusted authority such as a parent, teacher or Holy Book asserts a proposition then it may be accepted as belief; if an untrusted source asserts the same proposition, it may be rejected. If a source is reliable, the belief is more likely to be true. If the source is unreliable, the belief is less likely to be true. The source of belief might be a feeling generated by the self; e.g. “I believe my son is good” may stem from the feeling “I love my son” and other feelings associated with my concept of “son”. Feelings give rise to judgements of “good” or “bad”, “agreeable” or “disagreeable”, and those judgements are then used as the bases for beliefs. Beliefs formed from “good/bad” judgements may or may not be assessable for their truthfulness. “I believe my daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world” is a subjective belief and it is patently inappropriate to assess such a belief in the literal sense. A person’s assessment of their child’s beauty can only be assessed by the person. “I believe in astrology” must be carefully interpreted. The concept of astrology exists, so a person who means “I believe in the concept of astrology” believes truthfully. However, a person who means “I believe that the predictions of astrology are accurate” may be objectively challenged.

The following may be said about beliefs:
1. Beliefs may be true or false.
2. Beliefs are accepted or rejected on the strength of the trust placed in the source of the belief.
3. People may harbour strongly held beliefs for which they are aware that there is conflicting evidence from an untrusted source.

Beliefs are not necessarily either absolutely true or absolutely false. People believe things “a little”, “a lot”, “very strongly”, “absolutely” or anywhere they choose along a sliding scale. Beliefs are value-based and very often have an emotional content attached to them in the mind of the believer. We might rationally say “I believe it very strongly”. We would probably not say “I believe it for certain.” There are some who profess certainty in their beliefs, but this is surely a delusion. As Christopher Hitchens astutely pointed out, “never confuse certainty with truth”.

[Yuri]

Moonwood, MM, my edited paragraph on Faith with your influence:

Faith
Faith is many different things to many different people. Some might say,
 “Faith is decision to live by a belief even though proof is impossible.” Were there a universally-agreed definition of faith, I would use it. However, for the purposes of this essay, I am going to define faith as follows: Faith is a sub-set of belief. The defining characteristic of faith is that it is independent of proof. Indeed, the whole purpose of faith is that it is a belief which is unconditional of evidence, and by definition requires that there be no proof. If there were proof, then faith would cease to be faith and become knowledge.
I have found in discussions that the faithful tend to classify Knowledge as a sub-set of, or part of, or the same thing as Belief. This has led me to the conclusion that the faithful are unable to distinguish between Belief and Knowledge. If I use the word Faith as a condition of the mind, then I can say,
 “Faith is the inability to distinguish between Belief and Knowledge.”

Note: There is another meaning for the word faith which causes confusion, that meaning of faith which we use in the following sense: imagine we are addressing our son who is nervous about playing in an up-coming cricket match and is looking for encouragement. We might say,

 “I have faith that you will do very well. I believe in you.” Or,

 “I have faith that mathematics is consistent even though it has been proven that a proof of the logical consistency of mathematics is impossible.”
 This is not the “kind” of faith to which I am referring. It is a fault of our language that we use the word “faith” in this sense as well as in the sense “I have faith in Yahweh.” The two meanings of the word are quite distinct.

[Yuri]

Intolerance is the insistence upon judging others by your own self serving made up definitons and undemonstrable beliefs (no matter what you pretend and decide to call them).

I can't tolerate the notion that somebody should have no more certainty in the existence of their wife than they have in the existence of an imaginary friend. I consider it an insult to the wife and my moral duty to point it out to them because their well being may be improved by rehabilitation of their mental health. If that is intolerance then I am guilty without remorse.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Intolerance is the insistence upon judging others by your own self serving made up definitons and undemonstrable beliefs (no matter what you pretend and decide to call them).

I can't tolerate the notion that somebody should have no more certainty in the existence of their wife than they have in the existence of an imaginary friend. I consider it an insult to the wife and my moral duty to point it out to them because their well being may be improved by rehabilitation of their mental health. If that is intolerance then I am guilty without remorse.

This is a good example of a feeling judgement being mistaken for a guide to objective truth. Because your feelings on this are strong and primitive (coming from shadow in Jung's sense) you assume that Mitch's friend must be imaginary even though logically you cannot prove this. We have had a fair few discussions on this site about attributing people's religious beliefs to mental health problems and as someone who is a reader of Jung I am astonished you are unaware of the danger of this.

[Moonwood the Hare]

There are other kinds of knowing. When we take in information we label it as knowledge, belief, fact, fiction, nonsense etc. My point is that we should be careful what we think or feel is true, and we should understand the bases of our assertions that information is true. By looking at the process backwards, i.e. by asking ourselves if we think we "know" something or if we feel we "believe" something, that should tell us what kind of reasoning process we went through to give the information that label. We can then review our reasoning process, audit it if you like, to ensure that we labelled our information correctly. The process we went through could be any number of specific things such as empirical processes or otherwise. I use logic and value-based reason to show the ends of the spectrum. Much of our information will have been formed by a variety of processes before we give it our label, which is why sometimes we say we believe and know something. In such a case, we probably have value and logical bases for the information. The important thing is to check our reasoning for validity. Just doing that ought to help us weed out tons of bad information from "belief" and "knowledge" and consign it to the recycle bin.

We will assess knowledge claims according to an epistemological framework which may be formal or informal and which we may hold with varying degrees of awareness. However I think it is a mistake to think that such a framework is what justifies our knowledge. Rather the framework examines how our knowledge is justified. Sometimes knowledge is justified through rational analysis, sometimes not.

You have inspired me to read more about Jung (I only really knew about him through the work of Myers & Briggs), and I found something that raised my eyebrows. Jung's ideas about existentialism and anxiety: Jung saw anxiety as something useful in psychoanalysis because anxiety can be used as a motivational force to help someone improve their life. If you consider that another way, then something that removes anxiety could be considered harmful because it takes away that motivation. In my view, religion is like an anaesthetic to remove anxiety about death and other things. This has been a sticking point for me as to whether it is moral to lead people away from religion to what I think is the truth. Jung gives me moral support to carry on because although abandonment of religious ideology gives rise to anxiety about the finality of death, it has the benefit that it restores people's motivation to improve their lives rather than lie about in glassy-eyed ecstasy at the thought of the afterlife, wasting the only opportunity they have of existence.

Well I would stop reading about Jung and start reading Jung. If you do want to read about Jung I would recommend reading books by those who knew him like Jolande Jacobi or Aniele Jaffe. Man and His Symbols written by both Jung and his associates is probably the best place to start. Yes it is possible that a person may go into therapy because of anxiety and end up losing their religious faith, or converting to another faith or they may attain faith. Both belief and unbelief have pathological forms. Jung describes cases where a convinced materialist in mid-life suddenly has a deeply religious vision and thinks they are going insane. His approach was always to help them accept the validity of these experiences. He also describes some remarkable visions of the afterlife which he encountered in a dying child. Jung believed strongly in some kind of afterlife. The type of existentialist view you describe sounds more like Sartre than Jung. But I don't think you should worry about making people anxious, unless you are pushing people to the point where you make them suicidal or something of that kind. People do usually need to face their anxieties. My counselling supervisor is an existentialist who believes anxiety is a normal part of life that we need to live with rather than avoid.