For Moonwood and KTR

[Keep The Reason]

Wow, I step away for a few months and come back to this brilliant morsel of reason from KTR. You sound a bit like a closet Right-Wing Republican KTR

Well welcome back to both you and your delusions. I dont speak for anyone else, but I haven't missed you a bit.

You mean of course the "mythology" of non-terrestrial life?

Non terrestrial life mythology would be known as science fiction, a legitimate literary form. I can recognize it as such, so no, I don't confuse it with speculations of possible life elsewhere in the universe, and define it as such. But you know that because I clearly said it.

I also missed the love-fest between two like minded guys "Excellent! Thanks KTR, you and I have paralleled in almost every conversation on these forums. I enjoy reading your posts, and I'm glad you liked the link."

actually, is rare anyone on this forum stands with me. But glad to see that you can't deal with me getting a compliment. Poor CH, you seem so... Lonely.

Hope the rest of you guys/girls have been well too.

Why...this almost sounds sincere. Have you taken ill?

Ok, let's assume we solely take the evidentiary and/or reasoned approach to life, let's not discuss whether this is the best/only method of discovering truth. Let's assume that it is at least A method, and a good one, is it at least possible that two individuals can evaluate evidence with this reasoned approach, and come up with two completely separate interpretations, and thus, evaluations, and thus beliefs about that evidence? Is it possible that say, 9 judges, can look at the exact same evidence and disagree on the truth assertion required by that evidence, without relying on what KTR calls the "non-logical" side?

Oh, done with your smarmy horseshit now? Have something serious to say now that your Christian urges have been sated? How about you take your assholishness and get lost again? Why should I bother answering your questions, dripping with Christian love? I love it when you guys represent so well.

[ChristianHeretic]

Uncle KTR...thought for sure you could take a joke...but if not...I apologize. I will do my best not to question your posts moving forward...

Mundo, since it was your original post, and it sounded like a sincere one to me...thoughts?

[Keep The Reason]

Uncle KTR...thought for sure you could take a joke...but if not...I apologize. I will do my best not to question your posts moving forward...

Oooooh, it was all a joke, now I get it, calling me a closet right wing Republican, and repetitive sarcasm, and even here with the weird "Uncle" bit-- all of it just your elegant sense of humor, is that it? Well, I am so sorry for not getting your obvious attempt at comedy. For a minute there, hahaha, you know, I thought your completely indistinguishable-from-serious first post back to me upon your return was, you know, hahaha, sincere...in its dripping sarcasm. Er, I mean wittiness.

Oh, but of course, this misunderstanding is all my fault, you, of course, are blameless. And forgiven, let's not forget that. Always, always forgiven.

Since you've clearly taken ownership for something that is not your fault at all, and apologized with no strings attached, and did nothing like put the onus on me for not getting your subtil wit, please, make no effort to rectify a thing.

But like your Jesus, who taught to turn the other cheek, I forgive you. Go and sin no more. But if you do, don't worry. You'll just be forgiven over and over and over.

[Dr Mundo]

Uncle KTR...thought for sure you could take a joke...but if not...I apologize. I will do my best not to question your posts moving forward...

Mundo, since it was your original post, and it sounded like a sincere one to me...thoughts?

Hey ch welcome back, I was hoping I'd get to have more conversations with you.

[Moonwood the Hare]

It seems as if the difference between the two viewpoints can be compared to two people looking at a painting: one a feeling, intuitive person, and the other a rational, thinking person (I'm paraphrasing the Briggs Myers model here). Both can look at the same painting from different perspectives, neither of which is necessarily right or wrong. The rational/thinking person can look at the painting and make all sorts of concrete, objective statements about it, all of which can be demonstrated to be true:

It seems to me that this whole debate stems from people looking at Life, The Universe and Everything in one of these two ways and not being able to see if from the other. Scientists/atheists/rationalists seek to define and explain the world in concrete, objective terms, eschewing aesthetic or subjective descriptions and judgements. They are answering the Who, What, Where, When and How questions. Theists/spiritualists seek to explain the world in subjective, aesthetic terms. They seek the answer to the question of Why.

Neither is "right" and they both are going to have a difficult time convincing the other to look exclusively at the "painting" the way they do. I think it would be worthwhile, though, for both types to at least give the other a try. I believe we need both perspectives, both within the world and within ourselves as individuals.

I think your summary is too black and white. As a Reasonist, I do not dismiss or divorce emotions from the whole of human experience; what you're describing here is sort of the (corny) difference highlighted in Star Trek between humans and Vulcans (and given dramatic conflict within one character, Spock, whose differing natures were a clever dramatic device).

And I don't think theists simply discard logic either.

I think both allow one side to trump the other though (and you're not saying that. You're specifically saying, and I quote, not being able to see if from the other, with which I disagree).

I am ABLE to see it from the other, non-logical side, but I think that in doing so I open myself up to a wide chaos of beliefs. I consider emotion to be a valid sensory input, but not something to found one's worldview on because it's not demonstrable that in doing so you can get to any truth. I need physical evidence for claims that are of value, but I can still appreciate the emotional response to a wide variety of claims.

That's why I can state I really do like the NT stories, and the messiah mythology, and can glean lessons from it, but do not have to make the mistake of thinking it's actually true. That not only would destroy it;'s value, but it opens up an entire can of unnecessary worms that have no objective meaning, like sinning and afterlives and resurrections and other things that come across as simply childish. And that translates into behaviors that preclude me from making deeply ignorant mistakes, like intolerance for people of a different sexual persuasion than I, or disenfranchising women, or trying to encode in our legal system religious ideologies. and while I know that there are religious people who don't do those things either, I find it impossible to see what logical grounding they have for NOT doing so, given what they claim their beliefs are. I don't "get" what is called "liberal theists" because liberal theism is really simply rewriting the theism to be more palatable based upon quite clearly secular values.

And if you're going to toss in "right" and "wrong" -- yes, there is a right and wrong here. Choices made based primarily on one's emotions is rife with challenges because you base your actions not on what is objectively demonstrable but on what you subjectively feel is right. This is fine ONLY if you keep such actions to yourself. If your (the general "your") actions are going to have an impact on me (the general "me"), then you need to defend to me why your emotions are in some way the default, which I submit here that you cannot ever hope to accomplish-- that is why it's subjective to you.

But on the Reasonist side of the equation, if my (the general "my") behaviors are based on physical evidence and logic that is demonstrable to you (the general "you") -- and it has to be if it is physical -- then you at LEAST are privy to why I make the choices I do. You still may disagree with me, but at the very least we have something we can wrestle over in the physical sense rather than just something grounding ion "because I feel like it". Anything else is tyrannical by definition.

I know there is a lot in this thread that I should be responding to to but recently I have been doing a fair bit of reading on the thing SiillSearching is talking about. I'm hoping to give a talk on it in a few months and I would have to say that on the whole I disagree with StillSearching in that I don't think there is any particular relationship between personality types and approaches to epistemology, still less to the presence or absence of belief. Yuri who is interested in Myers Briggs typology told me he was an INTP (introverted Thinking type who deals with the world through extraverted iNtuition) and that people of this type are the most likely to be atheists. That may be true statistically but I am also an INTP. I tend to distrust feeling which is my weakest function but I have learned to work with it. When I feel that someone of my type could never make a good counsellor I remind myself that one of the greatest of all Carl Jung was also INTP. Yuri once told me he thought everyone when they reached their teens should rethink their worrldview from scratch - that was so INTP. Some people would never see any need to do something like that.

This whole typology was originally developed by Jung and it is important to understand what he meant by the terms he uses. By feeling he does not mean emotion (which he sees as a function of the unconscious mind) but rather a type of rational judgement which focuses on good/bad or like/dislike rather than focussing on true/false as reason does. In other words feeling he sees as a valuing process. I think he is mistaken in seeing this valuing process as a product of the ego alone as I think valuing is work of the organismic totality, what Jung calls the self, which includes both concious and unconscious processes. I have wondered a lot how Jung could be mistaken about this, whether it stems in part from his need to balance his system so that thinking and feeling are alike in this respect, and whether I have misunderstood him.

I sometimes use the term intuition for the acquiring of a belief which strikes us as self evident and which is not inferred from any other belief. This is not the way Jung and MBTI use the word. For Jung intuition when extraverted is a process of taking in information through the senses that bypasses the concious mind. When intuition is introverted this faculty is focussed on the inner world of the mind; this is the faculty used by mystics. It is not really about feeling (think how much mystical writing is about the absence of feeling). My intuition is usually extraverted so I find it hard to relate to the mystics but I can usually recognise this faculty in those who posses it. The other week I was talking to someone and I said your a typical extravert thinker. She replied 'I'm not an extravert' I said I know but your thinking is extraverted. Later that day I sent her a description of the INTJ type and she answered in three words 'You got me!' (she had been rejecting my suggestion that in terms of Beatles typology she was a 'Ringo' type - Beatles typology doesn't exist - it's one of my jokes based on a comment by McCartney who saw Elvis Costello as a John fan) But although I had always seen her thinking it was the introverted intuition I saw first, somewhere behind her eyes.

I recently acquired a copy of Jung's 'Psychological Types' and Jolande Jacobi's 'The Psychology of C G Jung' so it is something I will be researching. Recently giving a micro-teach on MBTI I wanted to use some of Jacobi's drawings and found they do not match what Myers and Briggs say so I want to explore the whole business of how functions relate and merge according to the various thinkers, perhaps comparing MBTI with Erik Erikson as different ways of developing Jung's insights.

I know the above paragraphs will not mean a lot to those who are not familiar with type theory but if any of those who are want to discuss this we could maybe set up a thread. It might be interesting if people did one of the online MBTI type tests and we did some comparisons to see whether the majority of atheists on the site were Thinking/Sensing types and the majority of Christians were Feeling/iNtuitive types. My guess is there would be an even spread but you never know. KTR does come across as a thinking type for example. He is horrified at the idea of someone doing something just because they feel like it and can only equate this with tyranny and yet because I feel like it is one of the best reasons for acts of compassion that do not come across as cold charity.

[Keep The Reason]

KTR does come across as a thinking type for example. He is horrified at the idea of someone doing something just because they feel like it and can only equate this with tyranny and yet because I feel like it is one of the best reasons for acts of compassion that do not come across as cold charity.

Meanwhile, I specifically said it's both; and went to great lengths to explain the shortcoming likely when doing things exclusively upon how one feels. "Shortcomings" magically becomes "exclusives" here.

Talking to some people here is like bashing one's head against a wall.

[Moonwood the Hare]

KTR does come across as a thinking type for example. He is horrified at the idea of someone doing something just because they feel like it and can only equate this with tyranny and yet because I feel like it is one of the best reasons for acts of compassion that do not come across as cold charity.

Meanwhile, I specifically said it's both; and went to great lengths to explain the shortcoming likely when doing things exclusively upon how one feels. "Shortcomings" magically becomes "exclusives" here.

Talking to some people here is like bashing one's head against a wall.

If Jung is correct it is very rarely both to the same extent. He compares it to handedness. Just as very few people are fully ambidextrous very few people have equally developed thinking and feeling. But you had said doing something just because you feel like it is tyranny by definition. Would you say acting on something something just because you have reason to think it true is equally tyrannical? I'm not trying to start an argument about which approach is ideally best I'm suggesting that maybe your thinking is more developed than your feeling. Your defensive reaction to that suggestion does seem to indicate I may be right.

Out of interest do you know your MBTI profile?

[Keep The Reason]

In context, here is what I said:

Choices made based primarily on one's emotions is rife with challenges because you base your actions not on what is objectively demonstrable but on what you subjectively feel is right. This is fine ONLY if you keep such actions to yourself. If your (the general "your") actions are going to have an impact on me (the general "me"), then you need to defend to me why your emotions are in some way the default, which I submit here that you cannot ever hope to accomplish-- that is why it's subjective to you.

But on the Reasonist side of the equation, if my (the general "my") behaviors are based on physical evidence and logic that is demonstrable to you (the general "you") -- and it has to be if it is physical -- then you at LEAST are privy to why I make the choices I do. You still may disagree with me, but at the very least we have something we can wrestle over in the physical sense rather than just something grounding in "because I feel like it". Anything else is tyrannical by definition.

[JustJim]

Moonwood,

Do you use the MBTI in your work? I was initially trained in Myers-Briggs in 1990 for potential use in our clinics, but it never fell through to implementation. The trainers made a lot of money, though. I still have Gifts Differing and Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in the "needs dusting" section of my bookcase.

I'm an ENFJ, btw.

Jim

[ChristianHeretic]

In context, here is what I said:

Choices made based primarily on one's emotions is rife with challenges because you base your actions not on what is objectively demonstrable but on what you subjectively feel is right. This is fine ONLY if you keep such actions to yourself. If your (the general "your") actions are going to have an impact on me (the general "me"), then you need to defend to me why your emotions are in some way the default, which I submit here that you cannot ever hope to accomplish-- that is why it's subjective to you.

But on the Reasonist side of the equation, if my (the general "my") behaviors are based on physical evidence and logic that is demonstrable to you (the general "you") -- and it has to be if it is physical -- then you at LEAST are privy to why I make the choices I do. You still may disagree with me, but at the very least we have something we can wrestle over in the physical sense rather than just something grounding in "because I feel like it". Anything else is tyrannical by definition.

The problem I see with this method is that choices made based on one's emotions oftentimes are recognized as such (if they're not, I concur there are tyrannical issues). The other side though is worse. Some people feel they are making decisions based on "objectively demonstrable" evidence, when in fact, their (the general "their") process is fundamentally flawed and in fact they are swayed at a deeper level prior to the evaluation of the evidence by some predetermined world-view or "emotional" state that influences their "Reasonist side." There is ABSOLUTE tyranny based on this method because the person (again, the general "person" which may or may not apply here), is extremely confident in his "reason-based" assertion in spite of the fact that it is far from such...

[Keep The Reason]

The problem I see with this method is that choices made based on one's emotions oftentimes are recognized as such (if they're not, I concur there are tyrannical issues). The other side though is worse. Some people feel they are making decisions based on "objectively demonstrable" evidence, when in fact, their (the general "their") process is fundamentally flawed and in fact they are swayed at a deeper level prior to the evaluation of the evidence by some predetermined world-view or "emotional" state that influences their "Reasonist side." There is ABSOLUTE tyranny based on this method because the person (again, the general "person" which may or may not apply here), is extremely confident in his "reason-based" assertion in spite of the fact that it is far from such...

Yet, as we see over and over, it's the addition of new information that brings down tyrants and tyrannical systems all the time. "ABSOLUTE" tyranny is a red herring.

[ChristianHeretic]

The problem I see with this method is that choices made based on one's emotions oftentimes are recognized as such (if they're not, I concur there are tyrannical issues). The other side though is worse. Some people feel they are making decisions based on "objectively demonstrable" evidence, when in fact, their (the general "their") process is fundamentally flawed and in fact they are swayed at a deeper level prior to the evaluation of the evidence by some predetermined world-view or "emotional" state that influences their "Reasonist side." There is ABSOLUTE tyranny based on this method because the person (again, the general "person" which may or may not apply here), is extremely confident in his "reason-based" assertion in spite of the fact that it is far from such...

Yet, as we see over and over, it's the addition of new information that brings down tyrants and tyrannical systems all the time. "ABSOLUTE" tyranny is a red herring.

I mispoke, I meant to say "There is ABSOLUTELY tyranny based on this method"

[Moonwood the Hare]

Moonwood,

Do you use the MBTI in your work? I was initially trained in Myers-Briggs in 1990 for potential use in our clinics, but it never fell through to implementation. The trainers made a lot of money, though. I still have Gifts Differing and Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in the "needs dusting" section of my bookcase.

I'm an ENFJ, btw.

Jim

Hi Jim

I don't use MBTI formally. I've heard of counsellors who begin by getting people to do a personality test and base the therapy on that; it sounds very restricting. But I'm very familiar with MBTI and with Jung's theory which it derives from so it does inform my perceptions of people. At the end of the day I want the extravert to delight in their extraversion and the introvert to delight in their introversion whether they know the words for it or not. But going deeper I want the intravert to know and love their extraversion and extravert to know and love their introversion which in effect means that I hope people can befriend their shadow which I see as the weaker more primitive part of the self (but not evil. In one of his later works Jung says that failure to integrate she shadow (I meant the shadow, a Freudian slip, what is my anima trying to say?) would not be a problem if the shadow were obviously evil - what does he mean by obviously? Is subtle evil somehow okay? Sometimes he talks as if we need to incorporate evil into our personality and sometimes as if we simply need to be aware of and accepting of our weaknesses - there is a lot that is helpful in Jung's theory of evil but I can't accept it simply as it stands). That's quite a lot of psychodynamic thinking and mostly I hold that in the background and try to be person-centred. Remember I'm only a novice Jim and all the theory in the world does not heal.

Gift's Differing is a great book. I think Myers Briggs biggest contribution was in developing the idea of the role of the auxiliary function in introverts - the full realisation that functions as well as individuals can be extravert or introvert and the consequences of that.

[JustJim]

I don't use MBTI formally. I've heard of counsellors who begin by getting people to do a personality test and base the therapy on that; it sounds very restricting. But I'm very familiar with MBTI and with Jung's theory which it derives from so it does inform my perceptions of people. At the end of the day I want the extravert to delight in their extraversion and the introvert to delight in their introversion whether they know the words for it or not. But going deeper I want the intravert to know and love their extraversion and extravert to know and love their introversion which in effect means that I hope people can befriend their shadow which I see as the weaker more primitive part of the self (but not evil. In one of his later works Jung says that failure to integrate she shadow (I meant the shadow, a Freudian slip, what is my anima trying to say?) would not be a problem if the shadow were obviously evil - what does he mean by obviously? Is subtle evil somehow okay? Sometimes he talks as if we need to incorporate evil into our personality and sometimes as if we simply need to be aware of and accepting of our weaknesses - there is a lot that is helpful in Jung's theory of evil but I can't accept it simply as it stands). That's quite a lot of psychodynamic thinking and mostly I hold that in the background and try to be person-centred. Remember I'm only a novice Jim and all the theory in the world does not heal.

I'm novice-er than you are, but I'm also fascinated by the Myers-Briggs personality type analyses (and also Jung's work, of which I know far too little and understand even less), and I still enjoy reading about the extravert and introvert types and their ways of discovering, accepting, and expressing their shadows. One of my daughters scored very high on her Introversion, yet was captain of the varsity cheerleaders, prom queen, most popular, etc., etc., etc. HUGE shadow... And regarding extraversion, one of our trainers explained it very clearly when he told of an introverted woman in one of his classes, who asked him about one of the extraverts in the group, "Does she have NO unspoken thoughts?"



Jim

[Moonwood the Hare]

Best intro to Jung, which I read back in the eighties is by Jolande Jacobi http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0300016743/ref=sr_1_1_up_1_main_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336404644&sr=1-1&condition=used You can pick it for the cost of postage in the US. The pictures, especially the colour plates, are great.
Was your daughter an introvert with strongly developed extraversion or vice versa? Actually most people tend to come out somewhere in the middle which suggests a flaw in the theory as developed by Myers and Briggs. Some people don't develop more than one function until their twenties, others have two from early on. Did you know MBTI became very popular in the Catholic Church? Largely because some people spotted similarities between Jung's ideas and Ignatius of Loyola's. Jung himself lectured on Ignatius thought the lectures were never published.