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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10892945 -

Mufungo said:
If people hold something to be true, even while completely in the present moment, they are believing...

If they don't hold something to be true, then how the f@#k do they speak an opinion about anything. Even saying "that's untrue" is holding "that's untrue" to be true. It's inherent in the way language works.

Supreme ignorance of believing is not the same as "not believing". Just saying "I don't believe" or "I don't have any beliefs" doesn't undo that, by even saying "I don't believe" presupposes the the speaker holds that statement to be true, and if they hold it to be true then by definition the very act of saying it is an act of believing.

Now having said this I'm expecting someone to go, "But, but, but, I really don't have beliefs and I don't believe either. Prove it if I do." To which I will answer "sure you do" pat them on the head and let them dwell in their ignorance of how they use language to frame their experience...


Very well said but some people wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the nose.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: zen buddy]
    #10893921 -

What does knowing the truth got to do with anything?


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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10894703 -

Nothing as far as I can tell.

So when a person says they believe something, are they saying it's simply an opinion, or do they imply something more? If they are not implying something more, why hold it as truth?


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love     truth awareness peace I am      I feel      I do     I love  I speak    I see    I know

To shrink a person's vocabulary is to shrink their capacity to think.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Rahz]
    #10895276 -

When someone says they believe something, they could be meaning to convey many things I would think. Especially with possible connotations taken into account. But that has little to do with what I was talking about. I'm talking about presuppositions in language which presuppose certain things to be true in order for an utterance to be understood. If the speaker holds certain things to be true, then this is an act of believing regardless of whether the person chooses to acknowledge it or not.

For example...
"Jack shit his pants"... presupposes things to be true in order for that sentence to make sense... i.e. Jack exists, pants exist, Jack can shit, Jack owns pants, Jack did a shit while wearing his pants, Jack was not wearing any other pants than his own, etc, etc. If you're familiar with the name Jack you might add even more layers of meaning such as Jack is male, Jack is human, etc etc.

"I don't have any beliefs"... presupposes things to be true in order for that sentence to make sense... i.e. I exist, beliefs exist, beliefs can be had or not, etc...

So again, if our language presupposes things to be true in order for utterances to be understood, then I can't see how a person using language can not do the act of believing because it's inherent in the very act of people communicating/interacting in the world (regardless of whether people are conscious of it or not).

I might also clarify that when I'm talking of truth, I'm not talking about truth in any absolute sense. But rather a truth relative to the individual operating from their own model of the world however fallible that might be.


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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10896243 -

Mufungo said:
What does knowing the truth got to do with anything?


Is this a serious question?

Please don't tell me the flamers have got you thinking I'm someone that I'm not who says things that I don't actually mean.

Why are you trying to prove a point if you don't believe what you're saying is the truth?

If you believe that the truth is subjective then why are you trying to have other people believe your subjective truth? What possible reason could you have for others to believe things the same way that you do?

Many people make the mistake of assuming that I mean more than what I have stated. My words should be taken literally within the context of what is being discussed. Please do not make that same mistake that so many have by assuming that zenbuddy thinks he knows the truth about everything.

In regards to the post that I quoted, you are speaking the truth. If you did not believe it was the truth, then why speak of it?

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: zen buddy]
    #10896259 -

Are you a troll?  Seriously.

You're throwing around the idea of "knowing the truth" without any actual explanation of what that means.  If you can't see how that looks to a person other than yourself, then you have very little self knowledge.  If you're not a troll, do us all a favor and tuck your knees into your chin and get inside your own head a little more without bothering all of us with your irrational nonsense.

If you were a troll at least your posts would be intelligent in their mockery of people like you.  If you're not a troll, then I guess you're just a joke.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: xFrockx]
    #10896276 -

xFrockx said:
Are you a troll?  Seriously.

You're throwing around the idea of "knowing the truth" without any actual explanation of what that means.  If you can't see how that looks to a person other than yourself, then you have very little self knowledge.  If you're not a troll, do us all a favor and tuck your knees into your chin and get inside your own head a little more without bothering all of us with your irrational nonsense.

If you were a troll at least your posts would be intelligent in their mockery of people like you.  If you're not a troll, then I guess you're just a joke.


please take your hatemongering elsewhere...

Or come up with a better argument than this.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: zen buddy]
    #10896284 -

Or come up with a better argument than this.

Why should he have to come up with reasonable arguments when you don't?:confused:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10896704 -

Mufungo said:
When someone says they believe something, they could be meaning to convey many things I would think. Especially with possible connotations taken into account. But that has little to do with what I was talking about. I'm talking about presuppositions in language which presuppose certain things to be true in order for an utterance to be understood. If the speaker holds certain things to be true, then this is an act of believing regardless of whether the person chooses to acknowledge it or not.

For example...
"Jack shit his pants"... presupposes things to be true in order for that sentence to make sense... i.e. Jack exists, pants exist, Jack can shit, Jack owns pants, Jack did a shit while wearing his pants, Jack was not wearing any other pants than his own, etc, etc. If you're familiar with the name Jack you might add even more layers of meaning such as Jack is male, Jack is human, etc etc.

"I don't have any beliefs"... presupposes things to be true in order for that sentence to make sense... i.e. I exist, beliefs exist, beliefs can be had or not, etc...

So again, if our language presupposes things to be true in order for utterances to be understood, then I can't see how a person using language can not do the act of believing because it's inherent in the very act of people communicating/interacting in the world (regardless of whether people are conscious of it or not).

I might also clarify that when I'm talking of truth, I'm not talking about truth in any absolute sense. But rather a truth relative to the individual operating from their own model of the world however fallible that might be.



To me, and in most of the usage I wittiness, belief is the grey area between possibility and truth. The dictionary equates it more closely with opinion than truth, however the difference between what people hold as opinion and truth could be negligible in many cases. Obviously though, there must be some difference between opinion and truth, if truth is to mean anything at all.

And of course in life there are many grey areas, but when it comes to words, especially in a philosophical sense, gray isn't the best color. It is a lack of understanding which develops when belief is substituted for other more definitive words.

So, talking about truth in a relative sense, could be said to be the only way to talk about truth philosophically. However, what is to be made of these statements:

Shoes go on feet. I like apples. Oak trees loose their leaves in the fall. Cats shed fur. I am.

While some of them could be viewed as more subjective than others, they could all be said to be absolute truths. Truth is the word we use when there is no faith or doubt, no room supposed for error. And where does belief fit in? To me, it doesn't unless the intention is to be vague, which may be why religions are so fond of the word. Belief is more akin to opinion, and is not fully know, yet is accepted as truth... how confusing is that?

But I don't want to try to pigeon hole the word. People may mean lots of things when using it, which is why I don't care for the word. But quite often, the word is used to represent truth, when the truth is, the user doesn't know what the truth is. Seems self deceptive perhaps even self abusive, though it is usually an attempt to alleviate the condition known as cognitive dissonance.

When communicating, I would rather leave the word out. If I am certain of something, what loss or fear is there in calling it the truth? I should either be able to back it up, or if it is an unprovable truth, I should still be wholly secure in stating it as the truth. "I know for a fact Billy pushed Johnny into the well, though I cannot prove it." If I am uncertain of something, and only think it likely to be truth, what loss is there in calling it an opinion? "I'm pretty sure it was Billy who pushed Johnny into the well. It was hard to see through the leaves, so I'm not positive." In neither case would I suggest that I believe it.

People being unconscious (or not) of what they say is not a good excuse for being confusing and misleading.


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love     truth awareness peace I am      I feel      I do     I love  I speak    I see    I know

To shrink a person's vocabulary is to shrink their capacity to think.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: zen buddy]
    #10897939 -

Why don't you come up with a better argument for me to come up with a better argument.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Rahz]
    #10899814 -

Rahz said:
To me, and in most of the usage I wittiness, belief is the grey area between possibility and truth. The dictionary equates it more closely with opinion than truth, however the difference between what people hold as opinion and truth could be negligible in many cases. Obviously though, there must be some difference between opinion and truth, if truth is to mean anything at all.

And of course in life there are many grey areas, but when it comes to words, especially in a philosophical sense, gray isn't the best color. It is a lack of understanding which develops when belief is substituted for other more definitive words.

So, talking about truth in a relative sense, could be said to be the only way to talk about truth philosophically. However, what is to be made of these statements:

Shoes go on feet. I like apples. Oak trees loose their leaves in the fall. Cats shed fur. I am.

While some of them could be viewed as more subjective than others, they could all be said to be absolute truths. Truth is the word we use when there is no faith or doubt, no room supposed for error. And where does belief fit in? To me, it doesn't unless the intention is to be vague, which may be why religions are so fond of the word. Belief is more akin to opinion, and is not fully know, yet is accepted as truth... how confusing is that?

But I don't want to try to pigeon hole the word. People may mean lots of things when using it, which is why I don't care for the word. But quite often, the word is used to represent truth, when the truth is, the user doesn't know what the truth is. Seems self deceptive perhaps even self abusive, though it is usually an attempt to alleviate the condition known as cognitive dissonance.

When communicating, I would rather leave the word out. If I am certain of something, what loss or fear is there in calling it the truth? I should either be able to back it up, or if it is an unprovable truth, I should still be wholly secure in stating it as the truth. "I know for a fact Billy pushed Johnny into the well, though I cannot prove it." If I am uncertain of something, and only think it likely to be truth, what loss is there in calling it an opinion? "I'm pretty sure it was Billy who pushed Johnny into the well. It was hard to see through the leaves, so I'm not positive." In neither case would I suggest that I believe it.

People being unconscious (or not) of what they say is not a good excuse for being confusing and misleading.


Here is the definition for 'believe' that I get from the dictionary "to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so."

While there are many connotations to what it means to believe or not, what I'm getting at is just that beliefs and believing is based on what we understand, what we have learned, what we therefore hold to be true without absolute proof. And this includes almost everything that guides our behaviour/language. Beliefs aren't the words themselves but the relationship between a person and their being in the world. Beliefs are a map to the territory. The map could be always changing, but sometimes people aren't aware of this.

The model of believing and beliefs I'm putting forth is a pragmatic one. It is a model. I'm not suggesting 'believing' exists anymore than 'thinking' or the 'mind' exists. These are things that we 'act as if' they exist through our language and being. So when it comes to 'believing' it doesn't matter whether someone says they do it or not, but matters more about how they use it in the language-game. As per Wittgenstein's "beetle in the box"...

"Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. -Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. -But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? -If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty."

Once it is understood that we interact with the world through believing, then this opens something up to realise we can change our experience of truth through changing our beliefs. And any belief can be changed. Sometimes the effect of changing a belief can be trivial, sometimes it can have dire effects. Such as, if I changed a belief "I like apples" to say "I like some apples" this might have an effect when buying apples so that a person begins to check that they are buying apples that they like and not the other ones, whereas before they might have been happy to buy any apples because an apple is an apple is an apple. But to change the belief "I am" to "I am not" or "I suck" can have more dire consequences on a person's relationship to the world..


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Edited by Mufungo (08/20/09 09:42 PM)

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10900844 -

TL;DR all responses.  To OP, I've often thought about this myself, are we really on the top of some heirarchy of living things? One thing is for certain, our intelligence makes us unique, and gives us a power beyond any other creature on Earth.  We are the only creature capable of destroying the entire planet. We are the only creature capable of saving the planet from destruction from such things as meteors or other natural phenomena beyond other creatures control assuming our technology becomes advanced enough (which it surely will). We are the only creature capable of actually leaving the Earth to explore the physical cosmos through our own will and determination.  We cannot know what life is like through the eyes and mind of other creatures, but it is very possible that they are all intelligent in their own way.  In a way, our intelligence is a burden, it causes us to be unfulfilled with simply living life, we always have to do more, see more, know more.  Our intelligence burdens us with great responsibility, as we have the power to save or destroy other creatures and the planet itself, we are essentially the gaurdians of Earth (although there is nothing holding us to this role whatsoever, we could move to a different planet and not give two cents about the Earth and its inhabitants).  Some eastern philosophy speaks of reincarnation, and how souls climb a latter, starting from simple creatures, working there way up to humans, from those in the servant position, to those in positions of power, finally to a higher state of existence where the soul becomes one with the ultimate universal mind.  Perhaps it is the other way around, maybe souls begin as human, and work their way up to bacteria, to viruses (which some don't even consider to be living), and finally the end state.  Makes sense to me, as new souls we are driven to answer soo many questions about existense, and are so curious, and unsatisfied with simplicity for the most part.  Other creatures are much more content with simple lives.  The simpler the creature, the simplier it's life is.  It's as though as new souls we know very little and hence seek to learn, and as though simpler creatures are uninterested in such things, as though they have already surpassed that, learned those lessons.  As we are the gaurdians of the Earth, our role can be likened to that of a servant to other creatures. Ofcourse, we also hold other creatures existense in our hands, so who really is on top?  Perhaps there is no set progression the soul follows in terms of reincarnation, our soul may very well choose a form to be incarnated into based on the lesson it may learn through the experiencing the universe through a new door of perception, each soul choosing its own path, learning it's own lessons.


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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10901253 -

Interesting post, and I agree that usage and intention are everything. I accept that we all have belief systems, but I think there is room for that which is beyond belief.

For instance, a person may believe "this business venture will be a success." or they may believe "this venture will be a failure." But they can also choose to believe that they don't know. This wouldn't be an actual belief, but rather a balance between two poles resulting in the lack of a belief. A belief could lead to success, or it could lead to a lack of confidence in ones ability to know what is true.

And of course, a belief system isn't "the truth", yet it is "the truth" which people want to connect with from a spiritual standpoint. For me, seeking "the truth" in this spiritual regard seems crazy at this point. I've believed in a lot of ideas, moving away from one system to construct other... systems, the details of which are simply smoke screens.

So although I have belief systems, they are only in regards to what is not "the truth". When it comes to ultimate truth, what can be believed? In this regard, we may not have points of contention, but it is interesting in relation to belief systems. I wanted to give a nod to Mr. Tull's argument.


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love     truth awareness peace I am      I feel      I do     I love  I speak    I see    I know

To shrink a person's vocabulary is to shrink their capacity to think.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Rahz]
    #10901650 -

Yes I agree that there are states of mind in which believing does not occur, that I refer to as 'know-nothing' states. But from what I have gleaned from these states, they are not conducive to doing/saying/thinking things in the world. In the 'know-nothing' state of being I do not walk, because I know not how, I do not talk, cause I know not how, I do not hold onto a thought, cause I know not how, etc.. That's why I laugh when people get on a forum and declare "I don't believe", because in that moment the very act of making that statement is evidence of them believing in something. If they didn't believe, they wouldn't be making such a statement nor any other on here.

But the state of 'not knowing' or 'not believing' is a temporary state, and I make these comments while not in that state. So therefore I'm open to being completely wrong about my experience cause I am not relying on "the experience" but rather a memory of "the experience" to form my reflections here, because as I said it is not possible for me to do much of anything while in a 'know-nothing' state. These reflections, while I hold them at some extent to be true, are my beliefs about the experience, they aren't "the experience" - any attempt to put "the experience" into words is an instant abstraction and an attempt to know something. Even thinking "that my reflections might not be true" is holding a perspective "that my reflections might not be true" is true, and hence is another belief.

Like you say, there's a belief system. Beliefs interact with beliefs interact with beliefs, etc. til it forms a map for which a person attempts to navigate through the world. While the map is working, there are few problems and a person might even mistaken the map for the territory. And when this happens people often choose to believe the external stimuli or territory is wrong rather than their being anything wrong with their map.


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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10902967 -

"That's why I laugh when people get on a forum and declare "I don't believe", because in that moment the very act of making that statement is evidence of them believing in something."

No, its you who believe that they believe they don't believe.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: xFrockx]
    #10903057 -

yes, I do as well.


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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Mufungo]
    #10903539 -

They could just be trolling :shrug:

Or maybe their expression of belief in no belief, to them, respresents a manifestation of the one, and not a free will choice that could be called a belief.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: xFrockx]
    #10904447 -

Maybe it's just what they wish/want to be true.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Icelander]
    #10904780 -

Right speech comes before right thought and after right action.

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Re: Are We Intelligent Beings? [Re: Jethro Tull]
    #10904790 -

Are We Intelligent Beings? no


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ga ga ga eets eets how you gone be mad on vacation?
MONICA COULDN'T TELL TIME UNTIL SHE WAS 13

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