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Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs?
    #777556 -

A lot of what underlies the theist vs. atheist debate and other big ones is a fundamental difference between how each of us validates what we believe. Everyone has some reason for believing what they do. For example, think of an important belief that you have- How are you so sure that it is right, true, valid, the actual state of affairs? Feeling? Evidence? Other?

What do you need to be sure?

Let's here from everyone to the Shroomisms to the Swamis.


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Concepts which have been proved to be useful in ordering things easily acquire such an authority over us that we forget their human origins and accept them as invariable.- Albert Einstein

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: buttonion]
    #777567 -

Deleted by admin

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: buttonion]
    #777778 -

First of all I try not to conflate believing with knowing. Philosophy took a wrong turn with Descartes from metaphysics to epistemology. If there is anything for certain it is that few things can be known with certitude. Each of us lives with the amount of certitude that we are comfortable with.

I use an interdisciplinary approach of empirical evidence, philosophical thinking, and experience.

Cheers,

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: buttonion]
    #777904 -

I'd say I validate my "beliefs" (there's gotta be another word for it...) pretty much in line with the coherence theory of justification, which is in the end just a form of pragmatism... which is what I think Nietzsche was trying to hit on with his perspectivism. Also, I also note the strong correlation between the methodology of Zen and pragmatism.


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Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: buttonion]
    #778261 -

I try not to believe in anything

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: buttonion]
    #778888 -

I use my mind. Rational thought process, experience, valid scientific evidence.
I don't use opinion, and I don't respect those that do. An opinion leaves nothing to debate. It requires no expenditure of energy on that part of the body located 2 feet above your navel.

Opinions are reletive, to the person that has them, the associated belief, the subject matter at hand and so forth. A sound argument is NOT RELATIVE, a relative position is nothing more than an OPINION. Your opinion is irrelevant in a philosophical argument. If you can't support your argument with SOUND REASONING then your argument has no meaning. I am not saying that your opinion is not important, quite the contrary, our opinions are very important, the question is, where did the opinion come from? On what, rational basis, did you form your opinion? Can you prove your opinion without the neccessitiy to provide proof by refering to the "invisible man"? Can you prove your opinion is in accord with individual liberty? If you are a socialist, can you prove your opinion that I must have most of my earnings stolen from me to pay for somebody else's child to get braces?

These are just a few of the arguments I see bandied about as "arguments" when they are nothing more than someone's opinion.

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: mr freedom]
    #779056 -

1. What do you do in the case of a null preference?
2. What do you do when you face the unknown, the uncertain, the as yet unexplained?


Not trying to refute you... they're just questions.


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Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: World Spirit]
    #779607 -

Enter -
Answer 'Yes' to all questions 1-6, but there are even more components to experience.

And...as you already may know, I concur with you on your additional points, with the addition that people have encountered God for quite a bit longer than 2000 years.

General reader:
Religious experience needs to be validated both from internal and external frames of reference. If one's subjective experience is at odds with one's pre-existing moral code, but it outstrips or surpasses that moral code, that is a evidence on the moral domain. If the experience simplifies or unifies heretofore divisive or conflicting aspects of one's psyche, this may represent a measure of intrapsychic integration that allows for a more single-minded and universal mentality. If faith and peacefulness increase; a diminishment of existential anxiety, then these too are indicative of genuine religious experience, taken subjectively.

One also needs to find the place of one's inner experience within a collective external frame of reference. A formal religious tradition that has codified the essential nature of the religious, spiritual, sacred or holy condition will also be necessary for one's 'horizontal' or interpsychic relationships. This means Scriptural references, more often than not. Even recluses, hermits or anchorites required the assistance of others in order to continue their life of solitude (for food, provisions, even emotional support). This aspect, for many or most of us at this forum is the more difficult phase because as we all know, crazy fungus-eating people are considered little more than a wart on the body of any mainstream Judao-Christian faith, that needs to be removed as some grotesque abberation. It will never be sufficient unto itself merely to take sacred mushrooms and declare that act the basis of a religion. Rather, it is a special practice that may bring the person deeper into sacred Mysteries of an already existing religion. The responsibility of any true seeker is to be worthy of the blessings that give such insights.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #779784 -

It will never be sufficient unto itself merely to take sacred mushrooms and declare that act the basis of a religion.
True enough.

Rather, it is a special practice that may bring the person deeper into sacred Mysteries of an already existing religion.
I would have to disagree here. As the mushroom seemingly puts one in touch with something deeper that bypasses dogma and ritual, why do you feel that to integrate the experience, one must use a pre-existing framework that may not resonate with the individual?


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The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: Epistemology: How do you validate your beliefs? [Re: Swami]
    #779884 -

The Buddha postulated 'Right Belief' as part of the Eightfold Path. The 'errors' that are deemed heretical in Christian theology - besides the ones that upset the powerholders - may be thought of as distortions that occur to individuals with distortions of the psyche. Like we may have distortions on our corneas that create astigmatisms, and for me (at the 5:00 position) might see a capital 'I' as an 'L,' that distortion needs to be compared with a more accurate measure. In such a case (and I remember being given a Fisher alchemical print which was entitled 'The Iatrochemist,' which I read as 'Latrochemist.') The former is correct, the latter an error. Similarly, certain personalities, howsoever brilliant intellectually, may have a distortion which is along a schizoid>schizotypal>schizoaffective or even a schizophrenic continuum, and that person's religious experience is going to be distorted as well. A certain faith in one's predecessors, because they are 'brothers' in this task of delineating 'right view,' is necessary. Moreover, it is not about one's ego - one's highly individual and idiosyncratic experience that matters - it is about Universal Truth. Further, a distorted experience, if made a yardstick of Truth, will direct others to distortion, not clarity, and thus do much damage to the development of others.

There are visionaries in Christendom like Hildegard von Bingham, who painted and wrote music (which we sometime play during 'special' nights). She was accepted, but remains idiosyncratic. Meister Eckhart narrowly escaped execution for his mystical doctrine based upon his experience of God. William Blake is another idiosyncratic poet/painter, whose works are fascinating, but like Hildegard, probably doesn't aid anyone else on their quest to become closer to God. So basically, part of religious experience is aimed at the edification of others, not just oneself. A common language of symbols based upon corresponding experiences in others is really the selfless thing to aim for. If one's experiences are too idiosyncratic yet arrtactive, and bring too much individual attention to the personality who is expounding his experiences, other people become angry or envious or frustrated through non-comprehension, and turn on that mystic. It's the same old story - you'd better be compassionate and caring - or else [we'll burn your ass]. The horizontal dimension, between people, is important when one is talking about a group, a church, or any other organization. The question remains: how does one translate one's vertical dimension of experience to others, without distorting it? This is THE creative endeavor.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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