Why are we (usually) reasonable?!

[tonyrey]

1. It is impossible for a rational hypothesis to exist in a void.

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Again:

(a) The natural world exists.
(b) The natural world and a supernatural world exist.
(c) A deity (and only the deity) exists.
(d) The supernatural world (only) exists.
(e) The natural world does not exist.

(a) again is a necessary assumption, the others aren’t.

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

1. The most economical hypothesis is that there is nothing whatsoever - which is clearly absurd because a hypothesis presupposes a mind rather than a complex nervous system.

1. The most economical rational hypothesis is that there is One Being rather than an immense number of atomic particles.

No!!! The first isn’t a hypothesis, it’s irrational (it exists therefore something exists, therefore it disproves itself).

B. A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is irrational.

C. The existence of rationality is itself a hypothesis.

The second is very complicated (if there’s only one being why are there lots of things, why are there lots of us, how come we feel we are independent agencies, who is this being anyway, etc.).

D. Persons are not things but indivisible entities.

E. In a court of law a person is considered as a whole, not “lots of things”.

1. Science presupposes the existence of physical objects - which is a metaphysical assumption.

1. The metaphysical null hypothesis is that nothing exists - which is clearly absurd.

1. The only metaphysical null hypothesis which is rational is that all interpretations of reality are equally possible because at the outset all are equally probable.

Again I don’t understand what you mean.

F. Science is based on the hypothesis that “the natural world” exists.

G. The hypothesis that “the natural world” exists is itself based on the hypothesis that our perceptions are reliable.** It is not a fundamental hypothesis.**

The laws of reason are not physical but metaphysical, logical and epistemological.

We seem to have gone down a side street. The side street is named Calle Whatever.

Then you should consult the meaning of those terms.

H. Science does not explain itself.

No one’s! (According to materialists. Persons don’t exist in their scheme of things.)

I got lost again, we were talking about free will, suddenly we get on to zombies.

H. If everything is composed of atomic particles persons are not indivisible entities but collections of things or in Hume’s words “bundles of perceptions”.

Remember you’re talking about a very large number of scientists and philosophers. My null hypothesis is that of course they believe persons exist and you are misrepresenting them.

I. Most scientists and philosophers are not materialists.

Everyone is a philosopher because everyone makes assumptions about the nature of reality. It is impossible to live rationally without believing in one’s existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect - to mention but a few essential presuppositions.

Fine. You may be devastated to find that very large numbers of people, when making assumptions about the nature of reality, do not find it at all necessary to assume that humans are the only species in the universe to have non-physical minds,

Non sequitur. **Rational **beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

 

[Robert_Sock]

1. We exist in order to choose what to believe and how to live.
2. There are many ways of interpreting life because it is so complex.
3. Our interpretation of life is deeply affected by our culture and personal experiences.
4. We are all fallible.
5. We often choose to be unreasonable because we are biased in favour of our own opinion.
6. Emotion plays a large part in our decision-making.
7. We are not logical machines!

1. I’m not sure that choice is a part of the reason we exist. I sense something tragic happened that makes worldwide salvation much more important than individual choice. (In all things, God works for the [greater] good.)
2. Yes.
3. This points towards a learning model, as opposed to something that is innate.
4. Yes.
5. Again, this points to a learning model.
6. Yes! Human emotions and cognition are actually two separate systems that are largely independent of each other. However, unconscious emotional ‘memory’ does indeed play a large part in our decision making. This points towards a psycho-dynamic model that is largely irrational.
7. I agree. Many of our choices need not be rational.

 

[Hamlet123]

1. I agree. Many of our choices need not be rational.

Here you are agreeing with the proposition:
“We are not rational machines”

Are you (all) suggesting that Man is not a rational being? That Man lacks wisdom, intuition, understanding of the nature or essence of a thing (the “first act of the mind”), self-knowledge, moral conscience (awareness of good and evil), and the appreciation of beauty, as well as reasoning and ratinal calculation (the “third act of the mind”)…
Are you suggesting that Man does not have the remarkable power to aquire knowldege beyond experience, and even with certainty, through deductive reasoning. … and secondly Man can know not only particular truths beyond our immediate experience, but also universe truths, such as" 2+2=4" or “all men are mortal”; i.e., Man can know beyond experience by abstracting - are you (all) suggesting that these propostions are wrong
The above was taken from Peter Kreefts’ text Socratic Logic

Or are you (all) suggesting that Man is not a rational machine;i.e., that His abiliities to reason WELL are not easy for him to use, that reasonING is work for Man, that Man is weak and and ever-so flawed; albeit, a most beautiful machine made in the image and likeness of God. Man is not a robot of reason, but in essence He is reason that He can or can not apply reason. Whether He exhibits that reason (well or at all) is not static. Man is not a machine.

Or is there another explanation that I am not understanding.

Thank you for reading my response. God bless

 

[tonyrey]

*1. We exist in order to choose what to believe and how to live.

No reasonable person can deny the reality of evil and our collective responsibility for what happens to other persons, animals and our planet. But our salvation as individuals is itself an influence which extends far beyond ourselves. The power of ideas and inspiration from the example of others shouldn’t be underestimated.

1. Yes.

1. This points towards a learning model, as opposed to something that is innate.

Learning presupposes the capacity to learn!

1. Yes.

1. Again, this points to a learning model.

It points to a combination of factors.

1. Yes! Human emotions and cognition are actually two separate systems that are largely independent of each other. However, unconscious emotional ‘memory’ does indeed play a large part in our decision making. This points towards a psycho-dynamic model that is largely irrational.
2. I agree. Many of our choices need not be rational.

Emotional choices are not necessarily irrational. As Pascal pointed out, “The heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t know.”

 

[inocente]

If people are usually reasonable, why do we disagree so much?

Excellent point. My answer is (a) we’re not usually reasonable anyway, most of the time we’re on autopilot; (b) we’re prone to many reasoning errors; and (c) even then we all have different realms of ignorance.

 

[inocente]

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Unreasonable, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my post. Again:

(a) The natural world exists.
(b) The natural world and a deity exist.
(c) The natural world and a deity exist, and the deity is the Christian God.

Of those, (a) is a necessary assumption and is also a subset of (b) and (c), which involve additional assumptions.

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Unreasonable, our thoughts, feelings and perceptions are subjective not objective.

*B. A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is irrational.
*

I guess we could all invent our own private definitions of words, but it makes it harder to communicate when we do.

C. The existence of rationality is itself a hypothesis.

The existence of irrationality has the same status, so what’s that got to do with anything?

…]

Sorry but I couldn’t get anything from what followed.

*Non sequitur. **Rational ***beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

Que? Where’s your evidence for what these alien beings believe? How can you reasonably know what hypothetical aliens believe?

We were doing quite well for a while, but it seems we’'re off all over the place. It remains that the mind arising from the body alone is the simplest workable hypothesis and is the one in use all around the world, so the onus is on you to show why it might be unsatisfactory.

 

[tonyrey]

G. The hypothesis that “the natural world” exists is itself based on the hypothesis that our perceptions are reliable. It is not a fundamental hypothesis.
The laws of reason are not physical but metaphysical, logical and epistemological.]

Then you should consult the meaning of those terms.

H. Science does not explain itself.

No response!

According to materialists. Persons don’t exist in their scheme of things.

I got lost again, we were talking about free will, suddenly we get on to zombies.

H. If everything is composed of atomic particles persons are not indivisible entities but collections of things or in Hume’s words “bundles of perceptions”.

Remember you’re talking about a very large number of scientists and philosophers. My null hypothesis is that of course they believe persons exist and you are misrepresenting them.

I. Most scientists and philosophers are not materialists.

Everyone is a philosopher because everyone makes assumptions about the nature of reality. It is impossible to live rationally without believing in one’s existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect - to mention but a few essential presuppositions.

You may be devastated to find that very large numbers of people, when making assumptions about the nature of reality, do not find it at all necessary to assume that humans are the only species in the universe to have non-physical minds,

Non sequitur. Rational beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

Unreasonable, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my post.

It has everything to do with your post. The sole means by which we have knowledge of the physical world is by inferences from what we perceive with our senses. The only direct knowledge we have is of our thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, desires, goals, values, principles and decisions. We do not know and will never know material objects directly.

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

… our thoughts, feelings and perceptions are subjective not objective.

.Precisely! All our knowledge begins at home (with our personal experience), not in the outside world.

B. A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is irrational.

I guess we could all invent our own private definitions of words, but it makes it harder to communicate when we do.

A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is “irrational”. Whether we regard a hypothesis as irrational depends on our presuppositions, i.e. our hypotheses. There is no gold standard on which knowledge is based - apart from our private experiences. We are all without exception in “the egocentric predicament”. It is impossible to “get outside our mind”. In The Two Dogmas of Empiricism Quine, an atheist who had no vested interest in putting interior knowledge before everything else, does precisely that. He describes everything except subjective experience as “posits” - including material objects…

C. The existence of rationality is itself a hypothesis.

The existence of irrationality has the same status, so what’s that got to do with anything?
It cannot have the same status because it undermines itself!

Sorry but I couldn’t get anything from what followed:

D. Persons are not things but indivisible entities.

E. In a court of law a person is considered as a whole, not “lots of things”.

In a court of law you cannot evade being found guilty with the plea that you are “a complex being” with a mind derived from a brain and we’re not usually reasonable being most of the time on autopilot, prone to many reasoning errors and having “a realm of ignorance”.

Rational beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

Que? Where’s your evidence for what these alien beings believe? How can you reasonably know what hypothetical aliens believe?

I specified “rational beings” which has the implications I have listed - unless you can explain otherwise.

It remains that the mind arising from the body alone is the simplest workable hypothesis and is the one in use all around the world, so the onus is on you to show why it might be unsatisfactory.

The vast majority of people in the world have a religion and are not materialists who attribute the mind to purposeless atomic particles. It is a simplistic hypothesis because it implies we are machines whose activity is determined by physical events.

 

[tonyrey]

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

It has everything to do with your post. the sole means by which we have knowledge of the physical world is by inferences from what we perceive with our senses. The only direct knowledge we have is of our thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, desires, goals, values, principles and decisions. We do not know material objects directly.

A. It is a mistake to begin with “the natural world”. Our primary data are our thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

… our thoughts, feelings and perceptions are subjective not objective.

.Precisely! All our knowledge begins at home (with our personal experience) not in the outside world.

B. A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is irrational.

I guess we could all invent our own private definitions of words, but it makes it harder to communicate when we do.

A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is “irrational”. Whether a hypothesis is irrational depends on our presuppositions, i.e. our hypotheses. There is no gold standard on which knowledge is based - apart from our private experiences. We are all without exception in “the egocentric predicament”. It is impossible to “get outside our mind”. In *The Two Dogmas of Empiricism *(online) Quine, an atheist who has no vested interest in putting interior knowledge before everything else, does precisely that. He describes everything except subjective experience as “posits”…

C. The existence of rationality is itself a hypothesis.

The existence of irrationality has the same status, so what’s that got to do with anything?

It doesn’t have the same status because it undermines itself!

Sorry but I couldn’t get anything from what followed:

D. Persons are not things but indivisible entities.

E. In a court of law a person is considered as a whole, not “lots of things”.

In a court of law you cannot evade being found guilty with the plea that you are “a complex being” with a mind derived from a brain and we’re not usually reasonable being most of the time on autopilot, prone to many reasoning errors and having “a realm of ignorance”.

Rational beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

Que? Where’s your evidence for what these alien beings believe? How can you reasonably know what hypothetical aliens believe?

I specified “rational beings” which has those implications - unless you can explain why not.

It remains that the mind arising from the body alone is the simplest workable hypothesis and is the one in use all around the world, so the onus is on you to show why it might be unsatisfactory.

The vast majority of people in the world have a religion, are not materialists who derive the mind from purposeless atomic particles and do not believe we are machines whose functioning is programmed by physical events.

 

[tonyrey]

Apologies for posting twice but the points are worth considering carefully - especially if they are not readily understood!

 

[tonyrey]

Here you are agreeing with the proposition:
“We are not rational machines”

Are you (all) suggesting that Man is not a rational being? That Man lacks wisdom, intuition, understanding of the nature or essence of a thing (the “first act of the mind”), self-knowledge, moral conscience (awareness of good and evil), and the appreciation of beauty, as well as reasoning and ratinal calculation (the “third act of the mind”)…
Are you suggesting that Man does not have the remarkable power to aquire knowldege beyond experience, and even with certainty, through deductive reasoning. … and secondly Man can know not only particular truths beyond our immediate experience, but also universe truths, such as" 2+2=4" or “all men are mortal”; i.e., Man can know beyond experience by abstracting - are you (all) suggesting that these propostions are wrong
The above was taken from Peter Kreefts’ text Socratic Logic

Or are you (all) suggesting that Man is not a rational machine;i.e., that His abiliities to reason WELL are not easy for him to use, that reasonING is work for Man, that Man is weak and and ever-so flawed; albeit, a most beautiful machine made in the image and likeness of God. Man is not a robot of reason, but in essence He is reason that He can or can not apply reason. Whether He exhibits that reason (well or at all) is not static. Man is not a machine.

Or is there another explanation that I am not understanding.

Thank you for reading my response. God bless

Inexorable logic!

God bless.

 

[Sair]

The vast majority of people in the world have a religion, are not materialists who derive the mind from purposeless atomic particles and do not believe we are machines whose functioning is programmed by physical events.

It’s fair to say, also, that the vast majority of people in the world do not have a thorough-going scientific education, and have a religion primarily because their parents have a religion, within the tenets of which they raised their children. The fact of the matter is that it’s less demanding, less confronting and more superficially comforting to suppose that there’s a ‘something else’ at work than it is to consider the implications of the materialistic worldview - as long as you don’t consider all the implications of the ‘something else’…

I’m still at a loss to understand why you exhibit such antipathy to the idea that minds can arise from mindless particles. Why should they not? Minds are not simple, monistic entities, but complex, many-faceted structures - what’s so difficult about accepting that they result from the interactions of simpler entities?

 

[Sair]

Excellent point. My answer is (a) we’re not usually reasonable anyway, most of the time we’re on autopilot; (b) we’re prone to many reasoning errors; and (c) even then we all have different realms of ignorance.

Good points. There’s no doubt that reasoning capacity is developed through experience and education - the potential for reasoning may be innate, but like anything, if you don’t use it, you lose it - or just misapply it…

 

[inocente]

Then you should consult the meaning of those terms.

It took me a while to work out that you apparently forgot you’d already written a different reply to that post, and mixed it in with a partial reply to my last post. Is everything OK in your neck of the woods?

Perhaps like me you’re finding it near impossible to navigate these multi-quote posts which leap from one topic to another, so I’m going to split it into separate posts, putting the subject into each post’s title.

Also when quoting you I’m removing all your numbering and lettering systems as they confuse the life out of me.

 

[inocente]

Science does not explain itself.
tonyrey;10156681:

No response!

Science is the systematic study of nature. There you go, it just explained itself.

If you want more then please have a little patience, science is explaining more and more every day. Unlike philosophers who just add confusion.

 

[inocente]

Most scientists and philosophers are not materialists.

Fine, if materialists are such a small minority then I see no reason why we should care what they think or what you think they think.

• The vast majority of people in the world have a religion and are not materialists who attribute the mind to purposeless atomic particles. It is a simplistic hypothesis because it implies we are machines whose activity is determined by physical events. *

I couldn’t find any reasoning there at all!!! I said that “the mind arising from the body alone is the simplest workable hypothesis and is the one in use all around the world”. What on earth has that got to do with atomic particles? What on earth has it got to do with machines? And you only just said “most scientists and philosophers are not materialists”, so why are you talking about materialists again?

Now again, it’s a simple statement of fact that the mind arising from the body alone is the simplest workable hypothesis and is the one in use all around the world.

 

[inocente]

If everything is composed of atomic particles persons are not indivisible entities but collections of things or in Hume’s words “bundles of perceptions”.

Most of us were able by a young age to grasp the concept that reality exists on more than one level. Sounds like Hume failed that test. Still, I expect his mother loved him just the same.

 

[inocente]

You may be devastated to find that very large numbers of people, when making assumptions about the nature of reality, do not find it at all necessary to assume that humans are the only species in the universe to have non-physical minds,
tonyrey;10156681:

Non sequitur. Rational beings on other planets believe in their existence, the existence of persons and things, the power of reason, the intelligibility of the universe and the principle of cause and effect. Otherwise the success of science is an illusion!

Non sequitur.

It has everything to do with your post. The sole means by which we have knowledge of the physical world is by inferences from what we perceive with our senses. The only direct knowledge we have is of our thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears, desires, goals, values, principles and decisions. We do not know and will never know material objects directly.

So is your morality that if it feels good then it must be good? Of course not. Most people grasp at a young age that our thoughts, feelings and perceptions are subjective and can’t be relied on. A rite of passage is realizing Father Christmas may not be real. Those who as adults can’t make the distinction are not necessarily in the best of mental health.

*A hypothesis does not cease to be a hypothesis because it is “irrational”. Whether we regard a hypothesis as irrational depends on our presuppositions, i.e. our hypotheses. There is no gold standard on which knowledge is based - apart from our private experiences. We are all without exception in “the egocentric predicament”. It is impossible to “get outside our mind”. In The Two Dogmas of Empiricism Quine, an atheist who had no vested interest in putting interior knowledge before everything else, does precisely that. He describes everything except subjective experience as “posits” - including material objects… *

Well yes we can only see through human eyes but that’s not an excuse that anything goes, that if it feels good then it must be good.

*The existence of irrationality has the same status, so what’s that got to do with anything? *

These are my words, how did they become your words?

In a court of law you cannot evade being found guilty with the plea that you are “a complex being” with a mind derived from a brain and we’re not usually reasonable being most of the time on autopilot, prone to many reasoning errors and having “a realm of ignorance”.

Agreed. But I still have no idea what you’re on about.

I specified “rational beings” which has the implications I have listed - unless you can explain otherwise.

If you want to believe you know what hypothetical aliens believe then it would be uncouth for me to stand in your way.

 

[inocente]

Unreasonable, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my post. Again:

(a) The natural world exists.
(b) The natural world and a deity exist.
(c) The natural world and a deity exist, and the deity is the Christian God.

Of those, (a) is a necessary assumption and is also a subset of (b) and (c), which involve additional assumptions.

No response, I think this got lost along the way.

 

[inocente]

Or are you (all) suggesting that Man is not a rational machine;i.e., that His abiliities to reason WELL are not easy for him to use, that reasonING is work for Man, that Man is weak and and ever-so flawed; albeit, a most beautiful machine made in the image and likeness of God. Man is not a robot of reason, but in essence He is reason that He can or can not apply reason. Whether He exhibits that reason (well or at all) is not static. Man is not a machine.

Yes.

 

[tonyrey]

The vast majority of people in the world have a religion, are not materialists who derive the mind from purposeless atomic particles and do not believe we are machines whose functioning is programmed by physical events.

The lack of a scientific education only diminishes the probability that people have insight into reality as a whole in the opinion of an inveterate materialist who stubbornly believes everything and** everyone** can be explained in terms of purposeless particles. It is a typically snobbish and elitist view that underrates the intuition and intelligence of the vast majority of human beings.

…

. and have a religion primarily because their parents have a religion, within the tenets of which they raised their children.

A genetic fallacy…

The fact of the matter is that it’s less demanding, less confronting and more superficially comforting to suppose that there’s a ‘something else’ at work than it is to consider the implications of the materialistic worldview - as long as you don’t consider all the implications of the ‘something else’…

It is far less demanding, far less confronting and far more superficially comforting to suppose that there is nothing else but **oneself **to decide what is true, good, right and just.

I’m still at a loss to understand why you exhibit such antipathy to the idea that minds can arise from mindless particles. Why should they not? Minds are not simple, monistic entities, but complex, many-faceted structures - what’s so difficult about accepting that they result from the interactions of simpler entities?

I’m still at a loss to understand why you exhibit such antipathy to the idea that minds are indivisible entitles that have not arisen from mindless particles. Why should they not be fundamental elements of reality?

Minds are not simple, monistic entities, but complex, many-faceted structures - what’s so difficult about accepting that they result from the interactions of simpler entities?

That argument would not satisfy a judge and jury who regard you as one person who is uniquely responsible for your decisions and actions - when you think and behave **rationally **of course. To which particular facet of your structure do you attribute your beliefs, values, goals, values, choices, ideals, decisions and conclusions? How do you derive **unity **from multiplicity?

Your atomistic view of reality fails to correspond to the way you think and live. Modern medicine regards a person as an integrated whole rather than a collection of physical organs that have somehow magically succeeded in appearing, developing and co-ordinating their activity to such an extent that they are capable of not only being aware of themselves but also controlling themselves. Obviously miracles never cease…