Destroy My Belief System, Please!

@anonymously99,

anonymously99 wrote:

Quote:
You are delusional.

You will not like being miserable.

You think I am miserable? I am far from it. It must be that arrogance again thinking that since I don't believe in your nonsense that I can't possibly be content or happy.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Quote:

You think I am miserable? I am far from it. It must be that arrogance again thinking that since I don't believe in your nonsense that I can't possibly be content or happy.

I did not say you are miserable right now.

1 Reply

@anonymously99,

anonymously99 wrote:

Quote:
You think I am miserable? I am far from it. It must be that arrogance again thinking that since I don't believe in your nonsense that I can't possibly be content or happy.

I did not say you are miserable right now.

Like I mentioned before. Being miserable has a cause. If that cause does not arise then the feeling of being miserable doesn't arise. The only way that cause can arise is if I am expecting things to be different than how they are. There is nothing at all that would bend me into that frame of thinking. I see the fault in it and have let it go. Just like if you were to burn yourself, you are cautious not to do it again. The cause for being miserable will never arise.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Quote:

The cause for being miserable will never arise.

It might not be too late for you to start believing.

1 Reply

@anonymously99,

anonymously99 wrote:

I'm not sure why someone would want their belief system destroyed.

I don't want to destroy my belief system per se, but I do want to destroy any false beliefs within it. The reason is obvious enough: I don't want to believe in false propositions. Accordingly, I try to do two things: (1) Express my beliefs in clear language so they can be tested and discarded if false; and (2) Invite criticism from people who don't share my beliefs and the confirmation bias that comes with them. My hope is that whatever propositions survive this two-step vetting are probably true, and hence worthy of believing.

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@anonymously99,

Belief has value only as a working hypothesis: it must be put to the test or, better said, it may help--like a placebo--to get temporary results. But belief, in the sense of a doctrine, has mostly negative value as far as I can tell.

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@JLNobody,

Isn't it also true that any belief system is subjective to the individual? Isn't that proven by the very fact that we have so many religions and party politics?

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Yes. I feel that it's an objective fact that all experience is intrinsically subjective.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Yes. I feel that it's an objective fact that all experience is intrinsically subjective.

It can't all be subjective or else there would be no way to communicate. There are things that we agree on generally speaking. If there wasn't any time we try to have a discussion other people would be completely baffled by what you were even talking about. There are not just a few things that we share an experience of, there are many.

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@Krumple,

It's not about communication; it's about what the individual believes to be true and factual. What the individual believes to be true and factual are subjective; that's the reason why all religions and politics has many believers.

Can you convince anyone of religion that their god doesn't exist? Give it a try - with all your powers/skills of communication.

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@Krumple,

At least my response had the merit of not favoring objectivity at the expense of subjectivity or vice versa; it tried to see past dualism (it did, however, seem to favor absolutism over relativism with the term "intrisically").
Take into account the possibility of INTER-SUBJECTIVITY. That is what the shared understandings making up a culture are about.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

At least my response had the merit of not favoring objectivity at the expense of subjectivity or vice versa; it tried to see past dualism (it did, however, seem to favor absolutism over relativism with the term "intrisically").
Take into account the possibility of INTER-SUBJECTIVITY. That is what the shared understandings making up a culture are about.

Perhaps I have swung completely the opposite direction, but I see everything as objective. We might think we have a subjective opinion about our own experiences but we don't. At least not from my point of view. Ha hows that subjective for you?

It is why doctors figured out that they can hit your knee just right with a tiny little hammer and you just might respond. If you don't respond either they hit you in the wrong spot or something is effecting your nerves.

I know a lot hate absolutisms but the further down the rabbit hole it seems there are nothing but absolutes. But I think the reason why so many hate that is because it lacks freedom, freedom of choice, the feeling that you are your own entity. I say even that is not the case.

I always return to the river analogy. The water molecules have no choice but to continue tumbling over each other. Our neurons are like those water molecules. We don't have a choice in the experience, we just tumble along through life.

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@Krumple,

Natural biological responses has nothing to do with individual subjectivism.
You are one confused dude!

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Quote:

You are one confused dude!

anonymously99 wrote:
That does not sound like something you would say.

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@Krumple,

Points well taken. Right or wrong I do not see subjective experience as the opposite of objective facts; I see the facts of "my" life as subjective phenomena, i.e., interpretations, and all of that as real--meaning both subjective and objective. What you may be seeing as experience-independent or "objective" reality I see as hypothetical (theoretical rather than existential) reality. But then I'm mainly just playing around here, what I think of as the "deep play" that we do in these philosophy forums.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Points well taken. Right or wrong I do not see subjective experience as the opposite of objective facts; I see the facts of "my" life as subjective phenomena, i.e., interpretations, and all of that as real--meaning both subjective and objective. What you may be seeing as experience-independent or "objective" reality I see as hypothetical (theoretical rather than existential) reality. But then I'm mainly just playing around here, what I think of as the "deep play" that we do in these philosophy forums.

i see the brain as a probe and the senses are the sensors. The data you collect and the data I collect are identical. You can say it is how we are processing that data that turns it into subjective experience but I disagree. There are reoccurring themes that reflect this, such as pizza and ice cream. Ever met a person who didn't like either one? You don't even have to stop there, get into music, art, a sunset, a stroll through the woods or a bath in a lake. We might not all agree but it isn't the experience that causes it. It is a selective decision of acceptance or rejection or for purposes of completeness, neutrality. The absoluteness comes about because if you were to remove the selective decision then everything would be exactly the same. I see no room for individuality.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

Belief has value only as a working hypothesis: it must be put to the test or, better said, it may help--like a placebo--to get temporary results. But belief, in the sense of a doctrine, has mostly negative value as far as I can tell.

i don't know that i agree. i know that i am being pedantic, but a hypothesis is a prediction about the results of an experiment. Belief, on the other hand, seems to perform differently. It does not predict a value, so much as it represents it -- historically speaking, one can observe persons holding the same values while changing beliefs [and belief systems], much as one can observe someone learning a new language to express themselves.

"Values" are abstract representatives of behavior, and, generally, the behavior required by survival. And even if one's personal survival was ensured, "values" continue to operate as a behavioral factor as long as those that one regards as one's peers are in danger..."values" are social extension of survival behavioral techniques.

JLNobody wrote:

...I feel that it's an objective fact that all experience is intrinsically subjective.

...Take into account the possibility of INTER-SUBJECTIVITY. That is what the shared understandings making up a culture are about.

Krumple wrote:

It can't all be subjective or else there would be no way to communicate. There are things that we agree on generally speaking. If there wasn't any time we try to have a discussion other people would be completely baffled by what you were even talking about. There are not just a few things that we share an experience of, there are many.

"Objective" and "Subjective" are not contrary categories of experience, they are complementary. Considered in isolation, each is inadequate to explain "experience" T

cicerone imposter wrote:

Natural biological responses has nothing to do with individual subjectivism.
You are one confused dude!

Oof, what is your context for that statement? How could that possibly be true, correct, or experimentally proven? In what way do you seek to separate the individual consciousness and the individual memory from her body?

2 Replies

@Razzleg,

Razzleg wrote:

Belief, on the other hand, seems to perform differently. It does not predict a value, so much as it represents it -- historically speaking, one can observe persons holding the same values while changing beliefs [and belief systems], much as one can observe someone learning a new language to express themselves.

In these kinds of discussions, the word "belief" is almost always a guess wearing a disguise.

People make guesses about the "unknown" of REALITY...and call them "beliefs" in order to give them stature they could not possibly possess if identified as the "guesses" they really are.

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@Krumple,

Quote:

I see no room for individuality.

how come there's so much disagreement then?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Yes, Olivier, social anthropologists generally treat the cultures of societies as highly homogeneous, i.e., exaggerate what they share and play down their (subgroup or inter-individual) differences/disagreements. But this exaggeration of intragroup commonalities is often for the purpose of contrasting intergroup (intersocietal) differences.
This may result in "hypothetical societies", idealized constructions which have the heuristic function of furthering knowledge about social processes rather than actually describing them.
Pardon my pedantism, Razzleg. My use of "hypothetical" here is not intended to be exactly what you mean by hypothesis, a methodological tool/ empirically testable proposition. I refer to heuristic presuppositions.

0 Replies

Destroy My Belief System, Please!

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