What is love?

[plumjam]

Plumjam, you seem to be coming up with horrible analogies faster than people can stomp on them. Lets dispose of this one right away, shall we?

If the blind man asks "prove to me that you have sight," it would not be very difficult at all. The sighted man touch him exactly on the nose, or guide him through a forest, or build a house for him, or any number of things that blind people cannot do because of a lack of sight. Note that the blind man would have no choice but to accept that the sighted man was in some fundamental way different due to how much better he could perform these tasks. He might try to explain the difference in some other way, and refuse to acknowledge sight, but he must realize it is there.

When it comes to religion, and your "religious sense," .... well, can you give me some examples of externally observable things that all religious people can do that all atheists cannot?

Do you doubt that some people have a better moral perception than others and can therefore offer them potentially highly valuable moral advice?
You know, like a parish priest or a judge or a magistrate, or even a mother, talking to a serial killer.

Your other response, sorry, not worth replying to.

 

[Michelle Lyon]

Love is the release of pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and other chemicals into the bloodstream of the human species. It is a process that developed as a result of natural selection and ensures that reproductive pairs bond long enough for the next generation to survive.

The release of chemicals is accompanied by feelings of snuggily-wuggiliness, the tingly-wingles, and slurred speech.

Oh yea, and it is the greatest feeling ever........wever.

Yep. And the finding of a "soulmate" is actually the unconscious recognition of similarities you share with the other person. That "spark" you get in the first few minutes of meeting that you can't explain? That would be it. Designed to ensure stability in family groups because you're all alike or you all compliment each others' strengths and weaknesses and everyone gets along, which in turn ensures survival.

Except in the instance of dysfunctionals seeking out other dysfunctionals. In past centuries these groups would have selected themselves out of the gene pool by killing each other. But in our era, although there are some groups who would still prefer to murder each other, we (in general) have frontal lobes and reasoning ability and MFT's and psychiatric medications to help overcome those obstacles and live reasonably peacefull family lives.

That neurobiology and the attatchments they form, and any disruptions of them, are extremely powerfull. It's the reason people, even those with no prior criminal or behavioral issues, kill their partners or the people their partners cheated with, or anyone related to them, or kill themselves because of some domestic event or ongoing stress and drama, or even die of "natural causes" when a spouse, child, or other significant other dies or leaves.

 

[Robin]

No. You made one long reply, and then one short reply, to my replies to other people. I chose to reply to your short reply because I couldn't be arsed with the long one. I told you why, and you claimed it was some kind of evasion. Let's remember correctly.

It is you who are not remembering correctly. You referred to them all as dogmatism. That implies you read them, understood what I was saying and commented on what I was saying. In short it means you responded to all of them.

Are you a regular on the Comedy Channel?

Name me a 19th century Materialist philosopher.

Which theists that you can cite say that morality is perceived via the retinas/ear drums rather than the conscience?

The Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the US evangelical movement, all of Islam. That accounts for a good proportion of the Theists in the world, don't you think?

The 5 senses are some data sources for the brain. As you gallantly concede there are other forms of perception carried out by the human mind, such as maths. Emotional and moral perception, how does that work? If we're being honest, we don't know. But we know that our lives are, I would say, a good 50% based on emotional and moral perception.
All mysterious.

All becoming less mysterious with the march of science.

It would depend on the piece, but if it was one of his best, and the person purported to prefer Britney or the chimps I would just have to conclude that my aesthetic perception was better than theirs.. just as some people have better eyesight than others.

Do you have a pair of glasses that would make someone who prefers Bach to Mozart prefer Mozart instead? Objectively, who is better? If you say you don't know what the fuss is about the Mona Lisa do you think you are wrong or right about this? If one tourist says the waterfall is sublime and the other says it is merely pretty how do we objectively determine who is correct. Isn't it all just a matter of opinion. After all many people hear the most sublime Indian or African percussion music and conclude that it sounds like a bunch of monkeys beating on drums.

No, you're still perceiving stuff external to yourself. If you witness a guy trying to rape a child that event is external to yourself and you perceive a moral reality about that act which is external to yourself.

In which case you have perceived it via eyes and ears.

But what kind of knowledge is the blind man going to gain from the sighted man unless the blind man puts his stubborn doubt and disbelief aside and puts some faith in what the sighted man is trying to explain to him?
That is a central problem in the interface between (genuinely) religious people and the non-religious.

No, that would be a problem between a religious person and a stubborn doubter and disbeliever, not a problem between a religious person and a non-religious person.

How would you recommend a sighted person define for a blind person what sight, light, colour..etc.. means?

You would use analogy with their other senses. An unsighted person would already understand shape and texture. You can compare colour with quality of sound, hue with intensity of sound and so on. You can explain the physics of colour and contrast it to the physics of sound waves. You could give an example of the sort of information that colour might convey for example the correlation between the shade of green and the ripeness of a fruit. In the end there is a great deal of information you could convey to an unsighted person about sight.

But with religion, nobody even tries. You would think that an atheist who has become a Christian would be able to give at least a taste or a hint of what new type of perception they have gained.

I understand your doubts. I can only recommend that you spend a decent amount of time learning about the lives and teachings of genuine religious personalities.
If people constantly demand that everything be set out in front of them so that everything becomes completely obvious to every conceivable mindset.. well that's just a bit unrealistic. If someone shouts to me that a meal is ready in the dining room I don't remain where I am paralysed by doubt as to whether the meal may or may not be there. That is just a regressive, closed, needlessly fearful approach to life.
Investigate it yourself. I'd highly recommend you put your materialist doubts on hold, and read William James The Varieties of Religious Experience, and then Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism, which are the two main classics in the field.

Well gee, I have read the Bible, the Upanishads, St Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Nicolas of Cusa, Plantinga, Donne's sacred poems, the Koran, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man to name but a few. I am not sure that this is descriptive of a regressive, fearful or closed approach to life, nor is it a demand for everything to be set in front of me.

I am willing to bet I have read more of the theological oeuvre than most of the theists here.

 

[blobru]

Maybe you should write book reviews.
Come back in 6 months.

Ever have the feeling you're trying to teach a guinea pig calculus? [just kidding, and "likewise!", I know] Once more...

what are you on about? his point was that repulsion can just as well be described as a form of attraction to other things, which are not in the general vicinity of the thing being ''not-attracted-to'.

Yes, that was his point alright. Good.

Now. Magnets are things. Things that attract or repel by electromagnetic force. Magnets only attract or repel when brought together. IF they repelled because of attraction to other things, you would observe that attraction when the magnets were not close together. You don't. Magnetic force has limits. It doesn't register outside the range of its field, and many things (wood, for example) are non-magnetic.

As an experiment, take two magnets with the same polarity. Observe that neither is being attracted nor repelled by anything else to begin with. Hold one magnet in place. Its position relative to everything else stays the same. Bring the other magnet closer to it, so the position of the first magnet only changes relative to the other magnet. That's the only change. Ok? Thus the force observed, repulsion, must be due to the change in the other magnet, the change in its position. (This leads to the inverse square law of magnetic force, useful for PC's.) It's impossible that the force observed has anything to do with any other thing, for none of these things has changed relative to the magnet. It is repulsion between the magnets, not attraction of the magnets for "some other things", as Baba suggests. The descriptions are not interchangeable. One's right. One's wrong.

Baba is wrong. Sorry.

If, at the human level, you go into a nightclub, and are attracted towards a particular female, is your attraction to her dependent on the amount of ugly people around you who you are not attracted to?
No.
You are attracted to her for her own beauty, not the fact that someone behind you has a massive nose.

Well, if you and somebody who considered you unattractive were the only two people left on earth, and he or she didn't respond to your advances, he or she must be repelled by you, not attracted to someone else.

But that's beside the point. Baba is arguing that the basic forces of nature like gravity and electromagnetism are forms of "love", and that there is no such thing as repulsion (which is where he and Empedocles part company, Ichneumonwasp?) In the paragraph in question, he is clearly talking about things, not people [my bold]:

The law of gravitation, to which all the planets and the stars are subject, is in its own way a dim reflection of the love which pervades every part of the universe. Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things. Repulsion is a negative consequence of positive attraction. The forces of cohesion and affinity which prevail in the very constitution of matter are positive expressions of love. A striking example of love at this level is found in the attraction which the magnet exercises for iron.

Things. Not people. No nightclubs. No beautiful females. No big noses (which some of us fancy, anyway...)

In my experience, no. He didn't make mistakes when talking about love. You are labouring under the prejudice that all examples of the human form must by necessity be fallible.

Nope. Suspend judgement until the claimant to perfection says something false.

For Baba, that took about six sentences.

Some very rare exceptions such as divine incarnations like Jesus and Meher Baba may well not be subject to that. Your belief that everyone must be is just a kind of faith.

Inductively, it's my experience that we all make mistakes.

We all have our "crosses" to bear. (bad joke)

You are welcome to "debunk" him if you like. During his life he repeatedly stated he preferred people be honest about their views on him. He preferred people to honestly think he was a fake, over people who through some sense of misguided piety preferred to dissemble that they felt he was an avatar.

Hey, that was nice of him! Consider him debunked then.

 

[The Atheist]

Like many of the atheists on this forum I used to be very faithful. A born again Christian in my case. I took the leap and I saw: There was nothing to separate my faith from any of the others that I dismissed as superstition. There is nothing to suggest that humans occupy a privileged place in the universe. I look out at the universe with science and see a fraction of it in all its mind-bending immensity and I am stunned by its beauty and glory, and humbled by how tiny and fleeting we are in comparison. How provincial and anthropomorphic our gods seem in comparison. How preposterously arrogant our religions are to claim to have the final answers in the face of such impenetrable mystery surrounding us. How weak they seem with their erroneous proclamations of inerrant truth, torn down by a simple but effective methodology of investigation. How precious and fragile we are. We are made of material produced in stars and complexity doesn't go from the top down, it goes from the bottom up. The sense of religious awe I have when confronted by the universe dwarfs that which I had in the presence of a god made in the image of men.

Just to make sure that doesn't get lost in the dross that this thread has turned into (for a change) I've nominated that.

Marvellous piece; thanks very much!

You touch on one of my concerns about theism - the enormous arrogance which says that of the billions of galaxies, one tiny speck in just one of them is worthy of praise for the mere sake of its creation.

Pathetic

 

[Piscivore]

Really? So if materialists do not rely on the five senses, what is it they do rely on?
Just to save you the trouble I anticipate you saying something like 'measuring devices' 'gauges' 'sensors' or whatnot. Please realise that the information from these things can only be conveyed to your consciousness via the 5 senses.
(Unless, like myself, you too believe that there are more than 5 modes through which reality can be perceived)

You anticipate incorrectly. Those you deem "materialists" rely on: Reproducability- Does someone different from you get the same results when tesing or examining a phenomenon? If I look at the chair, and see it as a red chair, I'll be concerned if another person notes they saw a blue chair, or doesn't see the chair at all. If several different examiners report the same red chair, that's evidence of its objective existance.

Repeatability- Does the same test under the same conditions give the same results? If I examine the chair on Monday, and see a red chair, I should see a red chair on Tuesday if no one has interfered with it and it has objective existance.

Falsifiability- Can I test that the chair is objectively there or not? Can I stack books on it, pick it up, sit on it? If it is in a locked room, or if I can only see it in a mirror it might be an optical illusion, I can't test it to know if it is objectively real or not. But if I can stack books on it, or I try to and they fall to the floor, that is evidence for, or against respectively, its objective existence.

There are a few others, but that's enought to give you an idea.

How do you manage to perceive the smashing vase, or my feet off the floor, yet not simultaneously perceive the chair? The primary two pertain to visual perception, as would the chair itself. How could you see the vase and the feet, but not the chair?

It could be invisible, I don't know. I was just trying to use your chair for my examples consitantly.

Let's stretch your opinion out. To be consistent you'd have to feel comfortable with agreeing in some rational manner that the musical output of the Beatles was in no way objectively demonstrably less aesthetically valuable than the musical output of 4 chimpanzees let loose in the Abbey Road studios for a few months.

It depends on the aesthetic sense of the observer. The tape recorder isn't going to know the difference. If you watched the sine wave without hearing the sound you wouldn't know the difference. An ear conditioned only to some other vastly different form of music for Rock isn't going to recognise any aethetic value in either- only discordant noise. And some people just dont like them.

So, the logical consequence of this is that music doesn't exist. Only noise.

Only if you assume objectivity exists, which is indeed your preconcieved conclusion. The actual logical conclusion absent that assumption is that aesthetic sense is entirely subjective.

If someone like this exists they are musically aesthetic idiots. In the same way that a blind person is a visual idiot.

And there you display your arrogance. Anyone who dissagrees with your preconcived notions of aesthetics is an idiot.

Does this have anything to do with the discussion?

Yes. If emotions were objective, then everyone should be expected to react positively to human contact. But they don't. An abused child will flinch from even a tender, affectionate gesture.

If emotions were objective then everyone should be expected to love in the same way. They don't.

Nonsense. There is an objective visual reality, which you accept.

I didn't say that, that's absurd. I get paraideola all the time.

Some people are blind, some people have 20/20 vision. The same applies in the emotional realm. Some people, such as saints, have very good emotional perception. Other people such as sociopaths, serial killers, the autistic etc.. are very impaired in their ability to perceive emotional and moral objective truth.

Or, absent your preconcived conclusion that there is an objective emotional or moral truth, these things are equally adequately explained by considering them to be entirely subjective. Which is what we see. "Saint" Mother Theresa refused to help the poor who did not accept her god. Need we even mention the legions of child molesters preists that have scurried out from under the rug? Most of the medieval and renaissance popes wre decadant, perverse, licentuous, gluttonous, and cruel.

Contrarywise, many sociopaths lead perfectly moral lives, they just have to work harder at it than most people. And are you really claiming that autistic people have no emotions and no morality? Your ignorance is staggering.

Of course it can. A person's perception that a vase is not beautiful enough can cause that person to break that vase. [isn't that the absense of beauty? Is the absense of an objective truth also an objective truth?] Beauty can, via the owner of those books' aesthetic sense encourage that owner to go and buy some shelves for those books.

Sure, but beauty cannot do either of those things for itself. And if that were the case, why do so many ugly things go unbroken, so many beautiful books sit on coffee tables, in attic boxes, and prop up wobbly tables?

The logical consequence being that no-one could ever say whether a nation of the blind or a nation of the one-eyed could reasonably claim to be visually perceiving the world more accurately.

The metaphore you use here only makes sense if you do indeed hold, as a preconcived conclusion, that your sense of beauty is unquestionably and inherently superior to all others. Evey argument you make stems directly from these unfounded an profoundly biased assumptions, and reflects nothing but your ignorance.

Sorry Psicivore, more nonsense on your part.

The nonsense isn't on my part, Jambo.

So what is real by your criteria?

Depends on what you mean by "real". I'm not making any assumptions with you. Define it.

Do you doubt that some people have a better moral perception than others and can therefore offer them potentially highly valuable moral advice?
You know, like a parish priest or a judge or a magistrate, or even a mother, talking to a serial killer.

You mean sterling beacons of virtue such as John Geoghan, Gerald P Garson, Reuben Galvan, or even Susan Smith?

Plenty more examples, in each category, too.

 

[plumjam]

Now. Magnets are things. Things that attract or repel by electromagnetic force. Magnets only attract or repel when brought together. IF they repelled because of attraction to other things, you would observe that attraction when the magnets were not close together. You don't. Magnetic force has limits. It doesn't register outside the range of its field, and many things (wood, for example) are non-magnetic.

As an experiment, take two magnets with the same polarity. Observe that neither is being attracted nor repelled by anything else to begin with. Hold one magnet in place. Its position relative to everything else stays the same. Bring the other magnet closer to it, so the position of the first magnet only changes relative to the other magnet. That's the only change. Ok? Thus the force observed, repulsion, must be due to the change in the other magnet, the change in its position. (This leads to the inverse square law of magnetic force, useful for PC's.) It's impossible that the force observed has anything to do with any other thing, for none of these things has changed relative to the magnet. It is repulsion between the magnets, not attraction of the magnets for "some other things", as Baba suggests. The descriptions are not interchangeable. One's right. One's wrong.

Baba is wrong. Sorry.

It's a pity you've spent so much time on this magnetism thing. Go back and re-read. Nowhere does he connect magnetism with repulsion. It was you who did that.
Thus: "Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things. Repulsion is a negative consequence of positive attraction. The forces of cohesion and affinity which prevail in the very constitution of matter are positive expressions of love. A striking example of love at this level is found in the attraction which the magnet exercises for iron. All these forms of love are of the lowest type, since they are necessarily conditioned by the rudimentary consciousness in which they appear."

In reference to magnetism he only mentions attraction, not repulsion. Plus he only mentions an interface between a magnet and iron. Not two magnets like you did.
Strange, huh?
Almost as though he knew everything.

Maybe for you, as a materialist, it will be of some major importance that someone, in a discourse trying to explain love only mentions a magnet/iron interface rather than a magnet/magnet interface. I think most rational people would recognise it as completely trivial given the subject matter of the discourse.

Well, if you and somebody who considered you unattractive were the only two people left on earth, and he or she didn't respond to your advances, he or she must be repelled by you, not attracted to someone else.

No. More nonsense from you, unfortunately. Think about it. Attraction and repulsion in this context would involve attraction and repulsion involving humans, not attraction and repulsion involving the rest of the non-human environment. If I were the only male option left to her on Earth then any attraction to me could not logically be any repulsion from any other males on Earth, seeing as they don't exist.
Simple.

But that's beside the point. Baba is arguing that the basic forces of nature like gravity and electromagnetism are forms of "love", and that there is no such thing as repulsion (which is where he and Empedocles part company, Ichneumonwasp?) In the paragraph in question, he is clearly talking about things, not people [my bold]:

Things. Not people. No nightclubs. No beautiful females. No big noses (which some of us fancy, anyway...)

Where did he say there was no such thing as repulsion?

"Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love."

Nope. Suspend judgement until the claimant to perfection says something false.

For Baba, that took about six sentences.

Where?

Inductively, it's my experience that we all make mistakes.

Clearly.

Hey, that was nice of him! Consider him debunked then.

I'm always amused when people make these claims of "debunkage". Decided entirely by themselves. Like kids in the sandpit declaring they have won the game.
Never mind though. Continue with the discourses, and see what fault you can pick.

 

[H'ethetheth]

Do you doubt that some people have a better moral perception than others and can therefore offer them potentially highly valuable moral advice?
You know, like a parish priest or a judge or a magistrate, or even a mother, talking to a serial killer.

What is "moral perception"? Where are the perceived morals?

 

[maatorc]

.....Does someone different from you get the same results when tesing or examining a phenomenon? .......If several different examiners report the same red chair, that's evidence of its objective existence.

No, it is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar; no more.

 

[blobru]

It's a pity you've spent so much time on this magnetism thing. Go back and re-read. Nowhere does he connect magnetism with repulsion. It was you who did that.

Me and every scientist for the past two hundred years.
There is no other force of repulsion in nature except magnetism.
Ergo, when Baba talks about "forces of repulsion" between things in nature, he must be talking about magnetism.
Because, there is no other force of repulsion between things except magnetism.

It's a pity you've spent so little time on this magnetism thing. Go read up on it.

Thus: "Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things. Repulsion is a negative consequence of positive attraction. The forces of cohesion and affinity which prevail in the very constitution of matter are positive expressions of love. A striking example of love at this level is found in the attraction which the magnet exercises for iron. All these forms of love are of the lowest type, since they are necessarily conditioned by the rudimentary consciousness in which they appear."

Note: "...since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things."

"Repulsion" is only an apparent effect: it is caused by attraction to "some other things", is the claim.

In reference to magnetism he only mentions attraction, not repulsion. Plus he only mentions an interface between a magnet and iron. Not two magnets like you did.
Strange, huh?
Almost as though he knew everything.

Every reference to a force of repulsion is a reference to magnetism. Same poles repel.
Strange, huh?
If he doesn't realize there is no other force of repulsion between things in nature except magnetism, it's almost as though he knows nothing about fourth grade electricity.

Maybe for you, as a materialist,

I'm not a materialist... (philosophically, I'm a pseudo-phenomenologist, with materialism as one noncommittal explanatory frame among many, but that's neither here nor there...)

it will be of some major importance that someone, in a discourse trying to explain love only mentions a magnet/iron interface rather than a magnet/magnet interface. I think most rational people would recognise it as completely trivial given the subject matter of the discourse.

"Rational people" would recognize that magnetism is one of the three or four basic forces of nature. There is nothing trivial about it. Your computer and the internet it is attached to are based on electromagnetism. Love is important too. Baba seems to think they are the same thing. They are not. They are both too important in their own right to be so thoughtlessly confused.

And "rational people", of which I am one, would recognize he is talking about magnetism when he talks about "forces of repulsion", because there is no other force of repulsion between things in nature, except magnetism. This is grade school science.

He mentions magnetism once explicitly, and once with the phrase "forces of repulsion", because, as may have been pointed out previously, there are no other forces of repulsion between things in nature, except magnetism.

Magnets are used in experiments to understand magnetism, the only force of repulsion. In the quote you provided, Baba says "forces of repulsion... since things are repelled..." How does this exclude magnets? Is the claim that magnets are not things? That a rock is a thing, a cloud is a thing, a pencil is a thing, but a magnet somehow is not? They are large things that repel. The principles derived from studying them apply to all things with an electromagnetic field, down to the atomic level.

No. More nonsense from you, unfortunately.

For clarity, my example:

... Well, if you and somebody who considered you unattractive were the only two people left on earth, and he or she didn't respond to your advances, he or she must be repelled by you, not attracted to someone else. ...

The example is you and someone else, the two last people on earth. He or she finds you disgusting. This person is repelled by you.
In Baba's theory, in truth the person is not repelled by you, he or she must be more powerfully attracted to other people. But there are no other people. So the person must be repelled by you. It cannot be attraction to any one else.

Think about it. Attraction and repulsion in this context would involve attraction and repulsion involving humans, not attraction and repulsion involving the rest of the non-human environment. If I were the only male option left to her on Earth then any attraction to me could not logically be any repulsion from any other males on Earth, seeing as they don't exist.
Simple.

And if he or she is repelled by you, as in the example I gave? It could not be attraction to anyone else on earth, since they don't exist. Simple.

Except Baba says repulsion is in truth always more powerful attraction to someone else. Apparent repulsion is always in truth attraction. It can't be in this hypothetical. Baba is wrong. (Unless you can demonstrate that you are irresistible.)

Where did he say there was no such thing as repulsion?

"Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love."

Uh-oh. You're misquoting your master Baba, turning a comma into a period.

Full sentence: "Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things."

He is making a scientific claim that what appears to be repulsion between two things is an illusion. The "repulsion" occurs in truth "because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things."

Studies of the forces of repulsion, magnetism, show Baba's scientific claim to be nonsense. Magnetic fields have a limited range. Two isolated particles with the same charge repel each other when their magnetic fields overlap. They repel each other, they are not attracted to other things, as Baba claims. Repulsion is repulsion, not, in truth, attraction. Baba is wrong.

Where?

"Even the forces of repulsion are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things."

This is the seventh sentence in the passage on "Love" you linked to, as a superior definition to the "pretty poor replies , which is not surprising", offered before.

Again, it is false. The forces of repulsion, magnetism (same polarity), are forces of repulsion. Simple as that. Their range is too limited to be due to being "more powerfully attracted to some other things."

Baba was ignorant of this. Which is certainly no sin (to me at least). But it is a fact. Baba was wrong.

Clearly.

Including Baba. Great.

I'm always amused when people make these claims of "debunkage". Decided entirely by themselves. Like kids in the sandpit declaring they have won the game.

This is a skeptical forum. A claim was made that Baba was infallible. Close scrutiny above of this claim reveals that he wasn't. Make of that what you will.

It appears Baba was only a man after all. Oh well.

Never mind though. Continue with the discourses, and see what fault you can pick.

No point. He claimed to be an infallible authority on love (and everything else). He clearly isn't. He confuses the basic forces of nature with love, electromagnetic repulsion with attraction, and God with himself.

If a "perfect" person makes a mistake, he's not perfect. If he still maintains he's "perfect", he's either deluded, lying, or stupid. Whichever is the case with Baba, I won't be continuing with the discourses until I see evidence that Baba had at least the basic intelligence, decency, and self-awareness to admit he could make and had made a mistake.
So -- was this "wise man" in fact wise enough to admit his mistakes? Or was his mind closed to that wisdom?

 

[Piscivore]

No, it is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar; no more.

Correct. I didn't say or mean "conclusive, incontrovertible, definitive evidence". But it is evidence.

On the other hand, if I report a red chair, and the next guy a blue one, and the next three no chair at all, and one guy says the room contains a monkey in a tutu playing the bagpipes, well...

 

[rocketdodger]

Do you doubt that some people have a better moral perception than others and can therefore offer them potentially highly valuable moral advice?
You know, like a parish priest or a judge or a magistrate, or even a mother, talking to a serial killer.

No I do not doubt that. What I doubt, and this is why I asked you the question, is that you could provide evidence that such a thing is limited to people with the religious sense -- namely, because there are many atheists who are very good people and there are many religious who are very bad people.

Or you could say, for instance, that the bad people don't have it, even though they are religious, and that the good people do have it, even though they are atheists ("confused" atheists I suppose you would say), but let's be honest, you might as well claim anything if "because I say so" is your method of proof.

You offered an analogy comparing the religious sense to the sight sense. It is a horrible analogy, and you know it, and that is why you are sidestepping my question: can you provide examples of externally observable abilities that people with religious sense have and those without it lack?

Your other response, sorry, not worth replying to.

Why?

You compared belief in God with belief that dinner is ready. I illustrated why, without insulting you in any way other than suggesting you manufacture horrible analogies, so why is it "not worth responding to?" Is it because I am correct?

 

[H'ethetheth]

No, it is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar; no more.

Correct. I didn't say or mean "conclusive, incontrovertible, definitive evidence". But it is evidence. [...snip...]

Incorrect. The word "correct" is incorrect and should read "incorrect".

 

[Piscivore]

Incorrect. The word "correct" is incorrect and should read "incorrect".

That would mean I disagree with you. I don't. It is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar, and that by itself is not enough to warrant a conclusion that the chair has an objective reality. But taken as an agreggate with other corroborating evidences, it is an element of the total of evidences that can lead to that conclusion.

 

[H'ethetheth]

That would mean I disagree with you. I don't. It is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar, and that by itself is not enough to warrant a conclusion that the chair has an objective reality. But taken as an agreggate with other corroborating evidences, it is an element of the total of evidences that can lead to that conclusion.

I don't think we disagree. You said:

If several different examiners report the same red chair, that's evidence of its objective existance.

maatorc then said:

No, it is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar; no more.

I could be mistaken, but to me that means that maatorc does in fact not agree that your example provides evidence for the objective existence of a red chair.
If you then say that he is correct, yet go on to say that it is in fact evidence for the objective existence of the chair, I find that odd.

Also, it may help to realize that I was aching to respond to maatorc in exactly the same way you did, except about him being correct. I didn't, of course, because that would be slightly rude and I assumed you would say exactly that anyway,



...except about him being correct.

 

[H'ethetheth]

That would mean I disagree with you. I don't. It is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar, and that by itself is not enough to warrant a conclusion that the chair has an objective reality. But taken as an agreggate with other corroborating evidences, it is an element of the total of evidences that can lead to that conclusion.

I don't think we disagree. You said:

If several different examiners report the same red chair, that's evidence of its objective existance.

maatorc then said:

No, it is evidence that their perception of it is approximately similar; no more.

I could be mistaken, but to me that means that maatorc does in fact not agree that your example provides evidence for the objective existence of a red chair.
If you then say that he is correct, yet go on to say that it is in fact evidence for the objective existence of the chair, I find that odd.

Also, it may help to realize that I was aching to respond to maatorc in exactly the same way you did, except about him being correct. I didn't, of course, because that would be slightly rude and I assumed you would say exactly that anyway,



...except about him being correct.

 

[plumjam]

Blobru,
how do you know that the magnet is positively repulsed by the other magnet, rather than positively attracted to the non-magnet i.e. that-which-is-not-the-other-magnet?
You don't. There's no way you possibly could know that.
All that happens is that you observe a movement in a magnet. Calling it repulsion or attraction is just a matter of choosing words. It's just as logical to say that magnet A is attracted to NotmagnetB more than it is attracted to magnet B.
So it's a matter of words, and a black hole of semantics and pedantry.

if you want to continue spending your time arguing the toss about magnetic repulsion in a thread about love, that's your call. Seems like a monumental waste of time to me.

 

[Piscivore]

I don't think we disagree. You said:

maatorc then said:

I could be mistaken, but to me that means that maatorc does in fact not agree that your example provides evidence for the objective existence of a red chair.
If you then say that he is correct, yet go on to say that it is in fact evidence for the objective existence of the chair, I find that odd.

Also, it may help to realize that I was aching to respond to maatorc in exactly the same way you did, except about him being correct. I didn't, of course, because that would be slightly rude and I assumed you would say exactly that anyway,



...except about him being correct.

My head hurts now.

I think what I was saying is that he was factually correct, but the implications of that fact were not what he thought. At least, that's my perception. ,)

And my bad for not paying attention to whom I was talking.

Love the new avatar, BTW.

 

[plumjam]

What is "moral perception"?

Do you really need to ask this? Would it be your argument that moral perception doesn't exist? We can all (apart from some people with mental problems) perceive good/bad in either real or imaginary moral situations. Call it conscience if you like, though other useful words could be of use in this realm, such as compassion and empathy.

Where are the perceived morals?

Where? You mean you think everything that exists has to have a spatial location?
Where is E=MC2? Where is history? Where is remorse? Where are multiplication and division? Where is gravity? Where are the rules of chess?
These are undeniable aspects of reality that exist non-spatially, but can and do interact with time/space, as do morals.

 

[JoeEllison]

Do you really need to ask this? Would it be your argument that moral perception doesn't exist? We can all (apart from some people with mental problems) perceive good/bad in either real or imaginary moral situations. Call it conscience if you like, though other useful words could be of use in this realm, such as compassion and empathy.

Those "things" are all subjective functions of the material brain. They don't show any validity for your position.