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Primal Curve mentioned that landmarks really should be landmarks, not just specific post counts. That can be debated back and forth, but either way I’ve had a definite landmark in my life since my last thread. Of course I’m referring to Annie (who is perfect in case you were wondering ) but just as obviously Hatrack was a big part of that and though I would love to tell you all about how great Annie is, I think that you (having already heard it) would not. So instead I’m just going to kind of ramble along through a Cousin Hobbes post and figure the lack of structure and the continual self reference gets made up for by this being a landmark.
There has been a kind of dividing up of people recently. One group supports complete rationality, one complete emotionalism. This is, basically, the debate between science and art. An art person (as in someone on the emotionalism side) looks at technology and scientific advancement with fear and anger. To them technology is something that invades their life, not advances it. They don’t see anything to connect to in their electric toothbrush or combustion motor. It’s all steel and fire and none of it human. To them it has no heart.
A science person would look at a piece of art and not understand it, and by the very act of not understanding, it would be rendered meaningless to them. Emotional contact can not be quantified and is thus not important, or at least not worth thought. If it can’t be broken down and examined it is should not be involved in your thinking.
Of course no one falls completely into one category or another, but it seems to be that more and more people choose one side or another to be on. The thing is, one side is meaningless without the other. Kind of like children in elementary school, all the guys getting together and the girls getting together separately and pretending to hate each other. If children stayed that way they would still exist at the moment, but eventually die out without leaving a thing behind.
Intellectualism needs emotionalism, just as romanticism needs logic. The two must be used together or neither of them serve any purpose. The key is to see how they fit together.
Really it’s incredibly simple, something that can be said in just one sentence, so I’ll just do that shall I? Emotionalism defines starting points and goals, logic gets you from one to the other. Perhaps this makes it clear, perhaps it doesn’t, either way I’ll give you an example.
Where in a scientific lab somewhere. A scientist is getting paid to discover something, he has to figure out something new. So what does he do? He attempts to perform a hypothesis and figure out what he wants to learn. Where did this hypothesis come from? Who knows, it was an emotional creation, one that didn’t come out of rational thought. He just suddenly appeared with a hypothesis. Not to say that it doesn’t involve any rational thought, but at it’s core, a truly new hypothesis requires an emotional input. For example, Einstein’s hypothesis of light traveling always at the same speed. Now that he has pointed it out we can see that it makes sense, but before he pointed it out there was no way to arrive at that particular conclusion logically. He created the hypothesis out of no where.
And where did he want to go with it? Logic and experimental work can give you an infinite (or close to it) number of facts, but you have to choose the facts. Which ones are important and which ones matter. It’s this “matter” that requires emotionalism, where do you want to go with them? You need to ask that question, and fundamentally this requires an emotional response.
So emotions are necessary to do just about everything, they are needed to start and stop any progress. But science is necessary too. Emotionalism can come up with as many starts and stops and matters as it’s little heart desires, but without science you can’t get from any start to any stop. In this lab the scientist has come up with a hypothesis and what he wants to find out (his personal “what matters” criteria) but now what? Now he needs to figure out logically if his hypothesis matches his data and facts that matter. He needs logic to get hum from his hypothesis to his conclusion. Rational thought and dialectic reason.
Perhaps a better metaphor is a map. Emotions will tell you where you want to start from, and where you want to go. But without logic you can’t figure out a way to get from the start to the finish. But with only logic, where are you? You can figure out how to get somewhere from somewhere else, but you don’t know those two points and logic isn’t capable of figuring them out. Both are required for navigation.
Personally I’ve pretty much boiled down all of my emotionalism into two postulates (postulates are a result of emotional reactions, they can not be proven by definition). Postulate one is where I am, my starting point for logic, and postulate two is where I want to go, what I’m working towards.
Postulate 1: my senses are giving me an accurate description of the world, and reality is, for the most part, as I perceive it to be.
This allows me to use the data my senses have collected to make logical deductions on it. The starting point for how to act in the world.
Postulate 2: My emotional connections and happiness, both with myself and others matters.
This is where I want to go, everyone being happy and loved. A kind of end game for myself.
Everything else I believe I try to base on postulate 1, and everything I do I try to have work towards postulate 2. Of course I fail at this plenty, all the time really; but that’s what I try to do. My belief in God is not a third postulate, it is completely based off of postulate 1, and my willingness to follow Him is not because I’m stupid, it’s because of my belief in postulate 2. Logic has taken a collection of inputs I’ve had and deduced that it is most likely that God does exist, thus I believe in Him. Logic then took His plan and what He said and informed me that following Him would be the best way of getting to fulfill postulate 2, thus I used my emotional postulate to make myself able to gather data, and then logic to take that data and let it fulfill the meaning of my emotionalism.
Well there you have it, a wandering, random landmark. Perhaps I shouldn’t have written my landmark at 5:00am when I couldn’t sleep, but since I’m swamped with work this is really the only time I have to do it. I wish you good luck in all of your endeavors, as for me, I’m going to sleep.
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I see I'm not the only one having trouble sleeping tonight.
Hobbes, as always, your post made me smile and made me think. Congrats on 5000! And may there be many times 5000 ahead.
Oh, and I would like to emotionally voice my support for rational thought. And quite rationally point out the importance of emotionalism. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Congrats, Hobbes ! I'm happy I read your landmark. I do agree with your point of view : I've been myself quite sad to see Hatrack divided by all these hugs story or others... And of course I'm very happy for Annie and you !
[ December 08, 2003, 06:28 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
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Hobbes You are wonderful, as always! I want to point out that, while your general thesis may be sound, your particular example of Einstein isn't quite true. The fact that the speed of light is the same no matter what is your speed or direction, was the result of careful experiments by Michaelson and Morley, and was something that was known by Einstein when he was formulating his theory of relativity. He was the one who put this weirdo fact into a new theoretical framework in which it made sense.
That doesn't negate what you are saying. New theories do come out of nowhere.... from inspiration or from quantum processes in the brain or at random or from somewhere totally unknown. They aren't logical. They're often accompanied by the "aha" feeling of crystalline certainty that they are true. Just your specific Einstein example isn't quite how it happened.
Congratulations on reaching 5,000. Here's to 5,000 more!
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I've often wondered how it is that the brain can get this information. Specifically, when trying to understand someone whose native language you do not speak. Be it a baby, or a person from another country, or a cat.
Yesterday my cat Drive By was meowing at me. She's very vocal and tends to point out to me when anything isn't right or needs my action. So I don't always know what it is she is saying. I will look at her and say, "What? What's wrong?" and watch how she reacts. Sometimes it takes a while for me to understand. Then suddenly I know what it is she is saying. <laughs> I know this is quite a common occurrence with babies or when trying to speak to someone with whom we share no common language. We talk, gesture, look in each other's eyes, then suddenly we understand what each other is getting at. How?
Another thing that happens in inter-species communication is that when there's something they don't understand, I explain it to them in great detail. I guess I started doing this out of a mixture of frustration and silliness. But I found that it works. Whenever Brando would sneak outside, I would follow him around and try to catch him and bring him in, usually ending in an empasse when he got somewhere I couldn't reach, but within earshot, while I blocked his retreat. I would then explain sincerely and earnestly in great detail all the reasons why we are indoor cats. After a while he would seem to understand and let me catch him.
Drive By is very wild and feels that health care is a violation of her selfness. She acts when I catch her, as though I am taking her to be eaten by a predator. She fights me tooth and nail with a desperate life-and-death mindset. I wait to treat her, because of this, until I am afraid for her life. After this last vet visit, she was angry at me and when I held my hand up in an offer to stroke her later that day she looked at me coldly and said, "don't touch me". I then spent probably 10 minutes explaining to her that I loved her and hated to have to put her through that, but that I was terrified by her illness and the vet was needed to get her well. Not long afterward she forgave me and came up to nuzzle me. I feel sure that she must have understood something from what I said.
How does a baby first learn what a new word means? To me there is a deep mystery hidden in this common event. One related to the place where new theories come from in science. How is it that we make sense of anything at all, in the very beginning?
[ December 08, 2003, 08:12 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I suppose people would say, "it's the tone of your voice", when explaining how animals understand us. But why should voice tones carry any inherent meaning any more than random strings of phonemes? We all feel that they DO, but Why? How?
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Sorry for hijacking your thread, Hobbes, but I figured a discussion of the metaphysics of science would be a fitting tribute for your 5000th post, anyway. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:There has been a kind of dividing up of people recently. One group supports complete rationality, one complete emotionalism. This is, basically, the debate between science and art. An art person (as in someone on the emotionalism side) looks at technology and scientific advancement with fear and anger. To them technology is something that invades their life, not advances it. They don’t see anything to connect to in their electric toothbrush or combustion motor. It’s all steel and fire and none of it human. To them it has no heart.
A science person would look at a piece of art and not understand it, and by the very act of not understanding, it would be rendered meaningless to them. Emotional contact can not be quantified and is thus not important, or at least not worth thought. If it can’t be broken down and examined it is should not be involved in your thinking.
Are you sure you aren't mixing up the difference between reason and emotion with the difference between quantity and quality?
quote:Postulate 1: my senses are giving me an accurate description of the world, and reality is, for the most part, as I perceive it to be.
That's either a very dangerous assumption or a very trivial one.
Are you merely saying that you believe your beliefs are correct (which is pretty much the definition of a belief anyway)?
Or are you suggesting your senses don't decieve you? If so, I'd suggest you rethink it. It would probably require you to deny most of modern science, which is built almost entirely on the theory that things are not just how the appear to be to our senses.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:Are you sure you aren't mixing up the difference between reason and emotion with the difference between quantity and quality?
No I don't think I'm doing that... but then I don't see how what I wrote could mean that so I'm probably just not understanding you.
My postulate 1 does not say that my other beliefs are just plain correct, nor that things are as they seem, or not exactly. Basically I'm saying that I wont dicker around about if I really exist or I'm just being fed impulses by a machine or something. That if I see something I start of from the assumption that it exists.
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I feel a little left out when I'm asleep during your most profound thoughts, but actually I think I got a pretty good deal last night, having beautiful dreams and then waking up and getting to read this first thing.
Read this objectively, Hobbesy, and you'll see why you're not allowed to protest when I say you're brilliant. You are. You're thoughtful and caring and, I would venture to say, the most optimum mix of intellect and emotion I've ever met.
Lucky, lucky little me.
Congrats on 5,000 baby. I want to be here for the next 5,000.
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quote:No I don't think I'm doing that... but then I don't see how what I wrote could mean that so I'm probably just not understanding you.
I mean that you suggest science is not concerned with emotion and that art is not concerned with reason. This isn't true though. For one thing, human emotion is something studied with great enthusiasm in psychology and biology. For another thing, reason is typically necessary for any artist, and probably is even more important than emotion in certain arts, like literature or architecture. In the case of arts like rhetoric, essay-writing, and debate, emotion is only slightly relevant. So it would be a big mistake to equate art with emotionaism and science with reason.
When you suggest later that intellectualism needs emotionalism and vice versa, I think you're making this mistake. It's not that one needs the other. It's that science needs both. And that art needs both. (And most other useful stuff too.)
The difference between science and art is more along the lines of quantifiability - or perhaps I should have said objective vs. subjective. Science approaches everything, even emotion, with an objective and quantitative method - what is measureably true? Art approaches it with a subjective and qualitative method - what do I judge to be true?
quote:My postulate 1 does not say that my other beliefs are just plain correct, nor that things are as they seem, or not exactly. Basically I'm saying that I wont dicker around about if I really exist or I'm just being fed impulses by a machine or something. That if I see something I start of from the assumption that it exists.
Everyone starts out with that assumption though. That's not much of a postulate. The real question is, at what point do you begin to question that assumption?
For instance, I suspect you don't believe rainbows really exist anywhere when you see them. Or do you?
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:When you suggest later that intellectualism needs emotionalism and vice versa, I think you're making this mistake. It's not that one needs the other. It's that science needs both. And that art needs both. (And most other useful stuff too.)
Well actually that was kind of my concluesion, my point was that people felt one side or the other was sufficent when really living required both so I think we agree, we're just not fully communicating here.
quote:Everyone starts out with that assumption though. That's not much of a postulate.
I don't know, it seems pretty necessary to me. If my sense are giving me an inaccurate view of the world and really I'm a dog floating in some sort of anti-gravity chamber getting carefully manipulated output pumped into my brain what am I going o do about? I assume that reality can be determined by my senses. I know it's really basic, but that's the point.
quote:If my sense are giving me an inaccurate view of the world and really I'm a dog floating in some sort of anti-gravity chamber getting carefully manipulated output pumped into my brain what am I going o do about? I assume that reality can be determined by my senses.
Perhaps. But wouldn't this lead you straight to the assumption that God doesn't exist? How is it pointless to speculate about a mad scientist manipulating everything, but meaningful to speculate about God doing the same? Isn't it the same thing, except in God's case the scientist is perfectly good?
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Umm... I guess techincally it would be my sense of touch if that's what you mean. I don't like dividing it up that way because all youor senses are the same thing, just nerves firing. Only some times your body has come up with clever ways of making your nerves fire (i.e. optical magnification).
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Well that's something I didn't mention. Logic can be used to analyze the effect of certain postulates. For instance if I had one postulate that said 1 + 1 = 2 and 1 + 1 = 3 logic would quickly show that my assumptions were condridictory. When I see condridictions in my senses then I have to figure out why, and if I come to the concluesion that postulate 1 condridicts itself then I remove it, but I haven't had that happen yet. Thanks goodness.
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That's the thing, for many people schizoid hallucinations are not logically resolvable. Does this make their reality different?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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This reminds me of a 3-d cartesian coordinate model for state of mind I came up with when I was 20. On the lighter side, it reminds me of how I learned the difference between Sales and marketing. Most people think they are the same, but they are way different. But the output of each department shapes the other.
Vocal intonation vs. phonemes- I think there are probably tones that go with the anthropological universals of happy, sad and mad. But why these should apply to animals is a little bit more of a mystery. Still, I think animals that can sense the aggression of other species would have a higher survivability. From a natural selection standpoint. Way to go, Hobbes! I knew there was a reason I wanted to get my landmark done well in advance of this week. Besides it being Pearl Harbor day on the 7th and whatnot.
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On the one hand, your definition of senses is broad enough to include what sounds like hunches or intuition. Your nerves start firing and you suddenly get this idea that God exists - that's a hunch, and I think it's quite a bit different from simply seeing a table and believing it exists.
The trouble is, at least in my experiences, hunches are very often false, even absurd. Consider the kid who gets this feeling that there's an invisible monster in his room. Are you going to tell him he should believe it because he sensed it to be true? There's no logical contradiction in it, after all (certainly less so than God). In fact, hallucinations aren't like math - they rarely can be disproven through contradictions. If you suddenly have a vision that there's a werewolf in your room, there's nothing much that could possibly contradict that.
Essentially, what you've got is a postulate that's going to have you believing every sensation you get, and I strongly suspect you don't actually do that. I suspect, like almost everyone else, when you get a chill down your spine that makes you think someone's watching you, you're going to turn around, and when you don't see anyone you're going to dismiss it as your imagination.
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It seems to me that someone hallucinating would get condridictory evidence, but if not, then you're right and they wouldn't have to throw out postulate 1.
quote: Your nerves start firing and you suddenly get this idea that God exists - that's a hunch, and I think it's quite a bit different from simply seeing a table and believing it exists.
It does not include hunches, perhaps it's just me but I don't count hunches as sensory input. I don't beleive in God because it just one day came to me and I said "Ohh, OK then". Exterior sensory information lead me to the concluesion that He exists, not a collection of hunches.
You're also right, each sensesory input needs to be analyzed and rexamined to see where it came from and what it really means. The chill down your spine certainly happened and is part of reality, it's your jump to there's someone watching that's illogical, but that doesn't invalidate the feeling itself.
quote:Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying you're throwing out postulate 1 now?
Read my entire post on context. I'm throwing it out if my sense tell condridict themselves. i.e. I hallucinate something that logically condridicts what they've previously told me, thus I know that they aren't functioning correctly and I can no longer assume postulate 1. This has not happened to me so I am not throwing it out.
quote:It seems to me that someone hallucinating would get condridictory evidence, but if not, then you're right and they wouldn't have to throw out postulate 1.
So, if you're hallucinating and there's no contradiction in what you are hallucinating, you're kinda screwed, no?
quote:Read my entire post on context. I'm throwing it out if my sense tell condridict themselves. i.e. I hallucinate something that logically condridicts what they've previously told me, thus I know that they aren't functioning correctly and I can no longer assume postulate 1. This has not happened to me so I am not throwing it out.
Oh come on.... you've never had a dream that you thought was real while you were in it? You've never thought you'd seen something only to find out it wasn't there? You've never gone to a magician show and thought something done there was real? You've never thought that you could stand on a cloud, or that there was actually something blue up in the sky, or that if you went to the horizon you could actually go find where the rainbow touches the ground, or that your table wasn't 99% empty space?
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:So, if you're hallucinating and there's no contradiction in what you are hallucinating, you're kinda screwed, no?
I suppose so, but I also find it hard to believe that one mind can create a continual relaity with on contradictions in it. Most sci-fi books (even our belvoed OSC's) have errors all over them because sometimes you just plain screw up. Big errors.
Which leads me to your second point, you're right, I've undoubtly witnessed plenty of things that don't fit with previous things. Magicians, bad eye sight, these things do happen, so I guess I have techincally said I should throw out p1 right now. I admit it, there's a margin of error, if the reality I see doesn't condridict itself within except within a small percentage then I'm OK with it. I should've been more specific, sorry about that.
I know, where do you draw the line? Well this is a postulate for me personally so I can tell you I draw the line further away than what has been crossed for me, no one else even has to have this postulate so they can draw the line wherever they feel like it. That's the point, it's a postulate.
The other things you mentioned, dreams, the fact that matter is mostly empty space, these do not condridict what I see. This is because, for instance, I recognize that when I "see" I'm just processing photons that have bounced off of those molecules and hit my eye. I can understand how despite the fact that atmos are mostly just empty space they can still absorb photons and re-emit them, causing them to appear to me in a visual way. When I look at the table it makes perfect sense that it both appears continous yet is also mostly empty. This is because of a series of logical steps in between me processing the vision of a solid table and realizing that it isn't really solid.
quote: Read my entire post on context. I'm throwing it out if my sense tell condridict themselves. i.e. I hallucinate something that logically condridicts what they've previously told me, thus I know that they aren't functioning correctly and I can no longer assume postulate 1. This has not happened to me so I am not throwing it out.
Doesn't this assume that you would have to come out of the hallucinatory state to know that your senses were contradicting themselves?
I guess you sort of covered yourself here by saying that if they weren't contradictory than you wouldn't have to throw out postulate 1. Wouldn't they still be equally wrong, though, if you were hallucinating and never knew? Sorry, I don't think I actually disagree with you, but these are interesting questions.
Also, isn't there an extra complication (for lack of better word) because your brain has to interpret your senses for them to make any sense?
Congrats on 5000! Great post, and I'm so happy for you and Annie!
I believe that logic gives you a basis in the world and that if you understand your emotions, it is easier to see the stimuli (sensory information?) that you respond to in order to choose the right path in life. However, it is not always easy to understand your emotions let alone anyone else's and so life really becomes doing the best you can with the information you can gather
Edit: That makes more sense You beat me to the punch!
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Anne Kate, I had understood that Einstein's idea of the constancy of the speed of light came from examining Maxwell's work in electromagnetism. At least, I think that's what my physics prof told me...
But, more to the point, congrats on 5000, Hobbes!
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The thing is, its always possible to resolve any logical conflict by hypothesis of an overarching theory. This is one reason its so hard to refute any religious text -- there's always the appeal to "it makes sense if you look at it this way".
Not that other texts aren't vulnerable to it, but its more used with religious texts due to the existing supposition that they are fact, and the result of some higher order being translated to us.
For instance, I can say that "squares are round" and "squares are not round" in the same text. This is "obviously" contradictory. However, it is easy to defend as completely consistent: clearly both statements were only meant to apply to certain situations, and therefore just as some squares are round some squares are not round.
It becomes harder when a text says something along the lines of "squares are always round" and "this square is not round", but this is also easily resolved: the first statement was obviously meant to apply in the de facto state of squares, not sqares as modified by, oh, the almighty woodchuck named Pierre who lives in the center of the earth.
Pretty much anything stated in natural language can be "logically resolved" to a consistent position. That this is possible is in no way an indication that the position is in fact, correct.
For instance, it seems irreconcilable on the face of it for there to be both an omnipotent, loving god and extreme suffering in the world. Yet there have been huge numbers of explanations that logically combine those two statements, showing why a God who could stop suffering and wants no one to suffer does not stop people from suffering.
This is not saying any of those explanations are wrong. This is not saying any of those explanations are right. It is merely an example of how easy it is to incorporate seemingly contradictory ideas into a belief system.
And that is why a set of observations can easily be made non-contradictory and still be wrong.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I've known Hobbes for... well about 7 years, and been friends with him for about four. When I knew him in middle school he was always the smart kid in sweatpants who was better than everyone in math (or something like that, since I've kinda blocked out a lot of my middle school days). When I began eating lunch with him in high school, I would sit and listen to him talk and think about how I would kill to have a brilliant mind like his. He was the guy that all my girl friends were friends with and most of them secretly had crushes on For most of high school I was in a relationship I didn't really belong in, I thought I was in love but I complained about the relationship whenever he wasn't around. At first I was very annoyed with Hobbes when he would make comments like "why are you dating him, then" or "have you broken up with him yet?" but every time I had a conversation with Hobbes I walked away feeling, well, cheerful . I realized that not only is he a brilliant person but he is a sweetheart... and I also began to notice how adorable he is . Well a couple months after I broke up with the other guy I was dating Hobbes, and I didn't realize it at the time but I learned a lot during that 7 or so months. So congrats Hobbes on 5000 and on finding what sounds like the perfect girlfriend. Annie, this one is definitely a keeper (but you knew that already)! Posts: 252 | Registered: Jan 2003
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saxon75, yes, Maxwell predated Einstein as well. Michaelson Morley experiments actually established without any doubt that the speed of light was the same in any direction regardless of speed. They were looking for the "ether" by measuring the speed of light in various directions, thinking it would show as faster in the direction toward which we were traveling (like a sound wave in air) and didn't find any medium there.
Then, you are right, Maxwell formulated his equations for electromagnetism, and they are inconsistent with classical Newtonian physics. Also Lorenz had already come up with the true equation (the Lorenz transformation) which included the (1 - v^2/c^2) factor that shows up in the equations for relativity so often. What Einstein did was formulate the new theoretical framework in physics in which all of this made sense.
[ December 08, 2003, 08:44 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I agree that emotion and logic are tied together, but I believe that the hypothesis stems from logic. When I look at math problem I don't emotional come up with a hypothesis to test, I instead ask myself how can I make the problem shorter. Nothing in the hypothesis itself deals with emotion in itself. No, where emotion ties into this relationship is the reason why there is a hypothesis. Where logic develops the hypothesis, emotion gives me a reason to develop it. In the case of the math problem it the emotion of laziness that stems my hypothesis. I don't want to take a whole page for one integration problem, which I will have to repeat another 44 more times, so my brain starts ticking and over a time period I may have a new little theory to shorten my work load.
Happy 5000 posts Hobbs. I'll leave you to your own devices for a while and get back to my integration problems. Posts: 129 | Registered: Sep 2003
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![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
) but just as obviously Hatrack was a big part of that and though I would love to tell you all about how great Annie is, I think that you (having already heard it) would not. So instead I’m just going to kind of ramble along through a Cousin Hobbes post and figure the lack of structure and the continual self reference gets made up for by this being a landmark. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
![[Group Hug]](graemlins/grouphug.gif)
![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
to one of the greatest posters on Hatrack, may there be many many more! *clinks glass*
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
Thanks Raia! ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
