Moementum7

[bigal]

Hello, hope you can help me out.
I started a thread a while ago called 'can anybody help', which is in this section and you replied and said you could give me the something called 'truth'. OK, I know it's your opinion, but I'd like to know what you think, I have no-one else in my life who gives enough of a shit about my original thread you replied to.

nice one

[moementum7]

A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

Truth,... can be described in many ways.
It can come out sounding like eastern philosophy,....or like a page out of a scientific journal.
I will try and make this as personal as I can right now.
Truth can also be described as an axiom. "Scientific Lingo!"
An axiom is an irreducible primary. It doesn't rest upon anything in order to be valid, and it cannot be proven by any "more basic" premises. A true axiom can not be refuted because the act of trying to refute it requires that very axiom as a premise. An attempt to contradict an axiom can only end in a contradiction.

The term "axiom" has been abused in many different ways, so it is important to distinguish the proper definition from the others. The other definitions amount to calling any arbitrary postulate an 'axiom'. The famous example of this is Euclidean geometry. Euclid was a Greek mathematician who applied deductive logic to a few postulates, which he called axioms. In this sense, "axiom" was used to mean a postulate which one was sure was true. Later, though, it was shown that his postulates were sometimes false, and so the conclusions he made were equally false. The "axiom" he used was basing his geometry on a two dimensional plane. When his work was applied to the surface of a sphere, though, it broke down. A triangle's three angles add up to 180 degrees on a plane; they do not add up to 180 degrees on the surface of a sphere. The point is that Euclid's "axioms" were actually postulates.

True axioms are more solid than that. They are not statements we merely believe to be true; they are statements that we cannot deny without using them in our denial. Axioms are the foundation of all knowledge. There are only a few axioms that have been identified. These are: Existence Exists, The Law of Identity, and Consciousness.

Many people are still confused about emotions and how they play such a pivotal role in directing ones life.
Take this into consideration.....Love, hate, fear, envy. We all feel emotions. We've all experienced them. We know what they are and how they affect us. The primary questions in philosophy is what causes them, and how can they be used. The first answers the second.

Emotions are caused by one's thoughts. They are both triggered by ones thoughts and programmed by ones thoughts. The triggering is straightforward to show. Hearing the words "rape", "murder", "death", or "genocide", etc., one experiences an emotion. Hearing the same words in an unknown language, the words would be meaningless. One wouldn't be able to make the mental connection between the sounds and the meaning of the words. The emotions that one normally feels with respect to these words would not be present. Only understanding can trigger an emotion.

A further example is that of a gunman. If someone burst into a room with a gun, the people present would probably feel fear.
However, if one didn't know what a gun was, you wouldn't make the connection, and wouldn't experience the fear. The emotion is only triggered when understanding of the situation is present.

We know that understanding triggers the emotion. This doesn't explain the particular emotion, though. Why do we feel fear when we see the gunman, but joy when we see a baby walk for the first time????

The answer is the same as why understanding is required to trigger the emotion The emotion is a response to our understanding of the situation. Emotions are triggered by particular beliefs. Fear is based on a belief that one's life is in danger. Pleasure is experienced when one believes a value has been achieved. Each emotion is a particular response to a certain kind of judgment.

Emotions are automated responses. When one sees the gunman, one doesn't need to follow the full chain of thought to the judgment that causes the emotion. The emotion occurs almost immediately after the gunman is seen. This is because of an automatized judgment: the judgment that life is worth living and death is to be feared. The gunman triggers this emotion when one realized that one's life is threatened. The evaluation of whether life is good isn't made at that time. It was made before.

Since emotions are automatic responses to previous value judgments, it is possible that the response is not proper. If the original judgment was faulty, the emotion will be faulty as well. For instance, one may hate a stepfather because one believes him to be trying to steal one's mother. Later in life, the emotion may still be triggered when one sees the stepfather, even if one no longer believes the cause to be true anymore. Similarly, if the original judgment no longer applies, neither does the emotion. Finally, it is possible to trigger an emotion out of the original context. One may properly hate a man for his actions, but another man with similarities may improperly trigger that same emotion.

Because emotions are automatic responses and thus "fallible", they should not be taken at face value. They should be compared to one's reasoned thoughts and if a conflict occurs, one should attempt to resolve why the conflict exists. One should try to understand why the emotion is being triggered and whether it is correct. It is possible that the emotion is correct, and the reasoning false, due to an oversight. But the two should be resolved carefully, and if the emotion is incorrect, one should attempt to change one's automatic response.

With a proper understanding of how emotions are formed, it can be seen that they serve a purpose for lightning fast value judgments which enable faster responses to time-critical situations and, as automatic responses, they can give useful insights to complicated problems. But emotions should never be taken at face value. They need to be validated with reason to insure that they are proper.

You are a creative being, with the abiltiy to perceive truth.
Use both as you learn fit.

[bigal]

That makes a lot of sense. Put a lot better than I would have said it, but exactly what I believe.
What line of work are you in?

[exsto_human]

You have many good insights moementum, but you seem to have overlooked the actual effect of all that subcontious "junk" we carry arround. The human organism isn't as rational and computing as what you seem to suggest, there are many things that we carry arround in our suibcontious that we cannot possibly get to with the reasoning mind and that exists inspite of all the logic and reason we may try to use.

For example not all emotions are based on values, infact some might argue that none of them are. The reason one fears death is a defense mechanism of the organism itself, fear, love, lust are all the most primitve of our emotions and are not often governed by more than the organism itself. Even a man who feels his life is worthless and wished to stop living shakes uncontrolably with fear when he stands at the edge of a bridge about to commit suicide. A man who values women to be attractive and desirebale might still find himself drawn to other men because he is geneticaly inclide that way.

Clearing the subcontious of all it's beliefs and garbage is probably what the Buddhists are trying to accheive in the mediations. Wether this can be done or is an intrinsic and permamnent part of our being is a good question. But what is clear is that even the most rational and logical scientist is full off subcontious junk, beliefs, fear... It is something logic can't touch.