Mundane knowledge is a myth

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by lightgigantic, Sep 23, 2007.

  1. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Mundane knowledge is a myth. Like the myths of primitive people, it is inseparable from the material conditions that prevail upon our minds: the time, place, and cultural circumstances in which we live. Western man measures world culture by his own standards of direct perception and rationalism. Anything he detects that does not fit into his outlook he is liable to classify as mythology. But as philosopher Stephen Toulmin points out, this very method of trying to winnow mythology from reality is itself mythological!

    By reliance upon the authority of the imperfect senses and mind, all that is accomplished is the invention of a new body of myths to explain the old. Toulmin writes of two kinds of myths: anthropomorphic and mechanomorphic. The first personalizes the natural world in the image of man. For example, theistic rationalists conceived of an anthropomorphic God whose purpose in creating the world reflected their own mundane desires. World history abounds in examples of anthropomorphic mythology. The second type depersonalizes nature, leaving only a schema of mechanical pushes and pulls. Mechanomorphic mythmaking is evident today in the theories of modern science. Instances can be seen in other cultures as well, for instance the atheistic Säìkhya philosophy of India. The aim of the mythmaker is to lay the objective foundations of a culture of mental speculation and fruitive activity. The mythmaking religionist, philosopher, scientist, or historian is convinced, and is too often successful in convincing others, that his sense perception and mental speculation are a lawful tradition for all humanity.

    Unfortunately, as we have seen time and time again, knowledge that draws its authority from empiricism and rationalism cannot be objective.
     
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    lightgigantic:

    You sound like you've read too much postmodernism. You're losing touch with reality and falling into a kind of extreme relativism where you start to think that there is no reality except ones that different individual humans construct for themselves.

    That will only lead you to an empty solipsism.
     
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  5. Grantywanty Registered Senior Member

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    I tend to agree with your idea here, but I think it would be strengthened by giving concrete examples of mundane myths. The part that James R. is responding to - which forms the center of one of your other threads - that there is no core or essential reality will lead to solipsism and frankly, I don't think you believe it. I think you do have values based on what you consider real. I think you have a problem with science because it says these expereinces/essences are not real.

    If there is no core experience, no essence, then who cares if science stakes out one area as real and says the others are not.
     
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  7. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    actually I only made one thread that dealt with postmodern issues, and even then it was in a half hearted mood of debunking it

    what I have been more greatly focused on is the inherent limitations of empiricism and rationalism
    actually that is the precise picture of reality as defined by empiricists and rationalists

    Reason fermented within sense perception distills no certain truth, because sense perception always raises further questions about itself. Inductive thinkers freely admit that there is no limit to speculative explanations of observations. Observations explained by one theory (for instance, Newton's) can be explained by a quite opposite theory (Einstein's). Speculation, scientists say, is the best estimate of the truth. But all that is certain about a best estimate is that it cannot be certain.

    that is one predictable course for a empiricist/rationalist when they realize the
    futile limits of empiricism and rationalism

    fortunately, I am not in such a category

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  8. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    Some citations from the book "Myths of Reality" by Simon Danser.


    From chapter "Myths of science"

    Scientific principles such as reason, objectivity, rationality and truth are all values and moral principles, created and adopted for a variety of historical and social reasons.
    ..
    Despite deeply held beliefs to the contrary, truth cannot be an exact mirror of reality. This is because truth is a representation or reflection of reality. And that representation or reflection derives from specific conceptual schemas (such as language) and perspectives (such as ideologies). No representation of reality can be objective. Indeed there are indefinitely large numbers of 'truths' about reality, none of which can claim to be an 'ultimate truth'.

    (p.90)

    From chapter "Myths of knowledge"

    The overall result is that organisation appears to be an inherit property of knowledge and thus reality is inheritly organised. However, this is pure illusion: reality is exactly the opposite. Our accustomed processes of learning create an illusion of order out of the chaotic nature of reality. The bottom line is that we make sense, although ultimately thus sense of understanding we have created is illusory.
    ..
    There is one particular dualism that is especially prevalent in western thinking, which is an excellent example of how an illusory concept becomes mistaken for a 'real' distinction. Despite William Shakespeare's Hamlet advising us that 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so', so Western culture constructs its sense of how 'good' it is by demonising what is excluded as 'evil'. In the wake of destruction of the World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001, George W Bush's spin doctors (and the media barons who sustain their efforts) clearly thought a large part of the American electorate could be successfully bamboozled by their 'good versus evil' rhetoric. They were right, although this rhetoric was more sceptically received in multi-cultural Europe, and totally failed to convince those who were deemed to be evil that they were anything of the sort. Indeed certain Islamic fundamentalists claim that the whole of Western culture is evil.

    Good/evil dualisms predate Christianity and seem to have originated in ancient Persia and are part of Zoroastrian and Gnostic beliefs, both of which are prominent in the syncretistic soup of ideas that fed the authors of New Testament. However not until the Inquisition was well underway in the 14th century do we begin to see Christianity fully developing this good/evil dualism. In their hunt for heretics the Inquisitors were not seeking a direct admission of guilt. Rather they were seeking a plea of 'Not guilty' because the accused had accidentally been led astray by the principle of evil in the divine order.
    'Evil' was constructed as the cause. With this cause comfortably established, the specific incidence of evil could be exterminated by a triumphant process of torture.

    The Christian sense of the reality of evil is strongly evident in the seemingly secular intellectual climate of today. A constant striving to 'do good' creates in its wake a sense of 'evil'

    (pp.92-93; 102-103)
     
  9. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    Perhaps he should jump down a hole to see if it exists, ha ha.

    Mr. Gigantic, you're rehashing the same tired, old theme across several threads here. We know that science is ultimately subjective - how can it not be when humans must ultimately interpret the data? Unlike God, science isn't perfect or infallible but I'm afraid that, for all it's faults, it's the best tool available to us. Scientists are able to overcome their individual flaws and biases to a large extent by insisting that results are repeatable, predictive and validated by their peers. No, it's not perfect - and that's one of it's main strengths. The fact that we know it's not perfect means that hypotheses are constantly tested and refined until the inconsistencies disappear (myth-based knowledge undergoes no comparable test). Can we say then that we've arrived at the Truth? No, of course not - it's possible that someone will come along 10, 50 or 100 years down the line and turn the entire theory upside down. But it's fine. You're constantly pointing out the imperfections without realising that science isn't some search for the ultimate Truth but a constantly-developing working model that's used to test, frame and categorise our myriad perceptions about the world. It differs from myth in that the core beliefs are open to constant and systematic modification.

    Ultimately you don't have much of a case in trying to reduce science to the status of a religion. There are similarities in that both have been invented by humans and both can be said to start from belief. It's just that religious myths are static in nature, and go untested from the point of origin. Scientific beliefs are dynamic - they're regularly tested, leading to their acceptance or rejection, and to the generation of new beliefs. If you can name a single myth whose core beliefs are constantly modified in this way, then you may have a case. If not, you need to think of another analogy - this one's getting a bit stale.
     
  10. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    you may know - clearly other's don't, JamesR included

    in case you haven't noticed, scientists are not at all shy about tackling issues way beyond their means

    to quote Benjamin Woolley

    Science, as we have already discovered, is outrageously demanding. It demands that it is not simply a way of explaining certain bits of the world, or even the local quarter of the universe within telescopic range. It demands that it explains absolutely everything.

    replacing one myth for another is a strength?
    in the mean time we have paleontologists that hotly dispute anything that doesn't tally with models of evolution ....
    once again, modifying one myth for another is somehow progressive?

    wait up
    you just said earlier that science cannot arrive at the truth and now you are saying religion is invented by humans
    make up your mind
    how do you propose to test the points of origin of science
    for instance you just said earlier that religion was created by humans (on the strength of science i assume)
    How do you propose that be tested?
    and how does this bear to "reality"
    for instance if you reject aspects of religion on the strength of science - and if both are as you say, issues of belief - what does such rejection amount to?

    so you are arguing that a myth that gets revamped by new and improved myths makes for a superior myth?

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  11. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    I'd love to have the time to reply to each of your bullet-points, LG, but my allotted hours for philosophical musing are very limited (why, I believe I've already told you this..).

    Later then, perhaps. For now I'd just like to say that (a) my opinions above haven't been peer-reviewed; and that (b) James R and others on here are full-time, working scientists - I'm not. I'd certainly have far more respect for their opinions on the matter than mine.
    If this is the interpretation that you're most comfortable with, then yes.

    Edit: Oh wait - something else. It seems to me that you're still searching for that ultimate, objective Truth. I'm not sure what psychological need that this fills in you, but my advice is to give up.
     
  12. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    Redarmy
    even if one is of the philosophy that philosophy is not important, philosophy still remains .....
    that's ok

    given the choice between having respect for JamesR's opinion of science and the opinions of Karl Popper

    We cannot identify science with truth, for we think that both Newton's and Einstein's theories belong to science, but they cannot both be true, and they may well both be false.

    Einstein

    Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occuring complexes of sense impression ... and we attribute to them a meaning the meaning of bodily objects.


    Rudy Rucker

    Try to catch the universe in a finite net of axioms and the universe will fight back. Reality is, on the deepest level, essentially infinite.


    and a host of others, seems to beg questions of your philosophical stance
    you feel confident mentioning words like truth/falsity without it as a reference?

    give up is certainly good advice for the empiricist and th empiricist - but give up they won't because they have too much faith in their imperfect mind and senses ....
    :shrug:
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    lightgigantic:

    One of your mistakes is to think tha scientists do that kind of thing.
     
  14. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    as soon as atheism enters the arena, its apparent that scientists think it too
     
  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    All science is provisional, until new understandings come to light which force us to change our ideas about the world. No thinking scientist would ever claim that any scientific is the final and indisputable truth. Having said that, there are many scientific conclusions for which it would seem incredibly unlikely that they will ever turn out to be incorrect.

    I'm not sure I understand your view on atheism.
     
  16. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    if science operates on models (many of which are beyond the scope of science to validate), and if such models are provisional, on what grounds are they given the status to determine something (particularly something that it has no scope to approach) as mythical?
     
  17. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    I see

    oh well
    good luck and on to grander things and all that .....

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  18. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    Aimless chatter. Consider it a compliment that I prefer to give your questions a bit more thought. Not everyone thinks they deserve it.
     
  19. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, I suspect that he wants to make some sort of point about only "divine" knowledge being valid - or at least, he wants to argue that it's just as valid as empirical knowledge. He's annoyed that it's impossible to verify the fantastical claims of his religion with observations in the real world, and that observations of the real world sometimes directly contradict his religion. So he wants to make the case that figuring out what's true by observing the real world and thinking about what you see is over-rated.
     
  20. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    Well, there's certainly more than one system of epistemology. You can look around at the world carefully and think about what you see. Or you can randomly pick an ancient magic story - maybe one with talking plants and people conjuring things out of thin air - and just believe in whatever it says. It would certainly save you the trouble of making all those tedious empirical observations, and you don't have to waste valuable time thinking about things.

    This is long, but I think it responds to this sort of argument better than I could:

     
  21. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    everyone has questions - it boils down to where one thinks value lies - for some it may be in the discussion of philosophy - for others it might be in the discussion of purchasing tele tubby posters - for others it might be in discussing Yoda vs Gandalf .....
     
  22. redarmy11 Registered Senior Member

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    And for others all 3, depending on mood. Not me though. I hate Star Wars.
     
  23. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    thus dominant moods indicate character or the callibre of a person
     

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