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Author Topic:   Do feelings count?
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 105 of 135 (293725)
03-09-2006 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by Silent H
03-09-2006 11:38 AM


Uh... I'm not just trying to give you a hard time here... but what makes that the "ideal god"?
By "ideal" I don't mean, what we would wish for in a god. I mean ideal as in what Socrates and Jesus and Buddha and Hegel and any other idealist means when referring to the source of all existence and all truth and all reality. Do you honestly have no idea what this means?
What does bumping your head have to do with viewing a painting you find repulsive?
If the painting contains immorality, and I am a moral person, then I might find it repulsive. Then again I might not. Perhaps it would appeal to my desires and I would find it very attractive even though on a different level my conscience is set against it. Let's say this painting depicts the torture of an innocent little girl. I would find that repulsive. A psychopathic killer might not. If the torture of an innocent girl is objectively wrong, then I am right and the killer is wrong. If there is no objective right and wrong, then our feelings of right and wrong are illusions: merely personal desires with no more authority than what we can back up physically.
Whether our feelings are telling us the truth or not cannot be proven, as I've said many many times. Your conclusion from this is that there is no truth about good and evil, and that we cannot say whether the torture of an innocent little girl is right or wrong, only that you personally wish that it didn't happen. But I say that to be consistent that conclusion must also apply to every feeling you ever experience, and you acknolwedged this when you said, "the sword cuts both ways." If you are not privy to becoming an existentialist, then you have to start accepting your feelings as pointing to truth.
You obviously accept some feelings as pointing to an objective truth, but not others. You reject your moral feelings as pointing towards a truth because of a lack of universal consensus on morality and because you believe that ideas are objectively true only for the individual that posesses them because they do not exist in a material form.
My counter to this is that a lack of universal consensus does not disprove the existence of an objective truth. And there is the possibility that the universe is primarly idealistic in nature so ideas are really "the dreams stuff is made of" therefore ideas like the material world have different objective characteristics and attributes such as right and wrong which it is possible for those with good consciences to sense just like it is possible for those with good eyes to tell if a rose is red.
If we have no evidence to support the theory that there is an objective moral reality, then we definitely do NOT have the choice of determining which feelings are associated with such a reality.
OF COURSE WE HAVE EVIDENCE!!!! The evidence is our feelings. This whole argument is about whether feelings count as evidence.
My point is that feelings are the only evidence we can ever have for anything. You do have a choice as to whether you are going to believe your feelings or not. If 10 people who believe as you do tell me that it is neither right nor wrong to torture an innocent little girl, I reject that because my feelings are far more persuasive than those people's words. My feelings tell me that action has the characteristic of being WRONG. If 10 people show me a red rose and tell me its blue, I'll probably still believe my feelings, because they are more persuasive. My feelings tell me the rose has the characteristic of being RED.
The default position is to say I do not know. We do not know. And we cannot choose or say anything.
YES, that is the default position, as I've repeated. So, we can either go our whole lives rejecting all feelings and all knowledge since we can't prove them (logical default; 42) or we can accept our feelings as pointing towards truth (normal human response).
Some people have and do view the world as ideal in nature, and that it does not contain good/evil in the same way that you conceive of such concepts.
So what? That is their choice to reject their feelings of good/evil as pointing towards an objective reality.
Individuals might, but are given no way to judge who has pierced that veil, and so its as good as if no one has.
To that individual its plenty good and practical. If you can truly see and the whole world is blind, sight is still good and practical to you. And what's more, your sight might be passed on to future generations so that all may eventually see.
For all we know...
...we could be eddies in a giant vat of galactic pea soup. Is that going to change the way I live? No. Am I going to assume that my feelings are meaningless random eddies of pea soup pointing to illusions? No.
It is a desire to see things not as they are but as you wish.
The goal of every philosopher is to see things the way they are.
It is to try to change things into what you wish rather than deal with them as they are.
You're again implying that "things the way they are" is that there is no objective absolute for morality, and you know that cannot be proven, so YOU are also changing things into what you wish. Only to YOU the conflicting voices of others are more persuasive than your own feelings.
This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 03-09-2006 04:10 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by Silent H, posted 03-09-2006 11:38 AM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 108 by Silent H, posted 03-09-2006 5:23 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 106 of 135 (293731)
03-09-2006 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by Chiroptera
03-09-2006 1:08 PM


Rubbish. According to the literalists, God preferred that Adam and Eve did not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The objective reality, according to the literalists, is that they did.
Fine. Let me be more specific. What God prefers becomes our objective reality if God prefers that it becomes our objective reality. It seems really stupid to start throwing around limitations on the one who creates limitations. You just assume that God is the simplest of created creatures so that you can disprove Him. I believe thats called a strawman argument.
You can say it as many times as you would like; it won't make it true.
Do you want to have an intellectual discussion or not? Honestly...
If you believe that statement is false, then explain why; don't just state the obvious.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by Chiroptera, posted 03-09-2006 1:08 PM Chiroptera has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by Chiroptera, posted 03-09-2006 5:30 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 110 of 135 (293754)
03-09-2006 6:43 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Silent H
03-09-2006 5:23 PM


First of all I didn't say I didn't know what it meant, I said what makes that the "ideal god"?
Because its the logical conclusion of an idealistic monistic universe: if the universe is made ideas, then for it to exist, it must exist within a over-arching consciousness (e.g. God). If any part of the universe were not being cogitated, then it would cease to exist.
Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, and Hegel had very different concepts of what the universe is. For example there isn't necessarily a god or heaven in Buddhism.
I know they had different concepts of this, but their idealism is what I'm referring to as the "ideal God". Discussing the specific personality traits of that God or Realm of Forms, or Absolute Mind, or Brahma is a different matter.
What does their being in a material form or not have to do with being objectively true?
Let's go back and look at what you said in an early post:
My position is that feelings are objectively real, only they are objectively real characteristics of an individual and not the external world. Not all feelings, though objective, suggest anything about the outer world.
How do you make the distinction between which feelings suggest something about the "outer world" and which do not? Aren't assuming a dualistic materialistic universe here in referring to "the outer world", and aren't you implying that for something to have an objective existence outside an individual that it must be material in nature since you limit the objective existence of "ideas" to the minds of individuals?
I have already stated I could hold a religious view point and come to the same conclusion regarding good and evil.
Of course! You can believe whatever the heck you want. As to whether its logically internally consistent or not could be debated and of course the founding assumptions can never be proven logically.
If the question is whether feelings count as evidence for objective moral realities, then feelings cannot be the evidence for the answer to that question. That would be circular.
That is not my argument! Have you been listening?
Yes, the question is whether or not feelings count as evidence for objective moral realities outside ourselves.
My argument is that we do use feelings as evidence for other objective realities outside ourselves even though they cannot be proven, even though there may be lack of consensus, and even though our senses can be dulled or fooled, so we CAN also use feelings as evidence for objective moral realities outside ourselves.
If you fail to understand this, then we might as well quit arguing right now because this is pointless.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by Silent H, posted 03-09-2006 5:23 PM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by Silent H, posted 03-10-2006 4:40 AM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 111 of 135 (293756)
03-09-2006 6:46 PM


P.S. I'm done... Going to Mexico tomorrow and won't be back for a week. Sorry if I didn't get to reply to everyone else's replies.

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by Chiroptera, posted 03-09-2006 6:47 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 129 of 135 (297609)
03-23-2006 2:59 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by Silent H
03-10-2006 4:40 AM


There is your mind and the world around it.
From your perspective, perhaps. But if there is another mind that contains both your mind and the world around it, then what's in your mind is just another "object" within The Mind, and there's really not much of a distinction between what's in your mind and whats in the world around it. If this is the case then we can say that the items within YOUR mind can have objective properties just like items in the external world have objective properties because both items are INTERNAL to The Mind. This is what I mean when I say that the subjectivity of the creator is the objectivity of the created.
My argument is that we do use feelings as evidence for other objective realities outside ourselves even though they cannot be proven, even though there may be lack of consensus, and even though our senses can be dulled or fooled, so we CAN also use feelings as evidence for objective moral realities outside ourselves.
That's called a circular argument. Its a logical fallacy.
That's NOT a circular argument.
A circular argument would be: we use feelings as evidence for objective morality, so feelings count as evidence for objective morality. That's not what I said.
Here it is again. Pay close attention, and maybe you'll get it. Since all kinds of feelings are equally powerless to "prove" the existence of an objective reality, yet are used as evidence for objective reality in many OTHER cases, they can also be used in the case of feelings of morality.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by Silent H, posted 03-10-2006 4:40 AM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 130 by crashfrog, posted 03-23-2006 8:39 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied
 Message 131 by robinrohan, posted 03-24-2006 8:10 AM Hangdawg13 has replied
 Message 133 by Silent H, posted 03-25-2006 5:32 AM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 132 of 135 (297954)
03-24-2006 9:44 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by robinrohan
03-24-2006 8:10 AM


What would be an example of our feelings being used as evidence for objective reality that doesn't have to do with morals?
Feeling the bark of a tree.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by robinrohan, posted 03-24-2006 8:10 AM robinrohan has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 134 by Faith, posted 03-25-2006 10:34 AM Hangdawg13 has not replied
 Message 135 by lfen, posted 03-26-2006 2:02 AM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
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