Perceptions of Reality v3

I'm not sure you can do this in two dimensional diagrams.

Perhaps superstitious/supernatural/religious perceptions should float in an overlay: they have no direct contact with testable reality.

AbE: Although they do cast shadows.

Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

I mean... the whole point is that we never actually get to know when something matches reality or not. Simply because we can always be wrong/mistaken just because we're human.

Indeed, and that is why I decided to make no graphic distinction for incorrect concepts.

Well the way I see it, what we can have are different levels of confidence in concepts by the ways we can evaluate them.

There are scientific concepts that we can have a high degree of confidence in -- that potassium will continue to ignite under water, that gravity will continue to operate on a pen let go over a desk, and the like, in part because of many validating observations and in part because of no invalidating observations.

The process of deriving confidence from testing is more difficult when we move to philosophical concepts that can't be tested scientifically, such as the different philosophies of politics and morality. In this it seems that we look for internal consistency, that the philosophy will provide consistent results in similar situations and not end up contradicting itself. This holds for scientific concepts as well, so this like extending this aspect outside of science. The more internal consistency is developed it engenders more confidence in the concepts even when their validity cannot be scientifically tested (albeit less confidence than we can have in scientific concepts).

And it becomes even more difficult when we come to concepts that are beliefs, articles of faith. In these situations it seems that we seek conscilience with opinions of others, and the more conscilience we find the more secure we feel in our beliefs. This searching for conscilience also applies to science and philosophy

So... getting back to my non-understanding... what are we actually trying to show with this diagram? Perceptions of Reality... but what does that mean?

How we as humans, with all our cognitive mechanisms, see and understand reality. Everyone would have slightly different circles like the YEC example

and the composite would be built up by compiling everyone's personal circles

But I consider this a work-in-progress and welcome suggestions.

So for someone like Faith we would have a "fact" circle that had biblical inerrancy in it because her perception of reality is founded on that. Its totally individual.

With some acceptance of science and some rejection of science, as shown by the "YEC" example

Everyone could have their personal circle within the conglomerated combined whole.

Examining individual perceptions of reality looking for common ground no matter how different?

Yes, that is part of the exercise. It should be fairly obvious that day to day interactions between people are possible due to a large number of conscilient views, whether religious or political.

RAZD writes: How we as humans, with all our cognitive mechanisms, see and understand reality. Everyone would have slightly different circles like the YEC example.

I see.
I think I understand a bit better now. You intend for the Faith/Philosophy/Science circles to act as a base to help indicate where certain viewpoints may lie for individuals (like you did with the YEC example).

Different people can place their own "YEC circle" (or any other particular concept) where they think it's best to represent themselves... and then you can compare data and discuss differences and reasoning and such.

Do I have that right or am I still missing something?

That make a lot of sense, and I think your chart is good for that... if you can get other folks to agree to use your chart
For this discussion forum, I think your biggest hurdle would simply be technological: other people saving/editing/rehosting pictures.

A secondary problem is that it's very easy for the general public to conflate "science" with "truth about reality."
If someone with such an every-day-normal-issue saw your chart... they might get confused without understanding that the chart isn't actually representing "truth vs. untruth" so much as it shows "more confidence vs. less confidence." That too would have to be made clear to each chart-user in order to properly compare apples-to-apples.

Just had a thought... maybe you don't plan to use such a tool here on the webpages (I just assume that because that's where I see you and we all know that you don't actually exist anywhere else... ).
If you were planning some sort of in-person teaching tool away from EvC... then I would put a bit more emphasis on removing the "Faith" "Philosophy" and "Science" labels... they tend to carry a lot of baggage, and that baggage isn't always the same for each person. I think it's just asking for trouble... if you plan on getting "unbiased ideas" from multiple people.

Edited by Stile, : 'Cause I wanted to say something more.

Edited by Stile, : Just another awesome edit.

RAZD writes: Everyone would have slightly different circles like the YEC example

I think you are underestimating the differences. In the case of a YEC such as Faith if the objective empirical evidence appears at odds with the word of God then it is the objective empirical evidence that is wrong or which has been wrongly interpreted. In effect the perceived word of God lies in the inner core circle you have labelled as containing "facts".

RAZD writes: So we could have a circle that contains facts -- objective evidence that we think is "true" to reality (or else all is illusion)

The equivalent for a YEC (e.g. Faith) would be something like - So we could have a circle that contains facts -- the word of God that we think is "true" to reality (or else all is illusion)

Or something like that....

It’s interesting to consider how “world views” which don’t ground themselves in objective evidence would look in your diagrammatic form. We have already considered how a “world view” based on the word of God might be represented.

I was wondering how something like solipsism would be represented in your diagrammatic form.

Metaphysical solipsism would hold that the only thing known to exist is one’s own mind and that the whole notion of objectivity is itself therefore nothing other than an evidentially baseless philosophical construct.

So a solipsist would presumably be represented by an inner core circle labelled something like ‘my mind’ with things like objectivity lying in the outer ‘philosophy’ circle.

It’s difficult to see how such a world view, which classifies your inner circle of objectively evidenced facts in the outer reaches of the philosophy circle, would have much overlap with your original diagrams at all.

RAZD writes: At odds with facts, not so much.

Au contraire sir RAZD, you know the bumble bee only flies because he believes he can!

Sorry, Numbers, this is basakwards. The stimulus to the bee is not faith but ignorance. The bee flies because it does not know that it can't. Same with religion. People believe some god(s) exists because they do not know that it can't.

To our benefit, of course, the bee doesn't have the mental capacity to recognize its error. The tragedy is that people in religion don't either.

No no no. You are both wrong. The fact that bees appear to be able to fly despite the fact they cant is in fact incontrovertible evidence that we are in the matrix and that bees are agents of the machines.

Now you're just getting weird.