I don't know creative. All of your questions just seem like trick questions to me, playing around with semantics.

Why don't you tell us what you can know from direct experience. Enlighten us.

I personally feel that in light of modern scientific knowledge it's far more interesting to ask what we can't know from direct experience, yet still know that it obviously exists and be directly "affected" by it through our direct experiences even though we can't "know" it from direct experience. That's basically sounds pretty spiritual right there to me.

From my perspective that's far more interesting. And the fact that scientists are actually making progress in those areas is just utterly amazing to me. They are making progress in discovering things that we can experience, but can't truly understand or know. And the fact that we don't need to know how they work yet we can still experience this is pretty darn interesting. Quantum computing and information systems are blowing everyone's mind. We can experience their weird effects, but according to quantum theory we can never "know" how the tricks are done via direct experience.

It's like watching a magician who flatly refuses to give up his secrets.

We may not be able to know the details of how the tricks are done, but we can know that the tricks are being done, and that is quite amazing in and of itself I think.


So perhaps our experience has indeed gone even beyond are ability to know.

It may be totally false that we can actually know anything at all from direct experience. Perhaps that itself has been the greatest illusion all along.

That is actually a question that I have not thought much about...

I also contradicted myself with the 'know-how' claim. That is actually an argument against knowledge as JTB. One can know how to ride a bike...

Where's the justified, true, belief in that?



JTB does not exhaust all knowledge.

--

Jb,

You gotta creativesoul-shaped chip on yer shoulder?



Semantics are all we have. We can talk about and use semantics without 'arguing semantics'. Knowledge is a curious thing. For all propositional knowledge, I think that JTB holds good, except in a few rare cases where we have a justified true belief that amounts to epistemic luck rather than anything that one may call knowledge.

Knowing X when regarding JTB boils down to knowing how say X(nevermind that... it's not right. I parroted it from another, but I shoulda thought about a little more)

Knowing how entail much more though, as your example of painting clearly shows. As the prodigy genius musicians clearly show as well. All knowledge boils down to know-how.

--

James,

Gimme a bit and perhaps I'll begin a new thread over in our old stomping grounds(science and philo) regarding this question of experience and knowing...

It may be a while, but it is an interesting subject... just food for thought, of course. To follow the lead.

Not that I have a creative chip on my shoulder but sometimes talking to you hurts my brain. At the very least it takes too much mental energy to interpret your style of expression.

I know the 'knowledge' of how to paint is there in my brain and I know that it involves thousands of bits of experience and information all working together. So much (and so many) that I could not teach it to someone else in weeks or even months.

If someone wanted to learn it from me, they would have to listen to everything I told them, (most people can't or won't listen) and then do everything I told them to do,(they won't) and then practice, and practice some more, constantly.... (and They won't)

If, (and only if,) they did that, I might be able to transfer that skill (its not talent, it is skill) to them maybe in a year of study and practice.

So, if that is 'knowledge' then I know what "knowledge" is.

I can already tell you my position on JTB.

From my perspective the bottom has fallen out from under the "J".

Seriously.

From my perspective there simply is no absolute concrete justification for any belief beyond the belief that I exist.

Period.

All else is necessarily speculation and can't truly be "justified".

When it comes down to it, it's basically impossible to justify a rejection of solipsism even. Everything I experience could be nothing more than a figment of my imagination, including the entire universe and everything in it including my own physical body.

I'm not saying that I buy into that line of thinking. But from a purely logical point of view, I can't give any "justification" of why it can't be true.

So what's JTB but a hope and dream of it's own?

In short, there's no more justification for JTB, than anything else IMHO.

I mean, sure, a person could take a hardcore physical approach to things and suggest that we should just begin by assuming that physical reality truly is "physical".

But from my perspective all that's doing is putting the cart before the horse.

If you begin a philosophy with the assumption that "physical are the basis of reality" then you're already DONE with your philosophy because all you've truly done is start out with your CONCLUSION.

How can you arrive at any other conclusion if you've already decided what is going to be considered "Justification"?

You've already "justified" your "true beliefs" based on the box that you've put things in to begin with.

That's the way I see it.

By the way, when I say "you" in the above discussion I don't mean you personally, I mean any philosopher who goes down that road. They are deciding what constitutes "Justification" before they even start out, and then they are going to argue that everything must be "justified" based on what they have decided meets their requirements of "Justification"

Like Jeanniebean suggests, to me that's just meaningless semantic approach. The philosopher has already defined what they mean by "justification" (i.e. they have created their own semantics for that term) and then they are going to demand that this be upheld throughout all the rest of the discussions.

Well, gee whiz. Why even bother to discuss it at that point?

The CONCLUSION of what constitutes "justification" has already been semantically DEFINED.

That's a useless conversation to waste my time on, IMHO.

I'd rather just say at the outset that I don't accept that approach.

It saves a lot of typing.

No need to see that as a "chip on the shoulder".

I just have no desire to play those kinds of games.

I'm not going to tie my hands behind my back by accepting someone elses conclusions before the discussion even gets underway.

Plato is ancient.

I live in a quantum time period.

Physical justifications for knowledge no longer apply, IMHO.

Not meant to be an argument. I'm just stating where I'm at, and where I'm not interested in going back to. JTB is classical thinking from my perspective. It just no longer applies to my current "knowledge" of the world which now includes behaviors that I can't "know" the justifications for any more.

So I take a whole different approach to things anymore.

I accept that I can never know all truths, and I have no ambitions to try to change that. From my perspective Quantum mechanics has proven mathematically that such information can never be known.

Never, ever. Unless, of course quantum observations turn out to be false, but I wouldn't want to hold my breath waiting for that to be the case.

~~~~~

I think Stephen Hawking reduced all of the above into a very nice elegant quote:

"Even if we had a complete Theory of Everything, it would still just necessarily be a set of equations that describe the behavior of things. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

JTB just addresses the physical description of reality.

I'm more interested in the

The problem I have trying to communicate with you, Creative, is that you speak from a completely mental plane. Some of the words are familiar but most of the time they just don't translate into anything meaningful to me. Even when I 'think' I am communicating, there is this little voice inside of me that is saying...."you have no idea what the hell he is talking about.

Abra ,you on the other hand, I understand with crystal clarity.

Abra speaks from a different plane, one that Creative has no idea even exists. Or maybe, creative, you think you are above that plane. I don't know. I suspect you are not even aware of the different levels of "truth." Perhaps you "think" yours is the only one or that there is only one level of truth.

The strange thing about the above statement is, I feel that Abra, you will understand it perfectly, and Creative, you won't at all.

This also contradicts the start of this whole tangent. He asserted since I claimed to "know about God" and some "perceived attributes" that it amounted to "knowing God"

k. seems time to say we both understand the other on the topic of knowable and unknowable and simply see it differently.

Teaching to mimic takes minimal effort - that is what occurs with indoctrinations.

Teaching or learning to think takes a lot of effort, curiosity, openness to new experiences, time and sometimes it can really seem to hurt your brain.

But for those who have the capacity and are able, it seems ashame to take the short route and to merely mimic. I would say that most who post in these forums are quite capable. But sometimes living life is more interesting than putting than pursuing time-consuming understanding. (and that has to be ok too.)

Someone (some human) had to know god in order to know anything about god. That means that god in knowable - Yes?


Createive made the statements and never even mentioned the fact that most Christians believe that the relationship that exists between man and god is a personal one.

If we are discussing relationship then there is a reciprocal exchange involved which required knowing god. Yes?



We assume and thus proceed on the basis that what we KNOW (what passes for knowledge)is true and accurate. - Yes?

Yet with every experience we face the possibility and the inevitability that we will discover previously held knowledge was false. We then adjust our perspective, sometimes our behavior and even our values in order to adapt our new knowledge. - Yes?

The odd thing here is that bogie and I understand one another, and simply disagree. He knows what it would take for my claims to be true, and vice-versa.

Abra, who offered a good(valid) critique based upon the earlier thinking that I laid out, simply mistook the argument for my own - which is no problem at all. Now, the later solipsism claim is rather outlandish, and unbelievable. I mean anyone who steps out in front of a moving bus will quickly find out that reality is not a figment of our/their imagination.

Pan, who came in and added his two cents worth based upon Abra's critique, seems to think I contradicted myself, whereas my claims were repeating his(Pan's) and showing that error. All in all, I find that to be a less than careful reading of how things have progressed.

Jb, and anyone else who confuses truth and belief and argues 'his truth', 'her truth', 'my truth', and 'your truth' overcomplicates that which is central to everything we think, believe, know, and think that we know... that central 'hub' being truth itself. Truth is a relationship(or lack thereof) between what is thought, believed, and or spoken and reality. Truth is correspondence between thought and reality. It is not determined by anything other than whether or not it matches up. It is presupposed within all thought/belief, argued for with justification, and proven by neither of those things.

Di, I suspect chuckles...

Peace to you all.

Abra,

I'd like to start a JTB thread over in philo...

I hope you'll join in. And, of course, anyone and everyone is invited. The religion forum is not the place for it.

That's ok Peter.

If we use your criteria for an "unknowable" God, then it's a meaninless concept because by that same criteria all humans would be "unknowable" as well.

If there is anything at all about me that you don't know, then you don't know everything about me. Thus by your standards, I am just as unknowable to you as God is.

So it would become a trivial and meaningless ideal to even state that God is "unknowable" because that would be true of all humans as well. It would have no unique significance for God at that point.

When the Eastern Mystics say that "God" is unknowable they literally mean it. This is why they call it "Mysticism" because they fully recognize that "God" is truly a mystery and cannot be known.

We PUSH things onto "God", by typically demanding that God has certain attributes. But that's because we like to think of God in that way.

The Christians claim that God is "All benevolent", but ironically their foundational doctrine does not support that ideal. There are many references to God being associated with wrath, and evil deeds, even if it's merely sending an evil spirit or giving permission for evil to plague someone like Job.

Christianity is a meaningless religion if it is held up that God is unknowable, because the Christians claim to know quite a bit about God. Especially in terms of who God is supposedly not pleased with.

If they think they know who their God would be pissed at, then they seem to be claiming to know a whole hell of a lot about this supposed unknowable deity.

I don't think the Christians are in any position to claim that their God is "unknowable", they claim to know far too much about their God to be taking that stance.

That's certainly true.

Perhaps Peter is just expressing his singular opinion.

Peter, according to the meaning of "know" in the Bible, you would have to be intimate or have intercourse with God to "Know" him. On earth, that means sexual intercourse.

Since "Nirvana" is similar to an orgasmic experience, perhaps a person who claims to have had "God realization" or "Nirvana" can also claim to "Know" God intimately.

I have certainly seen signs of this kind of elation or "Nirvana" in people who are "high on Jesus" who claim to be "spirit filled" and "born again."

Perhaps they "know" God.

That's sloppy thinking if I've ever heard any.

Well it started out as sarcasm, but it is actually starting to make sense.

Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus, is said to have claimed that she had never "known" a man.

She apparently "knew" God.

Its possible to train your mind to have orgasmic experiences in the course of meditation; i've experienced this and its just amazing. More pleasurable than sex or any mind altering chemical i've tried. I don't know what nirvana is, but if that is nirvana than nirvana is cheap.

The writings of respected sages in both hindu and buddhist traditions warn against mistaking those kinds of experiences with enlightenment (or realization or nirvana or [insert poorly defined inspirational concept]). I don't consider those writings authoritative, but i agree in the sense that people who value those kinds of pleasure-experiences, or mistake them for evidence of 'realization', seem more likely to turn meditation into a form of hedonism, and less likely to use meditation as a tool to develop their character and their capacity for love.

As I said, it's very sloppy thinking.

It really bothers me than anyone would correlate any of the orgasmic experiences that can follow from spiritual practices as an actual 'state of higher consciousness' or evidence of such. What is the basic purpose of a spiritual practice? What are the qualities that we would correlate with an 'enlightened person' ? If nirvana were real, what would we expect to follow from experiencing or achieving or arriving at nirvana?

Its too easy to induce a variety of extremely pleasurable experiences through meditation, and these experiences do not necessarily broaden a persons perspective, or bring greater compassion for other humans, or reduce our tendency to be reactive to others, or increase our ability to see others points of view, or bring greater peace or love into our lives, or give us a more accurate picture of ourselves, or any of the 'good' things which can come from a spiritual practice.

If we believe these experiences are evidence of a higher state of consciousness, these experiences can bring arrogance, presumption, and can lead someone away from the path of greater self understanding. This situation can lead to people making a game out of their meditation practice, using it as an escape from the pains of experience, a way to get high.

I don't know about nirvana, but i have known quite a few people who believed that this... this all consuming orgasmic pleasure was nirvana... put simply they were not sane. Like many people, they were petty, reactive, frightened...and deluded into thinking they were 'on a different plane' than other people. 'Spiritual practice' induce pleasure experiences are not evidence of any kind of 'higher state' of consciousness - not one of any value.