In Defense of Doubt

[Pavlos Maros]

So what makes something factual?

Verifiability (That is whether it can be being capable of being confirmed, or substantiated.) A definition of factual is that it is actually true and can be demonstrated, rather than unsubstantiated claims or what one feels about it.

 

[Waterfall]

Verifiability (That is whether it can be being capable of being confirmed, or substantiated.) A definition of factual is that it is actually true and can be demonstrated, rather than unsubstantiated claims or what one feels about it.

Can't imagine someone telling me something that I sense is not real.....especially when we have way more than 5 senses.

 

[BetteTheRed]

A definition of factual is that it is actually true and can be demonstrated, rather than unsubstantiated claims or what one feels about it.

So, it is not a fact that you love your family? (The equivalent of the "when did you stop beating your spouse?" question.)

 

[Pavlos Maros]

Can't imagine someone telling me something that I sense is not real.....especially when we have way more than 5 senses.

Well you seem to be living it, at the moment so it goes without saying, that you not going to be able to imagine it. (Emperors new clothes and all that.)
I think you are conflating the five basic senses with their sub-senses. So yes we have many sub-senses. However, what is your point.

So, it is not a fact that you love your family? (The equivalent of the "when did you stop beating your spouse?" question.)

I have always loved my family. So It is most definitely a fact because it can be demonstrated.

 

[jimkenney12]

How can it be demonstrated? Emotional love requires sophisticated apparatus. It is difficult to distinguish between actions that are self-giving for the sake of the other and actions that are part of a calculus geared to long term benefits for self. Who decides how to interpret your actions? Your comments prompt two thoughts for me. The first is that truth and facts for you are things you are ready to believe. The second is that you are looking for solid ground in an area of belief (truth and facts) that is slippery or elusive. The challenge for all of us is distinguishing between observations and interpretations. For example, an observation is that you discount simple observations by others of things such as auras clinically accepted as lacking sufficient verifiable evidence but expect us to accept your emotional experience of love as fact. My two thoughts are interpretations.

I wish you well in your search for meaning.

 

[Pavlos Maros]

How can it be demonstrated? Emotional love requires sophisticated apparatus. It is difficult to distinguish between actions that are self-giving for the sake of the other and actions that are part of a calculus geared to long term benefits for self. Who decides how to interpret your actions?

I feel sorry for you, if you have never had the love of family demonstrated to you. Have you always been suspicious of your loved one actions. (if you have any that is.)

Your comments prompt two thoughts for me. The first is that truth and facts for you are things you are ready to believe.

Correct if they are demonstrated to be true/factual.

The second is that you are looking for solid ground in an area of belief (truth and facts) that is slippery or elusive.

Not if they can be demonstrated.

The challenge for all of us is distinguishing between observations and interpretations. For example, an observation is that you discount simple observations by others of things such as auras clinically accepted as lacking sufficient verifiable evidence but expect us to accept your emotional experience of love as fact.

I haven't discounted that you claim to see auras. I discounted the fact you call them truths. Because they are not. Go back through our discourse and check. And I am sorry to say this but love can be demonstrated every day as an actual thing. Whereas your auras cannot.
Love can be demonstrated by the physical touch, with words of affirmation, and the acts of service the care you show to your loved ones, Gift giving, and spending quality time with them. Try to harm a parents child and they will demonstrate their love for said child.

 

[BetteTheRed]

Try to harm a parents child and they will demonstrate their love for said child.

Try to read a previously readable Excel spreadsheet with a visual migraine, and it will be demonstrably impossible.

You know you love your child. I know that I can't read the spreadsheet. Both unprovable. You could be protecting the child for another, less noble reason. I could be faking my reality that rainbow-y zigzags make reading individual Excel cells impossible.

 

[Pavlos Maros]

Try to read a previously readable Excel spreadsheet with a visual migraine, and it will be demonstrably impossible.

You know you love your child. I know that I can't read the spreadsheet. Both unprovable. You could be protecting the child for another, less noble reason. I could be faking my reality that rainbow-y zigzags make reading individual Excel cells impossible.

I used the parent child analogy, because it is proof of love. It is not unprovable, as said try to harm the child and see.
And you getting a migraine from the frame rate on screen is understandable, and has been proven to have an adverse effect we know this happens. As it has happened countless times before. So sorry not unprovable. What is unprovable is claiming you can see something which no one else has seen or has been demonstrated that it is true. Yet still claiming it is true.

 

[Luce NDs]

Is something transparently true if one can see into it like glass?

The half full theory when some Eire thing and other particles of sublime nature ... flaky emotions?

Can we render something from this in condensation still?

It is like that from within the unseen psyche that incarnates out there as a negative thought conflicted with positively large and blown up emotions ... potentially a metaphor of large proportion that enters life of folks too traumatized to see it ... even still!

Thus it ghost ... presently in a' merry Kahn LANs!

Unprovable yet there it is unseen ... some sort of intelligent fallacy? Crystal line ...

If you cannot address it ... tell a ridiculous story to amuse the powers about what they are entranced by ... hypE?

 

[jimkenney12]

I used the parent child analogy, because it is proof of love. It is not unprovable, as said try to harm the child and see.
And you getting a migraine from the frame rate on screen is understandable, and has been proven to have an adverse effect we know this happens. As it has happened countless times before. So sorry not unprovable. What is unprovable is claiming you can see something which no one else has seen or has been demonstrated that it is true. Yet still claiming it is true.

What do you mean by love? A mother duck will risk its life to protect its young. That willingness is instinctual. There are many reasons a mother will risk to protect a child. Love is only one of them.

A doctor explained auras to me based on collective clinical experience. Doctors trained in science accept the truth of auras. You do not because they are not part of your experience. As I said in another post, your truths are the only experiences you readily accept as fact. That narrowness can limit your opportunities to truly engage with other people

 

[Pavlos Maros]

What do you mean by love?

There is only one meaning. However, for you. I assume because you don't appear to have any in your life. You will have to make one up.

A mother duck will risk its life to protect its young. That willingness is instinctual. There are many reasons a mother will risk to protect a child. Love is only one of them.

The fact it is one is paramount. She will also nurture, etc. Those are all aspects of love.

A doctor explained auras to me based on collective clinical experience. Doctors trained in science accept the truth of auras. You do not because they are not part of your experience.

I say again I have nothing against you claiming you see auras and I said in a past post (64#) that doctors know of synaesthesia, and other eye problems. My issue is you claiming them as truths.

As I said in another post, your truths are the only experiences you readily accept as fact. That narrowness can limit your opportunities to truly engage with other people

No, that would be the truths, the facts. I don't have my own set of truths/facts. All the truths/facts I use are those that are scientifically verifiable. Close mindness is a problem for the religious not the secular. My/our minds are open to all that is verifiable.
And as for engaging with other people, I don't appear to have a problem, however I'm not one who will allow woo woo BS, or people who peddle it, to cloud my mind.

 

[Mendalla]

What about pain, @Pavlos Maros?

Is the statement, "I am in pain." a fact?

I mean, I think we can agree that certain events like injuries always produce pain, but I might be in agony with something you brush off as "only a flesh wound." Do you brush off my agony because your experience is different? Whose pain is a fact.

What about something like my tension headaches? They are agonizing to me at their worst but there's no visible injury or illness that would be relatable to someone else. In fact, I am not entirely sure of the cause other than they correlate strongly with back and neck issues which is why I think they are related to tension. If I say, "I am in pain", is that a "fact" or just a statement of my subjective condition?

This is serious question because we have a problem in our medical system with doctors sometimes dismissing people's experience of pain or other symptoms if they can't find an obvious medical cause. It is not a "fact" to them if they can't diagnose it so the patient gets no help beyond maybe a suggestion to buy some ibuprofen or see a psychologist.

 

[Waterfall]

What about pain, @Pavlos Maros?

Is the statement, "I am in pain." a fact?

I mean, I think we can agree that certain events like injuries always produce pain, but I might be in agony with something you brush off as "only a flesh wound." Do you brush off my agony because your experience is different? Whose pain is a fact.

What about something like my tension headaches? They are agonizing to me at their worst but there's no visible injury or illness that would be relatable to someone else. In fact, I am not entirely sure of the cause other than they correlate strongly with back and neck issues which is why I think they are related to tension. If I say, "I am in pain", is that a "fact" or just a statement of my subjective condition?

This is serious question because we have a problem in our medical system with doctors sometimes dismissing people's experience of pain or other symptoms if they can't find an obvious medical cause. It is not a "fact" to them if they can't diagnose it so the patient gets no help beyond maybe a suggestion to buy some ibuprofen or see a psychologist.

And now there are wellness centres which might suggest Reiki, meditation, acupuncture, things that doctors used to call quackery but now acknowledge....if it works for someone...why not?

 

[Mendalla]

And now there are wellness centres which might suggest Reiki, meditation, acupuncture, things that doctors used to call quackery but now acknowledge....if it works for someone...why not?

The problem with those is separating the ones that do work from the quackery. Acupuncture, for instance, has proven effective for those pain cases that don't have an easy medical resolution but practitioners sometimes make claims beyond that (cures diseases, etc). I think if someone is making a claim of a cure, I have the right to see evidence beyond anecdotal before I let them make it publicly.

 

[Waterfall]

The problem with those is separating the ones that do work from the quackery. Acupuncture, for instance, has proven effective for those pain cases that don't have an easy medical resolution but practitioners sometimes make claims beyond that (cures diseases, etc). I think if someone is making a claim of a cure, I have the right to see evidence beyond anecdotal before I let them make it publicly.

Your entitled to your beliefs....for me personally, if someone gets relief, thats good.

 

[jimkenney12]

I would like to return the thread to its title. Doubt is a useful tool for individuals to use in refining their beliefs. It can be useful in constructing defenses from others set on exploiting us and others. Without clear definitions, it may be of little use in discussions or debates. I believe there are at least 5 different meanings and uses of the word love, but others may see only be one meaning. That difference in definitions is an obstacle to productive discussions and has little to do with defending doubt.

The origin of modern science lies in doubting that accepted explanations of things in the world were complete and accurate. The origin of modern economics lay in doubting the pie was only so big.

Doubt, carefully applied, opens doors to many kinds of discoveries.

 

[Mendalla]

Your entitled to your beliefs....for me personally, if someone gets relief, thats good.

But what if getting that relief means an underlying condition is being ignored? Acupuncture for chronic pain, like my arthritis, is one thing. But what if the source of the pain is cancer? Acupuncture is not to fix that. It would like taking ibuprofen. And, yet, that is precisely what some "natural medicine" advocates try to sell to people; a cure-all.

 

[Pavlos Maros]

What about pain, @Pavlos Maros?

Is the statement, "I am in pain." a fact?

The statement "I am in pain" is fact because the person stating it is feeling it. However, pain is just like a religious experience, it's in the brain. But because we have all experienced pain, and it has medicines to treat it. It is demonstrable. You've only to poke yourself with a needle to experience it. Pain is analogous to colour what we perceive does not exist, our brains do the sorting of the information for us.

 

[Waterfall]

But what if getting that relief means an underlying condition is being ignored? Acupuncture for chronic pain, like my arthritis, is one thing. But what if the source of the pain is cancer? Acupuncture is not to fix that. It would like taking ibuprofen. And, yet, that is precisely what some "natural medicine" advocates try to sell to people; a cure-all.

Usually after all else fails.

 

[revjohn]

Is doubt a virtue or, is it a springboard from which an individual may launch themselves into virtue or vice with equal effort?

If I doubt a Christian doctrine, for example, do I become a better Christian or not? Being of a Protestant persuasion I don't believe the doctrine of Papal Infallibility for starters. Being of a Reformed Protestant persuasion I don't value Christian doctrines that treat free will as a positive with regard to salvation.

Do those doubts make me virtuous? Unfailingly so? If I gave up those doubts would I automatically become more virtuous or not?

What I see when I look at the texts (and the combined witness of the Gospels doesn't centre Thomas's doubt out in the same way that John's gospel does. I am not always convinced that we read John's inclusion with the emphasis on Thomas' doubt properly anyway.

What is more important to any Gospel of Christ. Is it the doubt of Thomas or Jesus' response to that doubt?

I think the doubt of Thomas is a given and expected. So much so it fails to surprise and doesn't rightly diminish Thomas in my view. Considering the combined Gospel testimony there are none of the 12 who refuse to feel the palms or the side of Christ and in one account he has to eat in front of them to prove he is not a ghost. So the doubt is par for the course.

Sure they have seen Jesus raise the dead but up until then they have never seen the dead rise without Jesus being responsible for it. With Jesus dead he isn't around to raise himself is he?

The whole Christian movement is premised on the reality of the resurrection not really what it takes to convince somebody that a resurrection has taken place.