I'm saying that to value life and to use reason is to be objective. — AppLeo

:brow:

That is what mysticism is. — AppLeo

Mysticism: belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.

You forgot the other defintion.

"belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies."

Mysticism is the antithesis to reason. Reason is our only means to knowing reality.

Mysticism is the antithesis to reason. — AppLeo

That I can agree with.

Reason is our only means to knowing reality. — AppLeo

So all other species (lacking our capacity to reason) that we know of do not know reality?

If this is what you actually believe, can you explain this belief? Other species appear to know reality.

Animals can only know reality through observation. They navigate through life with their instinct.

Humans navigate with reason.

I've already explained my belief a bunch times earlier.

Mysticism and death is bad. I don't understand how they are good things. — AppLeo

Well durr! Of course you judge them to be bad. So do I! That's because of the criteria we use for judgement, which is based on our values, which are based on our emotions. Don't expect me to explain how they're good things. I can only explain why other people might judge them to be good things.

They are objectively bad. — AppLeo

Unsubstantiated.

Why would we want to live in a world where humans don't value life, and pursue mysticism instead of reason to understand reality[?] — AppLeo

Wrong question to direct at me.

People who don't value life and don't hold reason as an absolute are people who make the world worse, not only for themselves, but for everybody else. — AppLeo

More or less preaching to the choir. I value life and reason over and above death and mysticism, remember?

Your kind of thinking is the reason why people can justify doing horrible things. — AppLeo

Completely wrong! My values lead to the same value judgement that you end up with. And neither my kind of thinking on meta-ethics nor your kind of thinking on meta-ethics is the reason why people can justify doing horrible things. People believe that they're justified in doing horrible things because of their own thoughts and feelings, which are not my thoughts and feelings, and which could involve thinking about right or wrong as objective, or thinking about right or wrong as subjective, or thinking that there's no right or wrong, or not even thinking about meta-ethics at all.

Because there is no right or wrong. — AppLeo

That's not a claim that I have made. That is not my position, nor a logical consequence of my position.

Because there is no morality, people can do whatever it is they please because, "it's my values there is no right and wrong." — AppLeo

Given what I said above, any logical consequences based on this false premise of yours are irrelevant to my position.

I'm going to end this discussion between us now because you seem like a novice who needs to study the various positions of meta-ethics before jumping in the deep end and trying to debate one of them. Don't try to run before you can walk. Frankly, you're small fry, and I'm a great white shark.

You don't really believe this do you, it's a joke right. — Rank Amateur

I question if the general public understands that difference between concrete thinking and abstract thinking, fast thinking and slow thinking, nor between doing math and thinking mathematically, so let us work on that...

http://maverikeducation.blogspot.com/2014/05/doing-math-vsthinking-mathematically.html

Doing math is an operation. It's about arithmetic and applying mathematical procedures such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, estimation, and measurement to solve an algorithmic or story problem correctly and successfully. It's all about the reproducing and applying facts and procedures to achieve or attain that correct answer because, in the end, that's all that mattered - get the correct answer!

Thinking mathematically is an art - specifically, as Lockhart (2002) states, "the art of explanation. It's about actively developing deeper knowledge, understanding, and awareness of mathematical concepts, practices, and processes - more specifically, analyzing how, evaluating why, and creating new ways of thinking about and using mathematics. It focuses on deeper understanding of procedural knowledge, deeper thinking about conceptual knowledge, and deeper awareness of how mathematics can address, handle, settle, or solve real world issues, problems, and situations. — maverikeducation

Most parents can help their children do basic math, but the new math is not the basic math most of us learned. The difference is so great, schools should have night classes for parents to learn new math so they can help their children with homework. The children whose parents can not help them are at an extreme disadvantage because it is learning a thinking skill, not just adding and subtracting. Most of us grew up with timed math test. That was is using the Behaviorist Method for education that is also used for training dogs. There is a stimulus and response. It is fast thinking. New Math is slow thinking.

Try taking out the word Christian in your sentence and insert black people and see how it reads — Rank Amateur

Black people can also be Christians. Politically the problematic group is not Blacks as a race but Christians as a group. Blacks as a group do not believe they are the only ones who know God's truth. Christians as a group, believe they are the only ones who know God's truth. These people are using a book for evidence and that is not how historians or scientist look for validation of what they believe. Because Christians are using their interpretations of a holy book to know truth, they can not come to an agreement on what truth is. Whatever, the word "Christian" is not equal to the word "Blacks".

Mysticism is the antithesis to reason. Reason is our only means to knowing reality. — AppLeo

I think an understanding of what you said depends on understanding the different modes of thinking.
Understanding the difference between accumulating facts and analyzing those facts with mathematical and scientific thinking and mysticism or the debating Scholastics were doing, are completely different modes of thinking.

The Church promoted Scholasticism and Scholastic scholars argued how many angels could stand on the head of a pin and if Eve had hadn't eaten the forbidden would babies be born miniature adults instead of helpless babies? They took a lot of pride in their serious contemplation of truth. That is how the Greeks came to argue what is true and good following Aristotle, and we should all know, Aristotle didn't have an understanding of the importance of experimenting to gain facts, and basing our understanding on evidence that can be observed. There was severe backlash against Aristotle that ended scholasticism and brought us into the modern age. Grrrr I am out of time, Here is link that may help...

Combining these two forms of logical reasoning together with the three different types results in the following distinguish in logical reasoning:
Deductive. Formal deductive reasoning. Informal deductive reasoning.
Inductive. Formal inductive reasoning. Informal inductive reasoning.
Abductive. Formal abductive reasoning.
https://www.google.com/search?q=different+modes+of+logic&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&oq=different+modes+of+logic&aqs=chrome..69i57.6676j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Contents
3.1 Syllogistic logic.
3.2 Propositional logic.
3.3 Predicate logic.
3.4 Modal logic.
3.5 Informal reasoning and dialectic.
3.6 Mathematical logic.
3.7 Philosophical logic.
3.8 Computational logic.
More items...

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&ei=kj5HXLqbFN-Ck-4Pp9GvyAQ&q=types+of+logic+in+philosophy&oq=different+modes+of+logic&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i71l8.0.0..169127...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.yxUPt9ieSoc
— google

Not all thinking is the same, and if we are using the scientific method we may not put much faith in mysticism. What I said of the difference between Christian and scientific thinking, and these people with their different approaches to knowing truth, do not trust each other.

No. They are not different forms of thinking. It's a matter of life or death. Reason is our only means of discovering the truth. Reason applies Aristotelian Logic. Mysticism is a bunch of nonsense. Mystical people claim to know the truth without any evidence or proof. They just know because they "feel" it from within. But our emotions do not reflect reality. The time period ruled by mysticism was the dark ages. The Renaissance was ruled by reason, where people actually focused on science and facts. Reason is the only form of objective communication. If you hold a piece of truth, you can communicate that to another person so that they know that truth. With mysticism, it is subjective. Which means you have no way of communicating what you know to another person. People must accept that what you say is true without evidence or a logical understanding. When men are reduced to such a lowly state, that they cannot communicate by objective means, it's only a matter of time before they result to violence to settle disagreements that cannot be settled objectively.

Animals can only know reality through observation. They navigate through life with their instinct.

Humans navigate with reason. — AppLeo

You're wrong on both counts, all mammals navigate through life with the same fundamental framework. 'Knowing' something essentially means being able to make predictions about that something and all mammals have this basic capacity. Humans can make more predictions about the world and more sophisticated predictions than other species.

Maybe you mean to say that other species don't have language and can't pass on things they've learned to their fellows, when you say that "Animals can only know reality through observation."

As for humans navigating the world with reason, do I really need to point out how irrational people are???

You're wrong on both counts, all mammals navigate through life with the same fundamental framework. 'Knowing' something essentially means being able to make predictions about that something and all mammals have this basic capacity. Humans can make more predictions about the world and more sophisticated predictions than other species. — praxis

Humans can think way bigger and deeper than any animal. Why do we kill wild animals that attack us instead of trying to have a civil discussion with them? Because they're dumb and instinctual.

As for humans navigating the world with reason, do I really need to point out how irrational people are??? — praxis

Yeah, people are irrational. Why do you think the world is falling apart? And why do think I keep advocating for reason over faith and mysticism? When people are irrational, they destroy their ability to live because they accept some things as truth without evidence or proof. Religious people are a perfect example of this.

You're wrong on both counts, all mammals navigate through life with the same fundamental framework. 'Knowing' something essentially means being able to make predictions about that something and all mammals have this basic capacity. Humans can make more predictions about the world and more sophisticated predictions than other species.
— praxis

Humans can think way bigger and deeper than any animal. — AppLeo

Which is another way of saying that we can make more predictions and more sophisticated predictions about the world or 'reality'. Nevertheless, other mammals can learn and make predictions about the world or reality, and they fundamentally do it in the same way that we do.

This line of discussion started with your claim that "reason is our only means to knowing reality." I suggest that a better way of saying this is that with language people have the ability to share information or mental representations and in this way we may 'know reality' in a way that other mammals cannot, in addition to our own experience.

We're apparently able to form more complex concepts and mental simulations than other mammals, and this relates to 'knowing reality' in terms of making predictions and 'navigating through life', but all concepts are formed from experience.

Mysticism is based in experience. Though with the capacity of human reason people can fool other people into believing things that are not based in their personal experience in order to manipulate others.

The essential value of mystical experience is that it may relieve existential anxiety. An anxiety unique to human beings and their capacity for form concepts like death, self, etc.

Yeah, people are irrational. — AppLeo

Earlier you claimed that "Humans navigate with reason." How can humans navigate with reason if they are irrational?

why do think I keep advocating for reason over faith and mysticism? — AppLeo

Because you have a simplistic understanding of faith and mysticism, quite frankly, and you overvalue reason.

This line of discussion started with your claim that "reason is our only means to knowing reality." I suggest that a better way of saying this is that with language people have the ability to share information or mental representations and in this way we may 'know reality' in a way that other mammals cannot, in addition to our own experience. — praxis

We're apparently able to form more complex concepts and mental simulations than other mammals, and this relates to 'knowing reality' in terms of making predictions and 'navigating through life', but all concepts are formed from experience. — praxis

Yeah, I agree.

Mysticism is based in experience. Though with the capacity of human reason people can fool other people into believing things that are not based in their personal experience in order to manipulate others. — praxis

Subjective experience that isn't objective. It's mysticism that fools people into believing things that are not real. If some guy says that he can talk to God, and God told him that you must sacrifice your children, you would want to know the evidence of this God and why God would ask you to do such a thing. Which means one must use reason not mysticism when they deal with other human beings.

Earlier you claimed that "Humans navigate with reason." How can humans navigate with reason if they are irrational? — praxis

People are not split into two groups of rationality and irrationality. We have a combination of rational and irrational thinking. What allows humans to live life and to not die is the rationality that they still have. The people that live more rationally than others will live happier and more prosperous lives. The ones that are more irrational live unhappy and destructive lives.

Because you have a simplistic understanding of faith and mysticism, quite frankly, and you overvalue reason. — praxis

No. It's because I want people to live the best life they can live, and the only way to do that is with reason, not faith or mysticism.

To try and clarify things a bit, animals are generally thought to be pre-rational. As you've mentioned humans are generally thought to be rational. Crazy folk are irrational. And mysticism is trans-rational.

Again, the value of mysticism is that it can relieve existential anxiety. This is important to a happy and fulfilled life, although most don't realize it, I believe.

Can you not also see the value of faith (not necessarily religious)? Are you faithful to nothing or no one? It's difficult to imagine anyone living a happy or fulfilling life without faith in anyone or anything. It would be very isolated, purposeless, and empty.

Again, the value of mysticism is that it can relieve existential anxiety. This is important to a happy and fulfilled life. Can you not see that? — praxis

Disagree. People shouldn't place their happiness on something outside of themselves in the first place. To be faithful is to undermine the value and judgment of your own mind. How does faith, accepting something as truth without evidence lead to happiness or relieve anxiety? You relieve anxiety and find happiness when you find out what is true because there is evidence for it.

People shouldn't place their happiness on something outside of themselves in the first place. — AppLeo

Mysticism isn't effective in relieving existential anxiety unless it's experienced to some degree.

To be faithful is to undermine the value and judgment of your own mind. — AppLeo

So being faithful to your spouse, for instance, which may have nothing to do with religion, is undermining your minds value and judgment? Faith has an aspect of loyalty.

How does faith, accepting something as truth without evidence lead to happiness or relieve anxiety? — AppLeo

Mysticism and faith are not synonymous, you're conflating the two. Also, mysticism is experiential and may not need to be taken on faith. As for faith, I've alluded to its social qualities, without which it's difficult to imagine happiness or fulfillment, for me anyway. And I'm not talking about religious faith necessarily.

So being faithful to your spouse, for instance, which may have nothing to do with religion, is undermining your minds value and judgment? Faith has an aspect of loyalty. — praxis

Well we aren't talking about the same kind of faith anymore.

Faithful in the sense in being loyal to someone is fine. Faith in terms of accepting truths without evidence is bad.

Mysticism and faith are not synonymous, you're conflating the two. Also, mysticism is experiential and may not need to be taken on faith. As for faith, I've alluded to its social qualities, without which it's difficult to imagine happiness or fulfillment, for me anyway. And I'm not talking about religious faith necessarily. — praxis

They are the same in the sense that they both accept truth without evidence.

Faith in terms of accepting truths without evidence is bad. — AppLeo

Oh please, you know what a ridiculous thing this is to say. We can't verify every truth claim we encounter everyday.

They [mysticism and faith] are the same in the sense that they both accept truth without evidence. — AppLeo

Mysticism can be experiential. Apparently you don't believe me when I make this claim. Being a person who claims to believe that accepting a truth without evidence is bad, I assume you will try to verify my claim before deciding which of us is right.

Oh please, you know what a ridiculous thing this is to say. We can't verify every truth claim we encounter everyday. — praxis

So because can't verify something, we should just fill the holes and hope we're right? I think it's intellectually lazy and destructive to claim a truth that you have no evidence for.

Mysticism can be experiential. Apparently you don't believe me when I make this claim. Being a person who claims to believe that accepting a truth without evidence is bad, I assume you will try to verify my claim before deciding which of us is right. — praxis

No it can't. Give an example of how it is.

I think it's intellectually lazy and destructive to claim a truth that you have no evidence for. — AppLeo

You’ve just claimed that mysticism can’t be experiential. Do you have evidence of this or are you being intellectually lazy?

There are countless examples of people reporting mystical experiences. I doubt any of these will be convincing for you. I also doubt any authority on the subject would convince you. You think it might help if I tried to explain it neurologically? Deactivation of the default mode network apparently coincides with mystical experiences. There are numerous scientific studies on this, if you care to look up more information about it (and not be intellectually lazy).

There are countless examples of people reporting mystical experiences. I doubt any of these will be convincing for you. — praxis

If they have evidence.

If someone has a mystical experience with the Flying Spaghetti Monster why should I believe them if they can't prove it to me? Why should I have faith in them?

Okay, I will go a step further into a subject I love. First, I use the word "God" because that is what interests Christians and I hope to build a bridge between their understanding of God and mine. Just insisting there is no God, strengthens their notion that they have God's truth and I don't want to do that. That is being a little bull-headed, isn't it? And how much fun is it to around and around in a circle of if God does or does not exist? That is a boring and irritating argument that goes nowhere. It will come to no good. Better to say something that others might think about. Okay, there is a God, now let us talk about what is real about this God. Now we have an argument worthy of our effort.

Here is something to think about...

"It is a frequent assertion of ours that the whole universe is manifestly completed and enclosed by the Decad and seeded by the Monad, and it gains movement thanks to the Dyad and life thanks to the Pentad." Iamblichus — Iamblichus

And here is something else to think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNDGgL73ihY

The laws of quantum mechanics are not the same as the laws of our universe. To this day the quantum mechanic thing keeps happening and gets organized in our universe. I think that is a correct way to explain the existence of our manifest reality and the quantum mechanics from which this comes?

Oh, oh I keep wanting to say another word we could use is logos. I am not referring to Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Gods". I guess all the Bibles are using the word "word" now and not logos but the original word from John would have been logos.

The phrase "the Word" (a translation of the Greek word "Logos") is widely interpreted as referring to Jesus, as indicated in other verses later in the same chapter.[4] This verse and others throughout Johannine literature connect the Christian understanding of Jesus to the philosophical idea of the Logos and the Hebrew Wisdom literature. They also set the stage for the later development of Trinitarian theology early in the post-biblical era. — Wikipedia

Logos means, reason, thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifested by speech. — Webster Dictionary

Jewish ideas of man and God were hijacked by the Greeks and then codified and formalized by Rome. Very much a work of man, not the voice of God. The notion of a trinity God was impossible to communicate in Latin until new words were created and this lead to a lot of warring between Christians who already had Greek concepts and Christians who did not. However, Greeks with their geometric, sacred math had no problem with the trinity.

"The Triad is the form of the completion of all things." Nichomachus of Gerasa a Pythagorean philosopher.

"Surface is composed of triangles" Plato

"Force without wisdom falls of its own weight." Horace a Roman poet.

Manifestation coming out of the trinity was a Greek concept long before it became a Christian concept and logos is the voice of reason, the wisdom, also a Greek concept long before Christianity.

Are you saying all people organize their thoughts the same way with the same fundamental thoughts, so reason should bring them to exactly same conclusion and if it does not, one person is wrong and the other one is right?

Why are you so sure you know reality? We can know a lot about our planet and we are learning more about the universe but that is not all there is to know.

Your understanding of our consciousness is very limited. I will dare to say, abstract thinking takes us far beyond the concrete and limited world we crudely perceive. But consciousness is so much more than this. We are aware of only a tiny bit of our experience at any one time and even that can be distorted or lacking in information.

Because the study of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) is, by and large, dependent on subjective reports of experience, what passes for the NCC is liable to be merely the neural correlates of meta-consciousness. As such, potentially conscious mental activity—in the sense of activity correlated with experiential qualities—may evade recognition as such.

As a matter of fact, there is circumstantial but compelling evidence that this is precisely the case. To see it, notice first the conscious knowledge N—that is, the re-representation—of an experience X is triggered by the occurrence of X. For instance, it is the occurrence of a sense perception that triggers the metacognitive realization one is perceiving something. N, in turn, evokes X by directing attention back to it: the realization one is perceiving something naturally shifts one’s mental focus back to the original perception. So we end up with a back-and-forth cycle of evocations whereby X triggers N, which in turn evokes X, which again triggers N, and so forth. — Bernardo Kastrup

I have had mystical experiences and they are more than emotion. They can be concepts with relatively no feeling at all. They can be events that have on explanation other than someone who just passed is communicating to me. The last one was validated, by me sending someone words that made no sense to me, and she gave the words that gave meaning to the words I sent her, without her knowing that was what she was doing. The lights flickering in an elevator when another friend crossed over makes me question why this unusual thing happened at that time. My sense of another incarnation may be imaginary, but the thoughts have impacted my life and I would not claim with the certainty that you have there is no more to reality than what we are aware of.

Personally, I would consider that a delusion and put no more thought into it.

But you were advocating for faith weren't you? Have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You'll go to hell if you don't you know.

Why was any of that addressed to me? It has nothing to do with anything I said. Again. This is just you rambling now, using “responses” to other posters as an excuse to blather on about little of substance. Masterbate on your own time, Im out.

Well actually you don't know if you'll go to hell or not, only I can know. But I can't prove it to you. But you should accept it blindly because apparently that leads to happiness and a good life.

I explicitly said that I wasn’t talking about religious faith necessary.

It is pointless to continue. I suggest, if it interests you, to study what religion is: how and why it may have developed and the role it plays in society. Then perhaps you’ll be able to untangle concepts like faith and mysticism from religion.

Just what we need: another asshole on the forum. Except this one worships Ayn Rand as well.

Again, the value of mysticism is that it can relieve existential anxiety. This is important to a happy and fulfilled life. Can you not see that?
— praxis

Disagree. People shouldn't place their happiness on something outside of themselves in the first place. To be faithful is to undermine the value and judgement of your own mind. How does faith, accepting something as truth without evidence lead to happiness or relieve anxiety? You relieve anxiety and find happiness when you find out what is true because there is evidence for it. — AppLeo

These kind of arguments seem kind of fruitless to me. People can and do live different lives from each other, can and do feel differently about things, can and do have different sets of values, and can and do order them differently in terms of priority. That's the case with you two. You don't have to see eye-to-eye on this, you know? It's not like there's an answer in the same way that there's an answer to what 2 + 2 equals or what planet we're on.