Theos-Talk Archives (October 1999 Message tl00325)

In a message dated 10/22/99 7:52:44 AM Central Daylight Time, WLR7D@aol.com
writes:

> Thank you Grigor.  That's a relief.
>
>  I am searching for an understanding based upon reason, logic, data,
>  believable experiences.
>
>  These are the underpinnings  and the empirical evidence I'm looking for,
not
>
>  references to dogma or mere fanciful mental constructions.

Fine, but what is empirical evidence is itself an issue and can not
be taken as an immediately obvious concept that allows us to
use the phrase "empirical evidence" without examination.  "Logic"
I will grant is clear enough but the concept of reason is another one
that needs further examination.  It is either an equivocal term or
there are five or six different concepts that share the same word or
there is a single concept of what reason is that unites these meanings
in an illuminating and explanatory fashion.  For example, reason can be
used to mean

1. logically consistent or not contradictory,
2. "He has utterly lost his reason;" where the word seems to be
a synonym for sane, not logical because an insane person
can be extremely logical.
3. "come on, can't you be reasonable" seems to use the
word to mean "socially cooperative"
4.  "The plan seems reasonable" seems to mean, depending upon
context, either that the means chosen are likely to realize the goal, or
the goal itself is probable of success, or the plan is a social compromise
that will please all parties, and so on.

I could give more but it should be evident that the word "reason" apparently
has many meanings and so it is not clear what you mean by the term.
And now, you've added "believable experiences" to the list.  What is the
criteria that demarcates a "believable experience" off from the more general
category of
experience?  Long time ago, I took my son to see Father Frost (Russian and
Armenian Santa Claus).  It was a guy dressed up but he was convincing actor
who provided my son with what could be called a "believable experience" since
the phrase has so far been left undefined.  If I'm in desert and see water,
the
experience may be belief-producing (even if belief that there is water may
be mistaken) or if I am at Holy Roller frothing at the mouth and rolling on
the floor prayer meeting, it may look like psycho-somatically self-induced
spiritual rabies to me, but those undergoing the experience come to believe.
Without specification of what you mean, all these are believable experiences
because they are convincing (with my son) or because they cause belief states
in those who undergo them (my desert mirage or holy rollers self-induced
seizures).  Then there are other experiences that seem to be cause beliefs
in those who undergo them that are true.  If you mean the later and not the
former,
what is it that makes the later indeed the later?

Grigor