Originally posted by Perfection
Well, I think Aga doesn't explain jargon enough, but I don't think you should dismiss him simply becasue of that. When I don't understand something generally I ask, "WTF are you talkin' 'bout d00d" or some other thing.
And really, this terminology is pretty helpful because everyday words are sloppy and have multiple meanings. It just carries an annoying learning curve.
Well, I think Aga doesn't explain jargon enough, but I don't think you should dismiss him simply becasue of that. When I don't understand something generally I ask, "WTF are you talkin' 'bout d00d" or some other thing.
And really, this terminology is pretty helpful because everyday words are sloppy and have multiple meanings. It just carries an annoying learning curve.
Well, I don't think it's self-evident and actually believe it to be false. Certainly you are correct that many cues come from external sources, but you shouldn't make the jump that all are without carefully looking for counterexamples.
Consider puberty. I didn't start desiring girls because of any external sense, rather because my brain itself changed.
Another one is dreams, while their content certainly is influenced by what we've previously sensed, what exactly we dream, when we dream, how long we dream, and the order of events in what we dream by-and-large aren't.
One final one is inspiration. You could be staring at your navel for a half hour attempting to solve some problem. Your sense data isn't changing but when you arrive at some solution your emotions change from say puzzlement to elation.
So in short, it's not just sense data that matters, there is internal stuff in the brain that play an important role too. Thus the assumption that religious experience must be exertnal sense instead of the actions of internal brain stuff is a pretty poor one.
Consider puberty. I didn't start desiring girls because of any external sense, rather because my brain itself changed.
Another one is dreams, while their content certainly is influenced by what we've previously sensed, what exactly we dream, when we dream, how long we dream, and the order of events in what we dream by-and-large aren't.
One final one is inspiration. You could be staring at your navel for a half hour attempting to solve some problem. Your sense data isn't changing but when you arrive at some solution your emotions change from say puzzlement to elation.
So in short, it's not just sense data that matters, there is internal stuff in the brain that play an important role too. Thus the assumption that religious experience must be exertnal sense instead of the actions of internal brain stuff is a pretty poor one.
No matter how fantastic the imagination is, we invent alterations or variations on what we have seen. Even H.P. Lovecraft, master of the insane and grotesque, made Cthulhu out of a man, a squid, and a bat. If you've ever had a religious experience, you know it's...very different, not easily described because it's not comparable to anything in ordinary human experience. It just doesn't feel like the sort of thing your brain could make up. They're also rare--not continual and sporadic like schizophrenic hallucinations--and, unlike hallucinations, are not necessarily sense-oriented. I just mentioned this as an aside, and it turned into a whole long argument. And I told Agathon from the beginning that there was no use in him talking about experiences he'd never had, but he insisted I was wrong, because he was a philosopher, and...and that's how we got into this mess.
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