Archive for the ‘objectivity’ Category:
The Gospel and “Religious Experiences”
During chapel recently on my campus, I witnessed something truly religious.
Our speaker sculpted a head of Jesus while telling of his betrayal (with a little bit of theatrics and exaggerations). Then he explained how Jesus was beaten and crucified. He thrust a crown of thorns on the clay Jesus’ head and sprinkled it fake blood. It was meant to evoke a highly emotional response, and it did. As he brought up a pianist to play some music in the background as he made the altar call. One young female briskly strode to the front of the auditorium and began uncontrollably weeping. The speaker continued to call people forth to have an experience. Then this young woman started screaming, at the top of her lungs. I could not make out exactly what she was saying. She continued for a few minutes saying the same two or three words over and over again. The speaker was pleased, and affirmed her experience as true.
Mistakes in Knowing
In Brad’s last post you learned of my apparent run in with the mob (thanks Brad), but I would like to ask upon what epistemology can we even know that (just kidding)? That got me thinking, what if someone really believed the mafia had kidnapped me on the basis of Brad’s post? And how does that apply to epistemology? Mistakes in sense perception and reason happen all the time.
In Men in Black, Will Smith learns, totally contrary to what Will Smith believed, that man is not alone in the universe. Tommy Lee Jones challenges Will Smith saying, “a thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on it. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” So why do mistakes happen in our knowledge? Read more »
Magic Eye
Disclaimer: this post is an explanation of Ether Meek’s thesis in her book Longing to Know. Most of the examples are taken from this book as well.
I have dealt with knowing in my two earlier posts about the need for certainty and the three epistemic options. Meek offers this new definition: “Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues, to focus on a coherent pattern, and submit to its reality.”
Meek argues that knowing is a three step process. First, we look at clues. Then we struggle to looks through the clues, and finally we integrate the clues. Confusing? Let’s look at an example. Think of those “magic eyes.” One is shown above. You are supposed to look at this 2D image and somehow you are able to see something in 3D. Knowing is like coming to see this 3D image. We are given a list of clues to how to see this image (http://www.magiceye.com/faq_example.htm). Then we try to do it ourselves. For the longest time I couldn’t get the stupid thing Read more »
Certainty and Knowledge
In our culture, the need for certainty is often held up as the norm, skepticism is even praised. The default position in the Scientific Method is doubt. We seem to believe that if something is true, it will be able to stand up to any test (without even questioning the validity of the test itself).
Until a few months ago, I also embraced this view.
I thought truth was something that could be put into nice neat propositional statements and always could be proved with absolute certainty. The first time I read Descartes’ Meditations, I soaked it up like a sponge. I thought that here was how I could know, with absolute certainty, that I exist, and subsequently that God exists. I could build a firm foundation and be certain of anything that comes from this foundation. After all, this foundation was built form the idea of radical doubt. But our need for certainty is misplaced and leads to epistemic nihilism (the inablitiy to know anything, and a sense of loss in this).
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