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What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

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Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#41

Post by n4r9 »

Anotheroneagain wrote: post #35
n4r9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which scientific theory or theories do you perceive being treated as inviolable?

It depends more on the person who does it, rather than a specific theory, but I will pick obesity in particular - there has hardly been any idea so widely contradicted by practical experience, yet it is still treated as an indisputable fact, to the extent that all the further work aims at resolving why people "lie" and how to make them eat less, rather than coming up with something else.

I don't understand... "obesity" has been "contradicted by practical experience"? Or do you mean the idea that following a calorie-restricted diet leads to weight loss?

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#42

Post by ecoquant »

pantalaimon wrote: post #25
anthk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happened in Europe from the 60's. A lot of people replaced Christianism with Horoscopes, which is a similar irrational bullshit to feel yourself better. Or buying lottery tickets depending on where they bought it, as if the place were magical or so.

Magical Thinking is way older than that and may well be the source for many religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking

[flagged]

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#43

Post by seszett »

mbivert wrote: post #37
emblaegh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's deeper than that: the vast majority of people believe in science in the exact same way as the used to believe in Christianism. Try asking around for bulletproof proofs of the Earth's roundness. Or communicating the idea that time and space aren't really distinct entities. I'm not so sure. The common person definitely cannot give scientific explanations for most things, but between modern medicine, computers an…

I think religions played a too often underestimated positive role in past societies, and I say that I someone who isn't particularly fond of what I would call the "religious mentality". For example in Buddhism there's the notion of karma: if you do something bad/good, you'll meet bad/good things in return. Now, there's the "fantasist" interpretation, with reincarnation & cie, but there's also a pragmatic approach: if…

> Or, frowning upon sodomy, considering that feces are a transmission route[0] for many common infections. Same thing with advanced promiscuity and STDs. Or the importance of sturdy couples (marriages, Confucianism) for kids's well-being (see e.g.[1]).

But all these things can be explained and understood rationally without the need for a divine book forbidding things for frivolous reasons (or at best, without any stated reason).

Basically, people don't really need a bible to know that poop is dirty (a parent or a doctor can explain it just fine) but when the bible explains that one shouldn't put one's penis in another's anus (does it actually say it, or does it just vaguely talk about an ill-defined action called "sodomy"?) it doesn't give valid reasons.

So in the end, while religions do have a positive role on some aspects, they also encourage thoughtless actions or even actively discourage rational thought because of gaps that shouldn't be questioned, or outright inconsistencies.

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#44

Post by sanitycheck »

seszett wrote: post #43
mbivert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think religions played a too often underestimated positive role in past societies, and I say that I someone who isn't particularly fond of what I would call the "religious mentality". For example in Buddhism there's the notion of karma: if you do something bad/good, you'll meet bad/good things in return. Now, there's the "fantasist" interpretation, with reincarnation & cie, but there's also a pragmatic approach: if…

> Or, frowning upon sodomy, considering that feces are a transmission route[0] for many common infections. Same thing with advanced promiscuity and STDs. Or the importance of sturdy couples (marriages, Confucianism) for kids's well-being (see e.g.[1]). But all these things can be explained and understood rationally without the need for a divine book forbidding things for frivolous reasons (or at best, without any sta…

Perhaps the problem religion solves is that half of all people are dumber than the average person.

Perhaps for a lot of those people "if you do bad thing big man in sky punish you" is the most convincing argument.

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#45

Post by AndrewKemendo »

svnt wrote: post #8

And Jung refined it, 150 years later: “our age has a blindness without parallel. We think we have only to declare an acknowledged form of faith to be incorrect or invalid, to become psychologically free of all the traditional effects of the Christian or Judaic religion. We believe in enlightenment, as if an intellectual change of opinion had somehow a deeper influence on our emotional processes, or indeed upon the un…

Then popper came along and dealt the final blow, proving that you can’t prove any “truth“ and there’s no such thing as certainty - simply levels of ignorance about claims

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#46

Post by AndrewKemendo »

seszett wrote: post #18
bitsinthesky wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating quote. Definitely need to read more Jung! And so, instead of asking here for the source I pinged the esteemed GPT: “The passage you provided is indeed from Carl Jung. It is from his work "Psychological Aspects of the Modern Archetype" which is found in Volume 10 of his collected works, titled "Civilization in Transition." This work was published in 1964, after his death, and is a compilation of various es…

> instead of asking here for the source I pinged the esteemed GPT Which gave you a wrong answer, as it is found in Volume 6, Psychological Types (pp. 268-267) published in 1971 (not sure about that date, maybe it's just the edition I found - looks like it might be 1921 which adds another layer of wrong to ChatGPT's answer). I really don't understand why people would ask ChatGPT for this kind of thing.

It’s Faster than searching + thinking (especially now with all the spam) and gives you a single answer that people don’t feel the need to verify

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#47

Post by mbivert »

seszett wrote: post #43
mbivert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think religions played a too often underestimated positive role in past societies, and I say that I someone who isn't particularly fond of what I would call the "religious mentality". For example in Buddhism there's the notion of karma: if you do something bad/good, you'll meet bad/good things in return. Now, there's the "fantasist" interpretation, with reincarnation & cie, but there's also a pragmatic approach: if…

> Or, frowning upon sodomy, considering that feces are a transmission route[0] for many common infections. Same thing with advanced promiscuity and STDs. Or the importance of sturdy couples (marriages, Confucianism) for kids's well-being (see e.g.[1]). But all these things can be explained and understood rationally without the need for a divine book forbidding things for frivolous reasons (or at best, without any sta…

I'm confident people understood the causality relations early on. But as time passes, the knowledge was progressively lost, and people were stuck with mis-understood habits: it's the "5 monkeys experiment"[0].

A Chinese friend once told me about the evolution of Confucius's interpretations: in the early days, a woman married to a poor excuse for a husband could be expected to leave him, for example so as to avoid her kids to imitate their father. Centuries later, breakups were strictly "haram".

The Muslims aversion for pork is another example.

The precise knowledge we have about poop's dirtiness is recent (e.g. first bacteria observed in 1676[1]; first virus in 1892[2]). Strictly speaking, we don't need divine books, but at some point, it probably was the only widespread, battle-tested option. Remember also that it was at a time with no Internet, and low literacy levels; people were different.

(I'm not intimate with the Bible's relationship with sodomy).

There's also the fact that the vast majority of people aren't receptive to rational arguments. Well-known, ubiquitous example: advertisement.

The fact that the Bible and others don't (always) give a why, do you think it's really a bad thing? There are valuable side-effects (let me leave this as an exercice).

[0]: https://intersol.ca/news/organizational-culture-and-the-5-mo...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#History_of_bacteriolo...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virology

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#48

Post by Anotheroneagain »

n4r9 wrote: post #41
Anotheroneagain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends more on the person who does it, rather than a specific theory, but I will pick obesity in particular - there has hardly been any idea so widely contradicted by practical experience, yet it is still treated as an indisputable fact, to the extent that all the further work aims at resolving why people "lie" and how to make them eat less, rather than coming up with something else.

I don't understand... "obesity" has been "contradicted by practical experience"? Or do you mean the idea that following a calorie-restricted diet leads to weight loss?

Yes. That it's caused by eating too much.

Re: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

#50

Post by froh »

Anotheroneagain wrote: post #16

For a long time I've seen Kant as someone who deeply misunderstood the Enlightenment. It was specifically meant to free people of this endless bickering over some scripture or other abstract issue, and told them see for themselves. But science has long descended back into "rationalism" (what an unfortunate term), and is no better than what the enlightenment fought against.

so do you meanwhile recognize him as one of the guys who started the age of enlightenment and defined what it is? with, for example this very essay that is referenced here? which is one of the groundbreaking philosophical works of that epoch?
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