So easy, a caveman could do it....

Gisteron,

Do you realize that not everything people say is a personal attack against you? I’m also not certain you’re aware of the aggressive tone you tend to take in your replies. I like to think that it is not intentional.

I am not meaning to imply that you sound like a horrible person or anything like that, please don’t take it that way.

As I was mentioning in my prior post, this is a good example of it. I am not saying that this is what you are doing but that it appears you are simply reading what someone else wrote and responding to it with your own opinion, completely disregarding any validity of their ideas and opinions. At least that is how it appears to me, I have been wrong before. :whistle:

Gisteron wrote: Now, given this misrepresentation, please, explain to the fair judgement of our readers how you are behaving like anything less than the "dishonest [censored]" I accused you of being in my post #164221.

Boy, you are testing my patience, lol...

I do not speak as you do, have you missed that?

Should I ask to borrow a pencil, I would say "Can I steal a pencil?" Which of course is not really stealing, but rather I am asking for one to be given/loaned to me...

I am not dishonest, lol, but given your way of speaking, I can see why you think so...

Gisteron wrote: No, that is not what I said. I said I wouldn't respond to you "in that thread", unless I was "faced with a direct insult", which, of course, is an attack, but necessarily a personal one as opposed to just any. You know that this is what I said.

Yes, let me fix what I wrote for you so you dont feel so misrepresented...

But, in my head, this is what I meant, but becasue you are so literal, you cannot envision anything you cannot see...

Jestor wrote: You say you wouldnt respond to me [in that thread], unless I attacked you [in that theread], and yet you [ [strike]do me[/strike] attack me in this thread] ...

Nice example you are setting [by attacking me].... lol....

Are you really attacking me? No, of course not, lol, how ridiculous, lol...

I take nothing short of a physical assault as a real "attack", lol...

I would probably have you laughing at the silly things I say.... And the silly way I say them...

Or, maybe not... Maybe I would have to wear my extra tight underpants so I could be uptight enough for you to take me serious...

But, as I am using those words, and they are my ideas, so, for the purpose of me speaking, they are representative of me...

Just like you get all bent out of shape, if I use words as you dont, or "misquote" you, in case you have not noticed, I didnt quote you, unless I use quotes... I am surmising your words, and how I took them... Doesnt mean I am right, only how I took them...

Ever read Phortis' signature?

I have a saying like that, "I am responsible for what I say, not what you hear.."

Your schooling and studies and life have lead you to understand things a certain way, and mine in another...

By your standards, I am wrong, lol, by my standards, you are simply interpreting the words slightly different...

Thats ok...

Gisteron wrote:

Science cannot speak to many human experiences, like love or grief...

Are you spitting both psychology, and biology, and, particularly, neuroscience in the face, or do you just not know that they exist, deal with exactly that, and are classified as sciences? I'm not saying that you're wrong, only that the things you say are...

I may be misunderstanding Alan, but I think he was saying that science doesn't explain why those things happen. Psychology, biology, and especially neuroscience (btw I have to help my psych major girlfriend who loves neuroscience study all the time. I'm not an expert but I have experience with all three of these sciences) explain what happens when we feel them. They can explain the chemicals released in the brain while we're experiencing love or grief, but not necessarily what caused those chemicals to release.

By that, I mean they can't explain why news that my dog died released more of certain chemicals than others. (dog didn't really die, just an example. I did get more sad just from typing that though.)

If I'm wrong, I'm sorry and will be more than happy to accept that. As I said, I have understanding of these topics, but it is limited.

Most people arent trying to communicate here to begin with, not really.

I disagree. Typing and responding on a forum most certainly counts as a form of communication. I would agree that not everyone here is trying to understand eachother, although our lists may differ somewhat.

Goken wrote:

Gisteron wrote:

Science cannot speak to many human experiences, like love or grief...

Are you spitting both psychology, and biology, and, particularly, neuroscience in the face, or do you just not know that they exist, deal with exactly that, and are classified as sciences? I'm not saying that you're wrong, only that the things you say are...

I may be misunderstanding Alan, but I think he was saying that science doesn't explain why those things happen. Psychology, biology, and especially neuroscience (btw I have to help my psych major girlfriend who loves neuroscience study all the time. I'm not an expert but I have experience with all three of these sciences) explain what happens when we feel them. They can explain the chemicals released in the brain while we're experiencing love or grief, but not necessarily what caused those chemicals to release.

By that, I mean they can't explain why news that my dog died released more of certain chemicals than others. (dog didn't really die, just an example. I did get more sad just from typing that though.)

Now, I'm not sure if neuroscience in particular got behind the exact mechanism of all of those things. However, how emotional attachment influences our experience of events is not unknown or beyond the understanding of psychology. We aren't identical, but we are close enough that psychiatry, the medical practice application of psychology, is actually a thing. I don't know what Alan meant, but if he meant literally that science cannot speak to experiences like love or grief, we know for a fact that this is incorrect. Now, science may not be very good at speaking to those things just yet (though it is less than perfect at everything, so I wouldn't know what standard Alan measures it against), but it can speak to them, and it gets better at doing so all the time. In fact, I would even go so far and assert that even if it currently didn't speak to them, since those are real phenomena, some discipline of studying real phenomena or another would eventually get behind them, too. So that whether it does nor not, science can (in principle) speak to those things. And we also know that it does and does so pretty well.

Wescli, I shall respond to you in private lest this thread digress from the topic it was intended for. However, since I wrote the text as a response to the public post, feel free to quote any or all parts of the incoming message at your discretion in public, if you wish it to be a public discussion. I thought of opening a thread for that purpose, but then it felt a little self-centered to start a thread about myself that wasn't a journal, so I'll leave the choice in your hands instead.

Gisteron wrote:

Goken wrote:

Gisteron wrote:

Science cannot speak to many human experiences, like love or grief...

Are you spitting both psychology, and biology, and, particularly, neuroscience in the face, or do you just not know that they exist, deal with exactly that, and are classified as sciences? I'm not saying that you're wrong, only that the things you say are...

I may be misunderstanding Alan, but I think he was saying that science doesn't explain why those things happen. Psychology, biology, and especially neuroscience (btw I have to help my psych major girlfriend who loves neuroscience study all the time. I'm not an expert but I have experience with all three of these sciences) explain what happens when we feel them. They can explain the chemicals released in the brain while we're experiencing love or grief, but not necessarily what caused those chemicals to release.

By that, I mean they can't explain why news that my dog died released more of certain chemicals than others. (dog didn't really die, just an example. I did get more sad just from typing that though.)

Now, I'm not sure if neuroscience in particular got behind the exact mechanism of all of those things. However, how emotional attachment influences our experience of events is not unknown or beyond the understanding of psychology. We aren't identical, but we are close enough that psychiatry, the medical practice application of psychology, is actually a thing. I don't know what Alan meant, but if he meant literally that science cannot speak to experiences like love or grief, we know for a fact that this is incorrect. Now, science may not be very good at speaking to those things just yet (though it is less than perfect at everything, so I wouldn't know what standard Alan measures it against), but it can speak to them, and it gets better at doing so all the time. In fact, I would even go so far and assert that even if it currently didn't speak to them, since those are real phenomena, some discipline of studying real phenomena or another would eventually get behind them, too. So that whether it does nor not, science can (in principle) speak to those things. And we also know that it does and does so pretty well.

Now to quote you a little less directly. Sources? :laugh:

This was another thread I feel had a more personal intention and should have been kept as such.

It was doomed to begin with, and given that it has me quoted from another thread at the outset of the OP, I feel I can say that this thread only validates what I wrote.

You'll have to be more specific, Goken. What do you need a source for? I claimed in essence two things: That science is the set of disciplines concerned with the study of the natural world (using a particular methodology), and that psychiatry exists. Now, I cannot provide a source for the latter. Lots of sources have a lot to say about it, and many places and people claim to practice psychiatry, but that is not evidence in favour of the existence of psychiatry. I guess therefore I have to retract that claim.

However, I do have a source for the other one. Behold, Oxford Dictionaries:
science:
"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment"

Now, the phrasing is ambiguous, I admit. Either science is concerned with the intersection of the physical and the natural world, in which case a phenomenon must be both, or it is concerned with both worlds, i.e. the union of them, of which the natural world with its phenomena would be a subset. My suspicion is that the union is meant. I shall thusly review a different dictionary to confirm or disconfirm this assumption. Behold, Merriam-Webster's:
science:
"knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation"
Now, in this case the natural world only is mentioned. Since in case that Oxford meant the intersection of the two worlds, that would only encompass a subset of the natural world, whereas Webster's tells us that it encompasses the entirety, I must tentatively accept that the union of the two sets is meant. Moving on to a direct formal proof that science can talk about love and grief.


Premise 1: Love and grief, at least the versions we have reason to talk about, occur in such a way that they influence natural beings. Their results occur in nature.
Premise 2: All things that occur within nature are natural phenomena.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, the results of love and grief are natural phenomena.
Premise 3: All natural phenomena are within the realm of science.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, the results of love and grief are within the realm of science.
Premise 4: The set of natural phenomena is a countable set.
Axiom 1: Let A(t) be a statement dependant from t that states that an element x(t) out of the set of natural phenomena has begone, is undergoing, or has completed being explored by science at time t and let t be a non-negative real number.
Axiom 2: Let no x(t_1) be equal to any x(t_2).
Conclusion 3: (from the definition of countability) Therefore there exists at least one t for which all A(t)=TRUE.
Conclusion 4: (from the definition of A and t) Therefore, science, if it has not yet, will at some point in time have begone or have completed exploring the nature of love and grief.
Q.E.D.

Goken, that's pretty good paraphrase, thanks for attending to my intention so carefully. Regarding your example, I agree, your description of grief is one that science can say little about with any meaning. While, it may be able to measure electro-chemical changes in your brain state when comparing the measurements of the pre- to the post-grief event, it can neither accurately describe the meaning of the loss nor the significance of your grief experience. Some gesture of mourning, a ritual of saying good-bye, a poem describing the experience of loss, or song expressing deep feeling speaks the truth more clearly than some machine's read-out of your change in brain state. My other point, Goken and Jestor, is that there are different kinds of knowing and different objects of knowledge. Wisdom tells us that it is not one size fits all.

I've been hesitating to comment on this thread, and perhaps this is ill advised, but this conversation seems to be one that should have been conducted in private messages. Having it out in the open like this seems self serving from my point of view. Not everyone on here is behaving this way, but this whole thread just seems like a long petty argument, the only purpose of which is to prove to everyone reading that one person is "right" and the other person is "wrong." If the conversation devolves into citing comment numbers and picking apart how exactly someone used a word just so you can get an inch over on them, it's time to end it. Proving that you're right or that someone else is wrong shouldn't be important to a Jedi.
Though, I am glad to see that some people are just having conversations about philosophy and science.

Alan, thank you.

Gisteron. I guess I was trying, originally, to state that science can't tell me why something makes me feel sad, it can just tell me what happens in my brain when I do. I assumed in your response that you were trying to tell me that science can explain this. I misunderstood. You weren't saying this at all. You were just saying that science explains nature and that emotions are part of nature so science does explain emotions, except that you didn't tell me specifically how science explains emotions.

I got confused and thought you could give me a link to an article that could answer my question a little more directly, my question being why a particular event triggers the release of chemicals associated with an emotion. See my dying dog example above. That is what I meant when asking for a source. You have done a good job of supplying this kind of article as back up for your statements in the past.

Science cannot speak to many human experiences, like love or grief...

Are you spitting both psychology, and biology, and, particularly, neuroscience in the face, or do you just not know that they exist, deal with exactly that, and are classified as sciences? I'm not saying that you're wrong, only that the things you say are...

You have yet to explain how the things Alan said are wrong. At least it has yet to become evident to me that he is. Maybe this goes back to something said in the OP. Something about things being explained simply. There could be several things happening here, one of which is that I'm not understanding what you're trying to say. Again, if that is the case, I apologize for my density. (My density has brought me to you. lol)

Conclusion 1: Therefore, the results of love and grief are natural phenomena.
Premise 3: All natural phenomena are within the realm of science

I'm sorry I left so much out of my quote, this is already a really long post and I assumed that just taking this point would get my point across.

I would like to point out that you state that the results of love and grief are natural phenomena. I never disagreed. That is, assuming, that the results are the releases of certain chemicals inside the brain. I asked what caused that. What tells my brain that my dog dying makes me sad and releases whatever chemicals are associated with the experience of that emotion.

I do have a feeling that this conversation may never end in an agreement so I'm prepared to let it end here as we have already pretty successfully derailed the thread. Sorry Jestor.