In the matter of abstract ideas it becomes much more complicated deciding and being persuaded of truth. Some factors:

1) Respect for authoritative people and institutions, sources deemed reliable,

2) Obtaining real-life verification through empiric experiences and careful examination and thought given to the info

3) Large numbers of credible people believe the matter

4) A suspension of doubt with a sense of credibility, objections laid to rest comfortably for the while

1) It seems a matter of recognizing, choosing to believe, choosing not to believe, dismissing/ignoring info.

2) Familiarity and frequent exposure to info that convinces us of its reality.

3) Sources we respect and feel confident in believing convince us of truth, including numbers of people–the persuasiveness of the many

4) A commonsense acceptance of pragmatic matter of matter of factness of something–avoiding danger and pain, seeing in the dark, touching things, etc.

Many people (including me, much of the time) typically interpret “transcend” as having connotations of “above, greater, bigger, better, superior, more inclusive.” (transcendental meditation, anyone?) I’m not convinced this is what Kant intended. I think it may be more like our “picture of reality, what Kant called a necessary transcendental unity” (blog, para. 4) is not and cannot be reality itself, yet it maps (with varying degrees of accuracy) onto reality (the universe-in-itself). It necessarily transcends reality because it is not an implicit part of reality. Reality can do just fine without whatever “map” we create of it. So to “transcend” is more of a step sideways than a superior view from above.

I can’t help but wonder what effect on what Kant, James and Pierce thought and wrote would have been created had they available to them our current knowledge of evolution. Evolution, when accepted as a fact and INTEGRATED into one’s philosophy and world-view, changes everything.

So far, philosophy hasn’t really been able to integrate evolutionary theory very well. Theology has completely ignored it. Brain science is currently in the process of swallowing and digesting theology. Not much of it will remain when this process is completed. Theology is attempting to survive by encapsulating itself in a stony shell.

Consider one of our million-year ancestors, or even a 100,000 year-old ancestor. How would “…William James’ conception of “The Will to Believe” in which he sees that what we choose to believe in fundamentally orients our perception of reality and as a result the way we act in the world….” apply to such a person? Survival, procreation and getting along with other humans was the key to evolutionary success. Reliance on what works often enough to make survival more likely may constitute “belief” in such a situation. Disbelief in what endangers you and reduces your chance of survival is equally important.

In this sense, natural selection drives belief systems. Useful belief systems are positively reinforced, non-useful or harmful belief systems are negatively reinforced. There is, of course, a wide range of mediocrity between the truly useful and harmful. Natural selection generally works to eliminate the worst in any collection of competing organisms or systems, but permits survival of the mediocre.

my take at the scientific worldview. The problem is certainly not the scientific Method (testing ideas on experimental results and in parallel getting ideas from careful observation of phenomena), which is so far quite an unparalleled way of making up our way in the Universe.

The problem is the interpretation of what we do when investigate the world this way. How close to the original is the reconstruction of reality we do this way ?
Can the scientific method be extended to deeper levels of reality ? how do we define those deeper level ( what is the ordering criterion there, the hierarchy principle which enables us to say “deeper” ?)

Moreover I would like to challenge the whole notion of “worldview” as being too shallow to account for the principle that make us act. I want to say that our worldview is not the motor of our cats, it is more a consequence.
The difference between a cat and human being doesn’t reside mainly in the fact that they have different world views. The point is that the cat has a different capacities to intellectualize and as such different level of consciousness. When the cat will know how to speak, his level of consciousness will increase. is the worldview of the cat important in learning how to speak ? I don’t think so.

My point is that we human should learn how to speak, should increase our capacities and transmit the new abilities, before our worldview can consequently change.

I discover, as a surprise to myself, that my view is strangely mechanical. Maybe that’s why after all I am a scientist. To be coherent, as s scientist following Andrew Cohen’s teaching, my view is that th eAuthentic self is as well mechanical. Let’s say that itmight have deeper levels of reality than the mechanical one, but it must also have this one (which is the good news, since the mechanics is what our human brain knows how to do). So can we be a scientist and not believe that “ consciousness comes from the brain” but rather to believe that the mechanical view is still of actuality, that everything reals obeys to some laws which our human scientific capacity can and will be able to unveil ?

If everything obeys mechanical laws, that’s really a good news, because we have a good grip on it and more than this, human know already how to transmit mechanical knowledge to each other. So transmission will be possible.

Jeff I will see in the next blog how my scientific worldview is probably destroyed!