Are there phenomena which simple rationality cannot adequately explain?
 

Disclaimer: a lot of this language sounds like hand-wavy new-agey bullshit. Keep in mind that may be due to the limitations of language and not just actual bullshit

I feel the answer must be yes, because people are inherently imperfect and therefore can never possess total understanding of the way the universe operates.

The following dichotomy is proposed:

there are "trans-rational" (or "post-rational") modes of consciousness or experiences, and pre-rational modes of consciousness. This basically corresponds to the way in which phenomena are interpreted. An example is mythology. Myths can be interpreted literally, as in lightning is literally caused by Zeus, or metaphorically in an "as-if" way of thinking.

I'm not totally sure how to distinguish between the two nor am I completely sure of what "trans-rational" actually means, but by necessity a trans-rational world view or interpretation of something must ******* rationality while augmenting that in some way; perhaps this can simply be called high-end thinking.


One could also say pre-verbal, verbal, and post-verbal. This seems easier to understand, as most ideas accessible to us are shared through language and writing, and it would be difficult to convey most abstract ideas without the use of language. By contrast, and I think most people have experienced this, sometimes an idea formulates or crystallizes far more rapidly and succinctly than it can be articulated. Perhaps an entire book is needed to adequately relay something which you intuitively understand but cannot adequately share due to the limitations of language and the speed of speaking and writing relative to the speed at which thoughts are processed.

Yet another way to describe pre/trans rational ideas is preconventional and postconventional. Conventional is exactly what it sounds like, the established norm, the putative method by which understanding occurs. Pre-conventional or pre-rational would be akin to a belief in magic, literal interpretation of mythology, improper application of causes and effects (human sacrifices end famine, for example).

I don't totally know what this is all getting at, but I feel that A: the universe, experience and consciousness are far more complex than conventional methods can ever account for, and B: there are ideas or experiences which have merit but cannot adequately be explained by rationality alone.



The ideas given here are "elevation of the pre-rational" and "reduction of the trans-rational". Someone getting high from huffing keyboard cleaner, shitting his pants and claiming to know the meaning of life based on that experience I would assume to be "pre-rational", but how do we determine the "trans-rational"? If the trans rational includes rational thought, it should be subject to verification via empirical testing. But how does one verify a subjective experience? It's easy to verify the shortcomings of the pre-rational (Sylvia Browne says hello from HELL). Just test the prediction empirically. But how do we test the converse?

In terms of finding any sort of ordered meaning or spirituality in life, this makes more sense at the surface level than anything I've encountered, but what do you guys think?

yeah man :warp:

We're all gonna die

This is a good topic for discussion.

As you've said, it is a failure of language in many regards that makes us unable to explain certain psychic phenomenon that could be interpreted as post-rational or even mystical. And further, there are ideas and experiences that must have rational explanations, but we just don't have a paradigm to interpret them in or we are not intelligent enough to grasp the underlying logic contained therein. That doesn't mean they aren't rational phenomenon, though.

The video eventually discusses Tarot, and how it can be used (and only really has any merit, IMO) as basically a framework to discuss whatever conflict or struggle or you are having. It is only as useful as the subject's imagination and ability to use the pattern of cards to insert a life event or period and see it in a new way. That is completely different from, as they say, someone who really believes it is predicting the future and pulling events from the past. But I don't necessarily see how that is trans-rational, either. We do that kind of thing every day with basic empathy and observation, interpretting things into a personal narrative that we carry around and call our selves, along with our "biological" personality (for lack of a better word) and memories. Everything has a place.

As to your question:
Does something have to be strictly "true" or verifiable to have merit, even? It is based on the intellectual capabilities and past indoctrinations of the person on what kind of bullshit, for lack of a better word, they believe. For most people, it doesn't seem to be practical to acknowledge the limits of what can be known to them.

For other people, like you, you are coming from a place where there are things that cannot be explained and that is not okay to you. It either needs to be explained or needs to be thought of as useless. I do not know how to come to a concrete conclusion as to how to both accept that some things cannot be explained rationally either 1) because they are just too complex for us to see with our intelligence and advancements 2) they only have personal significance and are not truly real at all. But there we are again: Does something subjective not have (scientific) merit if it can not be proven or extrapolated to others' experiences? It would be nice to have a neat little answer for this, but I don't know what it is.

why haven't some of us figured out that you can't actually put anything in the first post in a thread? it's unreadable

seems ok to me

i only have that problem when i'm not logged in

get better computers

bigger monitors that should solve the problem

my answer to what I think you are asking is basically no. I don't think it is very likely that any sort of sub or super physical levels of reality exist in any kind of spiritual sense, i.e. there are no ghosts, no deities, no destiny or karma, no divining future events by reading omens, etc. The things which we perceive in the universe as defying rational explanation either are just in our heads or actually can be explained using the same (or similar) enlightened methods of scientific investigation into truth that we apply to anything else, and the complexity of such phenomena simply escapes what we are able to understand currently. But in theory, everything in the universe can be explained rationally given sufficient human knowledge and understanding.

for instance, it is not beyond the bounds of physical reality that the future could be discerned, but it would require absolute and total God-like knowledge of every acting force in the universe and the ability to calculate their influences mathematically. If we had a complete, quantified understanding of the first cause, we could predict with accuracy everything that will ever happen in the history of the universe. However, this kind of power and intelligence will never be achieved by humans (probably).

yeah though guys skip the first post it's terribly hard to read

I agree with you that things should be able to be explained scientifically, but if we are not able to explain something based on our limited resources, how do we discern what is untrue from what is true but unexplainable for whatever reason (limit in human intelligence or knowledge of scientific principles etc)?

there are tons of unexplained things in science stop thinking about false flags and ghosts

Spontaneous Human Combustion
Red Rain
Earthquake Lights
Jets and Sprites
Starjelly
Naga Fireballs
Marfa Lights


we need to understand electromagnetism more - ICP was correct in their thesis

I'm not any of those things constitute being "in science"

:Skeptical

right and The Omega Concern is a total loony...

my point being if we're on a football field of unexplained phenomena this ghost talk is already 90 yards down the field. what about first down with how the pyramids were built or easter island

yeah, I see your point. I'm not sure I can think of very many legitimate examples of things which science has actually attempted to explain and totally failed. These things usually are beyond quantification and thus the scientific method cannot be applied to them... and generally fall into the category of "no one really knows if this is true or not"

But I still see your point. I guess I just feel like the inability to apply science to a phenomenon should not automatically constitute THE UNEXPLAINABLE or otherworldliness or spirituality in our minds, because that just leads us down paths of magical thinking which I believe are not helpful to us as individuals or as a species as tempting as they are.

ok, so in that vein, I don't really buy things like that as being "unexplained." That's like History Channel conspiracy theorist alien bating BS. The pyramids were built by many, many people dragging heavy-ass blocks across the desert and up ramps and shit, as difficult as it sounds. There is nothing about it that is "unexplainable" or physically impossible. When people say they think shit like that is impossible what I hear is, "I can't imagine doing it therefore no one could have." which is stupid

you always hear about ghosts being dressed in old-timey clothing and they are from the past but what if you lived in a modern building where something bad happened do you think you would see a ghost of a guy texting in the corner?

you wake up in the middle of the night and there's a ghostly figure hovering over your bed moaning "whatttsss youuurr wiiifiiii passsswwwwoooorrrrddddd"

http://media.npr.org/assets/artslife...f50-s6-c30.jpg

I mean I can't imagine how microchips were invented and it is difficult for me to conceive how data is stored as 1s and 0s, but it's also not hard for me to recognize that just because I can't personally understand something doesn't mean it's magic.

it probably is magic though

ok but what about certain rooms only being made of a certain stone and why or the air shafts and how they managed to see in the dark while building the passageways (if there are no soot stains in some places deep within the pyramid). some of the stones used were reported to be taken from quarries over 80km away.

we don't even know what's on the bottom of our oceans.

http://www.ufo-contact.com/wp-conten...-Machines.jpeg

http://www.everythingselectric.com/i...d-seafloor.jpg

yes but even if you were the smartest guy in the world and you couldn't understand it or be able to explain it wouldn't make it "false" or "magic"

I'm not really seeing how these things are unexplainable. You seem to be pointing to things which obviously have real answers that we just don't know. The question of whether some things are unknowable because of lack of documentation such as the exact way the pyramids were put together is not really what I think killtrocity was going for. I mean we are never going to know what George Washington ate for breakfast on June 3rd, 1760, but that doesn't have anything to do with aspects of the universe that defy scientific explanation

although like I said in theory if we could perfectly measure first cause we could know that he ate eggs over easy and the hearts of his enemies or whatever

how scotty hasnt been banned yet.

cuntitude

i don't understand the question, but yes

the only difference being that people don't devote their entire lives to breakfastology



















































































...OR DO THEY :confused:

totally agree

But just because something is unknowable doesn't in-and-of-itself mean it's probably false. There probably is no God, and my degree of uncertainty vs. awareness of not knowing makes me say that. But other people see these and come up with different ratios and say my awareness of not knowing and my experience of X, Y, and Z make me think there probably is a God. We have different windows of tolerance to the unknown, and that goes beyond our opinions of whether God exists or not. Yes Occam's razor blah blah blah but do you get what I'm saying? Trying to make sense here, not doing a very good job.

Also, the older you get - by virtue of your time on earth expanding - the more likely you are to experience "mystical" phenomena that is not rational from your perspective. Some people will right then say aha, this is proof that mystical things exist. Some people will say okay this is weird, but I'm not sure what it means. And if you were to say this means nothing, just a bunch of coincidences that have no meaning, that closes you off to ever knowing anything that may not be rational, if such a thing exists.

And even if it doesn't have some cosmic meaning relating to humanity or spirituality or whatever, it may have a personal one which comes to another point which is the meaning of "real" but that is another topic.

well of course

Also, I mean I guess I can agree that nothing is "unexplainable". But that doesn't concede that everything can be explained "rationally"

^ yeah that's pretty much why the "transrational" idea makes sense to me, in addition to your first post. I have an analogy of sorts:

so is a group of people comprised ultimately of atoms? Yes. But can we succinctly or even realistically describe social dynamics in terms of straight-line particle motion? Absolutely not. And that's not to say that we couldn't in theory, or that a supercomputer exponentially more complex than any sort of processor conceivable right now couldn't possibly break down the inner workings of a human body and brain to the simplest components, trace the behavior of each part, and calculate a probable or even inexorable outcome... but the simple physics need to be augmented, or at least benefit from, additional layers of understanding: the biological, the psychological, the sociological, the economic, yes?

Or how about something easier to conceptualize: are the workings of a video game ultimately comprised of zeroes and ones? Yes. Is it possible to describe how to kill a dragon in Skyrim using zeroes and ones? Yes. Is that a practical or succinct way of understand the process of killing a dragon in Skyrim? No. So it's not that the initial system is wrong, it's just that it lacks the complexity which arises from the systems which are layered on top of it, and speaking in terms of this complexity is ultimately beneficial for describing more complex phenomena.

Do "normal" sized bodies follow conventional physics? Yes. Do electrons? No. Are "normal" sized bodies comprised of electron-sized or near-electron-sized particles? Yes. Do electrons and rocks follow the same rules? No. There is a disconnect going on here which must be necessity be caused by an incomplete or inadequate form of thinking (assuming there isn't something huge about the universe which rationality cannot deal with). But our current system isn't "wrong"! So I guess the question becomes "Is the 'trans-rational' really just a "more accurate rational?"

So both of those thought examples are similar and involve complex systems arising from less complex systems. Not really sure if that's exactly what we're talking about. How about another one:

So primitive cultures would associate things like rain dances with summoning rain, or other rituals with bringing about certain desired effects - voodoo, alchemy, sacrifices to gods, perhaps prayer in the "wishing" sense - it seems like in these cases there is a perceived causal relationship which is usually non-causal. So perhaps sometimes the ritual happens to have some sort of causal relationship to the desired effect, and sometimes it doesn't. Like with alchemy, for example. I don't know much about alchemy except that it involved mixing things based on prior knowledge of mixing things, sometimes based on established experience but also with some sort of mystical affect attributed to the things being mixed. We can talk about these mixing process with pinpoint accuracy and precision in 2013, being able to accurately predict the outcomes of controlled reactions - we have a system of explanations which perfectly fits the observations - but back then it was essentially a ritual for obtaining desired outcomes. And strangely enough I don't think what we do today is dramatically different. We have developed a juggernaut of a school of thought for explaining and predicting alchemical processes based on cause and effect which fits the empirical data, but that initial system of mere association between objects is still central to the process of chemistry, we've only added more complexity and sophistication to the system of understanding, which has led to more sophisticated applications of "alchemy", so to speak. So is chemistry "trans-alchemy" or "more accurate alchemy"?

So is it conceivable that in 200 years we will add even more complexity to various systems of thought? I think it is inevitable, because there are things we still don't know but which must have explanations, and therefore I think it is reasonable to think of a "trans-rational" system of thought as something which augments rational thought without neglecting it.

So with the archaic or magical systems of understanding, sometimes the association is grounded in reality, sometimes it is not. Sometimes they got lucky with alchemical recipes, but what about rain dances? Isn't that just a happy coincidence when it works? So this system of happy coincidences called the "pre-rational" becomes augmented with a tried and true way to determine causal relationships: the scientific method, or the "rational". So does that imply, if you buy into the pre/trans dichotomy, that or current system for explaining the universe gets lucky sometimes but totally misses as well? Perhaps that systems of equations, while adequate in most cases, are missing something in other areas? So the leap from pre-rational to rational is pretty large, there's a significant improvement being made. My question then is what kind of dramatically significant improvement will come next? Will it have to do with how societies function as wholes? Will it have to do with consciousness as it relates to brains? Will it be some other even more accurate method for determining truth amidst misleads akin to rain dances being associated with rain? Is consciousness arising from complex systems an inherent property of reality itself? If this part strikes you as too metaphysical or theoretical, read this article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...consciousness/


This part gets abstract and is just a vomiting of thoughts:
This is a side note, but one thing which rationality does not account for is systems of values - what makes one thing aesthetically pleasing? Films, music, artwork, faces, sunsets... some of these can be attributed to evolutionary tendencies in a pretty logical way. But there is a gargantuan lack of understanding of values, esthetics, and morals when it comes to rationality alone. But if one were to poll an audience or look at aggregate ratings or opinions of the aforementioned things, there is usually some degree of consensus. Another example: a strong case can be made that love is the only truly rational act (read "The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm), a conclusion arrived at via logic, but traditional empiricism totally neglects the idea that certain things are inherently "better" than others, and certainly that humans are capable of putting others before themselves - this violates self-preservation according to evolution! Maybe...

Ok so perhaps the whole idea of putting others before oneself is just another evolutionary mechanism for perpetuating groups of species (to me this seems as odd as describing a human in terms of electron distribution, but ok). But it's also strangely aligned with the teachings of that Jesus dude, who was arguably ahead of his time, whom everybody has been freaking out about for 2000 years. Logic denotes that living things have survival mechanisms built into them, but where does the will to survive come from? The lesson IMO is that systems are self-perpetuating independent of motive. So we're all supposed to be motivated according to our DNA by the desire to create the most evolutionarily advantageous offspring to perpetuate our own genetic data and therefore lead to a fitter species, yes? So not only is the individual perpetuating itself, the collective of individuals is self-perpetuating, for subsequent generations. So maybe we all get together and form culture and therefore similar tastes as an extension of evolution, to self-perpetuate, to not kill leach other due to lack of common ground and values, to reinforce each other and therefore the continuation of the species and by extension the new collective system known as society which has emerged form this coming together of parts. But if values are culturally relative, than how can they arise from DNA? And so we have a situation where things like collective values and behaviors are arising from a collection of parts, the parts being people in this case, in the same way that a person is a collection of other self-perpetuating systems. And if this complexity arises based on probability in the same way that life arises from non-life due to retention of individual mutations and therefore incrementally increasing complexities, then how can "values" or perceived quality be subjective? Unless quality (what is good, beautiful or efficient/situation appropriate in an Aristotelian way) is a distinct property of the universe. What if truth is a subset of quality, and therefore just one aspect of it parallel to goodness and beauty as measures of quality? Could the "trans-rational" incorporate these things to augment rationality? Can the subjective be quantified and predicted using a calculus even more exponentially complex than that required to predict the outcomes of societies based on straight-line particle collisions, with the caveat that "subjective" carries with it a connotation of a unique set of circumstances and experiences specific to one person or situation which has it's own ideal set of conditions which might be refereed to as "good", "beautiful", or "true"?

yeah I pretty much agree with everything you've said except acceding to slunken's claim that the pyramids are unexplainable.

I definitely believe there is a difference between something being unknowable because of lack of evidence and being unexplainable by rationality. I think most everyone would agree those two things are not the same, I feel like slunken is muddying the waters. He's probably trolling, I am drunk

I'm cool to drive.

killtrocity that is far too long, but I read the first two paragraphs and basically I am down with what you are saying as well. I believe the human experience is comprised in part by things which we are not able to trace back to rational, scientific causes. I think the only place I differ from you and reprise is that just in terms of framing, I don't think it is helpful to say that that kind of thing constitutes the existence of something beyond the realm of the explainable. I think it is better for people to look at it in terms of I don't personally understand this but I acknowledge there is almost certainly science under it, even if my senses are presenting me with this thing which is beyond understanding. I personally don't see that attitude as lessening the significance of "spiritual" or "mystical" experiences in our lives. I think it makes us human that we feel things that are unexplainable. I just also think that saying that literally means there are mystical forces in the universe around us is counterproductive and gives fodder to people who do LITERALLY think there are mystical things flying around us and fucking with shit

i'm just saying that one person's "science" may well be anothers "magic"