Much has been made of the idea that in order for logic and emotion to do what we think they should do (whatever that may be), they have to be kept far away from each other. Is it possible, or even desireable, to have an emotional attachment to an idea, and still argue it logically? Or does emotional involvement completely undermine the credibility of your case?

To me logic is a system for identifying relationships among propositions so that the validity of statements can be evaluated given the truth of other statements.

And Rebecca, as always, the question is well put, and is always a puzzler, even when we're all trying to be good.

Damned if I know. I spend a lot of time thinking about brains lately, about The Brain as an organ, just another organ of the body -- and damned if I know.

It seems to me obvious that both logic and feelings are just words that we apply to things our brains can do. Until recently, I had resisted the rigid opposition of "thought" to "feeling" mainly out of literary-historical training. When you trace even a single cultural tradition over centuries, it is hard to resist thinking (sorry) that logic and sentimentality both, along with a few other moods, are equally potential moods of the human brain, and that there is a certain historical logic (sorry) in the way that moods generalized to cultural periods succeed each other.

I'm sure that's clear as mud. Sorry. People who read Frye, eg, will know whereof I speak.

But for instance: it can't be a secret to anyone that we are living now in what students of poetics would think of as an intensely ironic/satirical age, when any and every faith or intellectual commitment is instant fodder for any dissenting critic.

It must be easier to live in epic cultures (as long as no one rapes or plunders you), or romantic ones, or maybe even tragic ones (heavy commitment to cause and effect in those -- see, eg, USA). It would be wonderful to live in a comic culture, a culture deeply in touch with the eternal return, the cycles of nature, a sense of wholeness.

But we don't. We are too smart.

As an example, opponents of reproductive choice for women often want to couch their criticisms in "logic", such as "harm to the mother", "harm to society", or "life begins at 'x' weeks", etc., and nearly always fail to acknowledge that what's really driving them to oppose choice is their own moral beliefs. I don't know, but I suspect that at some level they know that these beliefs would discredit their "logic", and that the beliefs alone offer nothing with which to sway the opinion of another, so they persist in their attempt to be objective.

If a critic of reproductive choice were ever to come right out and say "I know it's just a bunch of cells, but I think women who have sex for fun are immoral and need to be controlled or punished", then I'd be all ears. But the crap you see in "counselling" pamphlets and web pages - about how abortion makes women feel bad and they all regret it, and how these tiny lumps of cells have souls and feelings and little tiny hands - is, to me, just "logic" as the sheep's clothing, with personal beliefs as the wolf.

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Hmm. I take a very different position from Sisyphus. Would like to elaborate, but to put it in a nutshell:
To me logic is a system for identifying relationships among propositions so that the validity of statements can be evaluated given the truth of other statements.

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I would argue that to a large extent, given the sensory/intellectual limitations of the species, that logic, is at its root, an aesthetic choice, and therefore a great deal of personal feeling (often masked as proofs of epistemological superiority) is invoked for its defence.

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The way I see it, the logic aesthetic organizes conceptualized information, data, for an analysis that attempts to remove the emotional content of the received information or data. Does the data, the information, exist outside of our concept of it? Well, yes and no. In order to be considered 'data' or 'information' to be logically structured, it has to be filtered through our consciousness, it has to be received. Outside of that consciousness-filtered form, we assume it to exist in an objective and unfiltered form, but of course there is no way of verifying it with absolute objective certainty.

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When you trace even a single cultural tradition over centuries, it is hard to resist thinking (sorry) that logic and sentimentality both, along with a few other moods, are equally potential moods of the human brain, and that there is a certain historical logic (sorry) in the way that moods generalized to cultural periods succeed each other.

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I could make it more precise, by calling it a set of "symbol-ordering rules" with criteria for choosing to map allowable symbol-strings (sentences) onto one or other, not both, of the "truth values" {true, false}.

Yuck.

The important points are the arbitrary nature of

i)the "rules"

ii) what constitutes an allowable string, and

iii)the inadmissability of strings whose mapped truth value is neither true nor false, or which are undecidable.

Note to self: Do not mention Kurt Godel.

All of this stuff is made up by human brains - which do not neatly compartmentalise thought and feeling except in cases of pathology, I might add.

Other cultures have had very different "logics", too.

If it feels good, think it!

[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

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Note to self: Do not mention Kurt Godel.

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[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

Personally, my dartboard has Wittgenstein on it.

On the other hand, I like Russell and always secretly believed that he was too down-to-earth to really believe in positivsm. I always got the impression he just liked it for the intellectual workout.

[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

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we appear to use different parts of our brains to process different types of information.

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This appears to be true but the processes do not occur in isolation but are interactive.

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I have observed this.

It is a most important fact about our brains. NRK has put his finger on what is most wrong in the way conventional medicine has taught people to think of dementia.

The researchers observe that the brain shuts down in a predictable order -- so they, thinking in linear fashion, and knowing (vaguely) what different sections of the brain do, conclude that there are points where reflective consciousness of several kinds no longer occurs.

Inevitably, barring some sort of mental dysfunction.

Of course not, see previous answer.

I'm getting to that.

See, the basic issue here for me is:

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All of this stuff is made up by human brains - which do not neatly compartmentalise thought and feeling except in cases of pathology, I might add.

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and

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This appears to be true but the processes do not occur in isolation but are interactive

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I would have thought anyone who (rightly, IMO) speaks of "fucking" neopositivsts, would have a friend in Godel. Didn't he mess up their programme for intellectual domination of the top floors of the Ivory Tower?

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Personally, my dartboard has Wittgenstein on it.

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On the other hand, I like Russell and always secretly believed that he was too down-to-earth to really believe in positivsm. I always got the impression he just liked it for the intellectual workout.

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Edited to add and avoid double-post syndrome:

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This appears to be true but the processes do not occur in isolation but are interactive.

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[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

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I feel much the same way about most philosophical endeavors...

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Me too, but y'know, some people just get so dang emotional about them .

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S: personally, my dartboard has Wittgenstein on it.

RW: Why? I mean his concepts of language and philosophical conceptualization make the world seem a smaller, less interesting place

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Precisely.

[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

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But they are wrong. They even know they are wrong. When confronted with evidence that advanced dementia patients can still reflect, the "scientists" make up fairy stories to explain those phenomena ("Oh, a window opened ..."). Yeah, sure.

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[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Rebecca West ]

If the question is put to a detective trying to solve a crime, say, then logic must be separate and apart from feeling irrespective of the "hunch." In other words, there must be motive and opportunity in the case of murder. A weapon and a body would be very helpful too.

But what of an issue of right and wrong? Isn't that just feeling?

And isn't that feeling paramount to the order of our society. Because logically, it might make perfect sense for me to kill someone, but morally, it would be wrong.

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. What's your opinion on Persinger's work?

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This is really, for me, the fun stuff in neuroscience. I don't know Persinger's work, but I'm happy you turned me on to it. I'm gonna read some and get back to you.

Jaynes' book, OTOH, immediately triggers the sneering sceptic in me because of this quote in the article you link:

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In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics.

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A book I read recently on Alzheimer's called The Forgetting did the same thing by harping on a controversial scheme that purports to relate, on some deep level, the loss of abilities in the adult AD patient with the acquisition of similar abilitites in the development of the healthy infant/child.

It seems like one of those all-too-common facile attempts to find deep meaning in superficial similarites, which disappear when the language and thinking is tightened up.

It smacks of the New-Agey shaman-madman-prophet-seer archetype that confuses pathology with unconventional use of one's brain.

However, I haven't read the book, so I could be way wrong.

[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

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To those of us who prefer a little mystery in our lives, it all sounds like a letdown. And as I settle in for my mind trip, I'm starting to get apprehensive. I'm a lapsed Episcopalian clinging to only a hazy sense of the divine, but I don't especially like the idea that whatever vestigial faith I have in the Almighty's existence might get clinically lobotomized by Persinger's demo. Do I really want God to be rendered as explicable and predictable as an endorphin rush after a 3-mile run?

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Does identifying the source of our grand illusions make them any less wonderful?

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At the risk of (God forbid! ) drifting into another God/No God recurring nightmare, I'll say I wouldn't find it remarkable that God uses the matter She/He created, in order to carry out His/Her wishes. If we need a particular bit of brain to communicate with the Almighty, then so be it.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
But they are wrong. They even know they are wrong. When confronted with evidence that advanced dementia patients can still reflect, the "scientists" make up fairy stories to explain those phenomena ("Oh, a window opened ..."). Yeah, sure.

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In astronomy, I believe they called this act of regression "adding epicycles". You will get the reference, I'm sure.

I have also actually purchased a copy of Dr. Julian Jaynes's book, and while it is unfortunate that a certain fringe group, called Neo-Tech has taken over Dr. Jaynes's ideas and smushed them in with some kind of wacko theory about human "post-bicameral" evolution, his ideas have a certain validity about them without reference to the Neo-Tech boobs.

The basic summary of the bicameral mind is untouched, however, and ironically, I first learned of this theory when reading a Neo-Tech propaganda book that a friend of mine had. It was larded down with mysterious references to bicameral minds and, of all things, poker.

The mystery was partially revealed when the writer deigned to remark on the origin of the theory of the bicameral mind, and I confess I found a rather powerful attraction to the heretical notion that human consciousness is actually a sociobiological invention, in effect favoring a selection away from people who did not have the mental "wiring" to shift from the bicameral (unconscious) mind to the conscious one.

I forgot about it for a few years and then found it again when I googled for "Neo-Tech" and it all came rushing back to me. I decided I would have to get Dr. Jaynes's book to see for myself what he said minus all the stupid frippery the Neo-Tech people lard his theories with.

Anyway, I've kind of drifted away from the notion of a "bicameral mind" having existed as it did in the past, although Jaynes uses historical evidence to back up his work.

One odd similarity that he picks up on is that some schizophrenics tend to speak in dactylic hexameter, and many old Greek epics and Hebrew writings are also often structured in dactylic hexameter.

Logic and emotion.

The basic issue here seems to be that people who are enamored of logic tend to have a way of speaking and writing that can be very off-putting to people who are more geared towards an emotion/sensing view of the world; even though both sets of people can use very eloquent phrasings and well-written sentences to describe what they are thinking about, the logician's method of doing so versus the senser's method of doing so are different enough that the logician can seem cold, abstract and in some cases very stuffy, while the senser's may seem excessively fluid, amorphous and in some cases appearing to evade the point under discussion.

However, it is clear that a synthesis is the best approach. This can best be described as using one's logic as best as one can, but using intuition and sense to "fill the gap", as it were.

I like to call it "going with one's gut." What it really is, I suppose, is one's brain shunting over all the reasoning used to arrive at a conclusion, and simply presenting the conclusion. Because the chain of reasoning is not self-evident even to one's own thought processes, people may unfairly dismiss it, even though it is the brain using its own emotional and thinking capabilities rather than stopping to explicitly set out each link in the chain.

I can only offer my own experience in this regard: When I go with my gut I often find that in retrospect, there was a good reason for doing it.

That does not mean I abandon logic; far from it. However, it is clear that reducing "feelings" to the status of non-helper in using one's brain is a rather bad proposition from the point of view of allowing one's faculties to be fully expressed.

[ 03 October 2003: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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This "soul" business just seems like inefficiency when the brain's already there, and only being used to 10% of its capacity, so people who have no empirical evidence whatsoever for the claim continually tell us.

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I take issue with the assumptions that were made to define this debate.

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Witout feelings we cannot make a demarcation between justice or injustice, truth or untruth, good or bad.

- my Dalai Lama desk calendar, October 4

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So, like the Dalai Lama, do you think that "feelings" are at the root of our moral choices?

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As you can probably guess my tone about the "soul" was gently facetious. What burns my ass more than anything else in let's-call-'em-the "science-soul" wars is the smug assertion on both sides that there's a dichotomy or a dilemma or single a pair of alternatives.

There's no reason that both sides can't be hopelessly wrong. Personally,
I suspect that both are.

I read the Persinger link. Intriguing. I'll look up a few of his research papers before I close my Third Eye, though.

As to your questions about "types" of logic, I fing myself most in agreement with Ken Wilber on the subject.He suggests that there are different types of logic which follow different, but objectively knowable rules.
In
Eye to Eye, he enumerates them as the empirical (sensory), rational (logical, intellectual) and contemplative ("trans-rational", poetic, spiritual). Each is associated with a methodology that can be taught, let's say by respectively, a biologist, a philosopher, a Zen master.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:
Sheesh, Rebecca, that's enough for at least five dissertations.

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So, like the Dalai Lama, do you think that "feelings" are at the root of our moral choices?

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Well, I mostly posted it just because I thought it was kind of timely that Saturday's quote would be appropriate to a thread.

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As to your questions about "types" of logic, I fing myself most in agreement with Ken Wilber on the subject.He suggests that there are different types of logic which follow different, but objectively knowable rules.
In
Eye to Eye, he enumerates them as the empirical (sensory), rational (logical, intellectual) and contemplative ("trans-rational", poetic, spiritual). Each is associated with a methodology that can be taught, let's say by respectively, a biologist, a philosopher, a Zen master.

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To me, this is just evidence, in phenomenological terms, of the structural interconnectivity of brain functions.

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How's that? Sorry, I'm not sure what 'this' you're referring to. You mean, how Wilbur has it organized is, in itself, evidence of the structrual interconnectity of brain functions?

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You're right, that was sloppy.

This thread's been more productive than others asking the same questions, I think.

This summarious sniplet was authored by Prof.Roger Walsh, psychiatrist at UofCaliforia MedicalSchool.

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PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT INTEGRATION

Previous attempts can be grouped into broad categories of 1) attempts by science to deny legitimacy to religion; 2) attempts by religion to deny legitimacy to science; 3) epistemological pluralism; 4) generating scientific plausibility arguments for the existence of spirit, and 5) postmodern approaches. We have already discussed the first two and Wilber next proceeds to explore the others.

Epistemological Pluralism

This argument holds that science and spirituality employ different, even complementary, modes of knowing and can therefore coexist peacefully. This has long been the standard view of the great religious wisdom traditions but has been strongly denied by modern scientism (the pseudo philosophy which holds that science is the best or even the only means of acquiring valid knowledge). St. Bonaventure offered the clearest expression of the pluralism argument, and Wilber updated it in his book Eye to Eye (1996b).

Bonaventure argued that we all possess three "eyes" or modes of knowing which access different levels of The Great Chain of Being and generate corresponding disciplines of knowledge. The eye of flesh looks outward on the world of matter, while the eye of mind looks inward at the mental realm of thoughts, images, symbols, and feelings. The eye of contemplation looks deeper within to recognize the spiritual domains of archetypes and subtle illuminations, and beyond even these to behold pure formless consciousness, Mind or Spirit.

A contemporary way of expressing this is to say that the eye of the flesh is monological; it simply looks objectively at the things of the world. The eye of the mind on the other hand is dialogical and is concerned with interpretative, symbolic, hermeneutic knowing and mutual understanding, all of which depend on dialogue and communication. The eye of contemplation is translogical and what it looks upon cannot be seen, captured, or even adequately described by other eyes.

Epistemological pluralism argues that different disciplines employ different eyes. Science uses the eyes of flesh and mind, philosophy relies primarily on the eye of mind, while the eye of contemplation is the province of spirituality and especially mysticism. Such a claim seems balanced and logical but makes no headway against scientism which utterly denies the validity of the eye of contemplation.

Plausibility Arguments

These arguments claim that while science may not be able to prove the existence of spiritual or divine domains, it may at least be able to show that its findings suggest or even demand a great Intelligence organizing the material universe. The most dramatic contemporary example is the Big Bang in which it seems that physical laws were operating within the first trillionth of a second, long before matter could cohere out of energy. This and other examples are essentially variations on the old philosophical "argument from design."

However such arguments are essentially attempts to use the eye of mind to see or demonstrate what can only be seen by the eye of contemplation and hence are examples of what are called category errors. Indeed the attempt to use rationality for transrational proofs was devastated in the West by the philosopher Immanual Kant and a thousand years earlier in the East by the great Buddhist sage, Nagarjuna. Rational approaches to the spiritual give no direct spiritual knowledge, no firm proof, and perhaps worst of all, no real spiritual growth or transformation.

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A contemporary way of expressing this is to say that the eye of the flesh is monological; it simply looks objectively at the things of the world. The eye of the mind on the other hand is dialogical and is concerned with interpretative, symbolic, hermeneutic knowing and mutual understanding, all of which depend on dialogue and communication. The eye of contemplation is translogical and what it looks upon cannot be seen, captured, or even adequately described by other eyes.

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You mentioned that my earlier post was not clear as to which assumption I disagreed with...

You stated that "Much has been made of the idea that in order for logic and emotion to do what we think they should do (whatever that may be), they have to be kept far away from each other."

I took your reference to the physical separation of logic and emotion to imply that they are separate entities (ways of thinking). I was offering the thought that emotion may be the product of logical thought, taken in an individual context of environmental experience. Hence, emotion may, in a very indirect way, be an expression of logic.

Reading through the posts more thoroughly after your response to my post, I now understand your point that I am not the only one to have raised thses points. Sorry. I'm a new babbler !

"The eye of contemplation is translogical and what it looks upon cannot be seen, captured, or even adequately described by other eyes."

If it cannot be seen, captured or described, then how can we contemplate it? Walsh purports that this statement is "balanced and reasonable".

I don't see adequate defence of this statement in his essay. I don't want to send this debate into the science vs. religion debate here (for this is slightly off topic), but Walsh unfairly brushes off scientists here. Scientists, many skeptical by nature, are also skeptical of scientific claims, including (especially) the Big Bang he cites as an example.

In Eye to Eye Ken Wilber first summarized the three steps that he suggests are essential for any valid knowledge:

from the link in my previous post:

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1. Instrumental injunction. This takes the form, "if you want to know this, then do the following." Instructions such as, look through the telescope, multiply acceleration by time, or hold attention on the breath, would be examples for the eyes of flesh, mind, and contemplation respectively.

2. Direct apprehension. Observe the direct experience revealed by the injunction.

3. Communal verification. Check the experiental data against the experience of others who have also adequately completed the first two steps in order to obtain confirmation or rejection of the data.

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http://members.ams.chello.nl/m.albers2/wilber/rev/rev_mss_walsh.html

Apparently, by denying the eye of contemplation (the ability to contemplate that which cannot be known), I am unbalanced and unreasonable and, thus, cannot comment further. Since I cannot possibly disprove the possibility that such an eye exists, and those who assume that such an eye is possible could not possibly have any proof (it is unknowable), it becomes a fruitless debate.

Uh, I was out west, dashing my knuckles to a funny little tune. Drowning in apple juice.

I look at logic and reason in less clinical terms. I just go by the evidence. Doesn't mean you'll find the "truth", or make you infallible, (my life's a tribute to that) it just puts the odds in your favour.

And, it's a system that has a better chance of working than any other so far.

Sure, there's schools of thought that suggest that the Mack Truck bearing down on you doesn't exist if you don't look at it, but I challenge those proponents to put it to the test.

The ace up my sleeve here is that you know, I know, we all bloody well know that when it absolutely, positively has to be fixed, has to work right, matters of life and death, we use logic and reason first, and after exhausting all that, then we pull out the tarot cards or call for the Priest; we might like architecture designed by post modernists artists, but we don't like bridges designed by post modernist engineers, and we don't take our kids to see post modernist nuerosurgeons.

But does that leave no room for emotion, like "Mr. Spock"?

Dammit I'm a factory worker, not a philosopher, Jim.

But I think not. Emotion is every bit a part of the natural world, like Silurian bedrock and nuetrinos.

Emotion has it's logical place.

Jeff House (amoung others) probably thinks I'm pretty wacked out, owing to my emotionality regarding when kids and other innocents are victimized. If I was a lawyer, or a judge, sure I'd be dispassionate. But I'm niether, and you know what? I don't want to be dispassionate, rational, reasoned on those subjects. I want to be visceral.

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On the surface, it looks like the eye of contemplation. In reality, it is more likely the eye of the flesh and the eye of the mind, working with incomplete or erroneous data/assumptions and coming up with responses that help the individual involved deal with his/her environment. I also feel that communal verification is not evidence.

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Do you believe that your mental states (i.e., your experiences) are objectively real?
It's possible to defend the position that they're not, intellectually, but that position contradicts my experience (and further I have a lot of sympathy with sceptical epistemologies that say they are the only valid primary data).

If we can agree that the answer to my question is yes, we can move on.

Can we also say, that there is no foolproof way to separate our primary sense data (fleshy eye) from the mental state it causes us to experience?

Except by communal verification?

Likewise, with our conceptual or intellectual structures (brainy eye)?

I'm also wanting you to agree with me that data, assumptions and the logical processes we use to draw inferences and conclusions are also "real" BUT (and here's the catch) that these can only be subject to communal verification through representation by language (unlike primary sense data which I can experience myself, but with you).

I can never know what it feels like for you to solve a (for example) simple syllogism like:

All people have feelings.
I am a person.
Therefore, I have feelings.

We can't see feelings with our fleshy eyes, but we can assume that we know what it intended by the word, and that (separate, but related issue) that the syllogism is valid, though I can't be privy to your validation procedure.

We decide on the basis of communal verification.

The eye of contemplation is similar in this way to the brainy eye, except that it can be aware of "mental state" data that is not subject to syllogistic manipulation, for example. A chain of free-associations is a banal example. Nonetheless, just as a logician can tell me that the conclusion to the above syllogism "I have feelings. Therefore I am a person." is not logically valid, so a Zen master could tell whether the development of your contemplative eye is proceeding properly by evaluating your responses to situations which test that faculty.

In each case, communal verification is what determines "right" and "wrong" because there is no way to objectively measure your inner mental state.

I would say that your scepticism of the reality of the contemplative eye only indicates that you have not used it, or that you are trying to see with the "brainy" eye what can only be seen with the contemplative eye.

[ 09 October 2003: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]

You wrote:
"Do you believe that your mental states (i.e., your experiences) are objectively real?
It's possible to defend the position that they're not, intellectually, but that position contradicts my experience (and further I have a lot of sympathy with skeptical epistemologies that say they are the only valid primary data).

Okay, fair enough… if I don’t accept that, then there wouldn’t be much use in discussing anything.

You wrote:
"Can we also say, that there is no foolproof way to separate our primary sense data (fleshy eye) from the mental state it causes us to experience?
Except by communal verification?"

I agree that there is no foolproof way to separate our primary sense data from the mental state it causes us to experience. I would also agree that, at the moment, we know so little about the detailed, inner workings of the brain that communal verification is the best way we have to try to do this, but it is subject to error not only because of our lack of understanding of how the brain operates, but also because there may be some causative (genetic) differences between individual minds that may affect the mental state produced by such primary sense data in ways that we currently are not even close to understanding. Some interpret this impossibility of understanding as the eye of contemplation, or some magical subconscious analysis. Perhaps our minds try to make sense of the unexplainable in our dreams or in our subconscious and perhaps I am weaker than most in giving credit to this type of thought and allowing it to enter the conscious state. Hell, I never remember any of my dreams. Call me stubborn, but I believe that to interpret our lack of understanding this way is to submit to human weakness and to assume that there is sense in that which we are unable to explain.

You wrote:
"Likewise, with our conceptual or intellectual structures (brainy eye)?"

Same response as above.

You wrote:
"I'm also wanting you to agree with me that data, assumptions and the logical processes we use to draw inferences and conclusions are also "real" BUT (and here's the catch) that these can only be subject to communal verification through representation by language (unlike primary sense data which I can experience myself, but with you)."

Yes, I agree that data, assumptions and the logical processes we use to draw inferences/conclusions are ‘real’ to the best of our knowledge and I definitely agree that these can only be represented by language or expression of some kind. I say this with the same caveat that communal verification is dodgy because of our total lack of mechanistic understanding of differences in brain function.

I agree with your point on language, but feel that this only strengthens the argument against communal verification. I take the position that personal knowledge is history because even our eyes and ears can only see the past (speed of waves). Our mental state then acts upon this imperfect history (imperfect because of the time lapse and the fact that we only see a minute fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum in three/four dimensions) to produce an even less accurate history (knowledge) and this process is fraught with error because we are animals with imperfect brain function. Is the picture you have in your mind of your family and friends’ faces absolutely perfect? Mine isn’t even though I see them every day. Now, the transfer of information between individuals creates even worse history, because it has to be transferred through language, facial expressions, tone, music, art and body movement. Again, the process that takes place as this information is accepted by another brain is fraught with the same errors and time lapses. In the end, communal verification is useful, but is only very poor circumstancial evidence at best. Such things as group mentality and mass hysteria start to make a lot of sense!

You wrote:
"I can never know what it feels like for you to solve a (for example) simple syllogism like:
All people have feelings.
I am a person.
Therefore, I have feelings.
We can't see feelings with our fleshy eyes, but we can assume that we know what it intended by the word, and that (separate, but related issue) that the syllogism is valid, though I can't be privy to your validation procedure.
We decide on the basis of communal verification.
The eye of contemplation is similar in this way to the brainy eye, except that it can be aware of "mental state" data that is not subject to syllogistic manipulation, for example. A chain of free-associations is a banal example. Nonetheless, just as a logician can tell me that the conclusion to the above syllogism "I have feelings. Therefore I am a person." is not logically valid, so a Zen master could tell whether the development of your contemplative eye is proceeding properly by evaluating your responses to situations which test that faculty."

At the risk of sounding anti-religious again (and believe me, I respect Buddhism more than any other religion I can think of – if it is even a religion), how do you think the Zen master would be any better than any of us in this evaluation? I think his/her analysis is fraught with the problems I outline above (admittedly, the problems I outline involve a great deal of skepticism about the eye of contemplation so the argument gets a bit circular here). I would not consider a response that is different to expectations to be evidence of a poor eye, even if the eye of contemplation exists.

You wrote:
"In each case, communal verification is what determines "right" and "wrong" because there is no way to objectively measure your inner mental state."

True (unfortunately). Or fortunately, because this promotes debate.

You wrote:
"I would say that your scepticism of the reality of the contemplative eye only indicates that you have not used it, or that you are trying to see with the "brainy" eye what can only be seen with the contemplative eye."

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What I can say is that … good grief, you have me thinking !!! Thanks !!!

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