Four Questionable Sources of Knowledge

1
Four Questionable Sources of Knowledge

• Expert opinion (????)
• Faith (??)
• Intuition (??)
• Mystical experience (????)

2
Expert Opinion (????)

• When should we believe expert opinions?
• A good reason for belief when the expert is
• a real expert,
• giving an opinion about his/her own field,
• reporting a majority opinion in the field.
• The Fallacy of Misuse of Authority (???????)
• Why such a common fallacy?
• Three common modes
• Controversial cases, e.g. tyre designer example

3

• Russells maxims against intellectual rubbish
• When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion
  cannot be held to be certain (probable).
• When they are not agreed, no opinion can be
  regarded as certain by a nonexpert.
• When they all hold that no sufficient grounds for
  a positive opinion exist, the ordinary person
  would do well to suspend judgment.

These propositions seem mild, yet, if accepted,
they would absolutely revolutionize human life.
4
Faith (??)
It is to be believed because it is absurd.

• Faith (?????)
• As confidence, trust
• Usually based on inductive evidence (????)
• Faith (??)
• Belief without good justification
• Supported by believers feeling, attitude or will
• Usually taken as certain, not open to doubt

??? ??????
5

• Can faith (??) alone give us knowledge?
• No way. Why?
• A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows
  that faith does not prove anything. - Friedrich
  Nietzsche
• Discussion
• Why do people need / have faith?

1844-1900
6

• ????, ?????????????
• ????????????????????????
• ?????????,?????????????????,??????????????????,???
  ???????????????????,?????,???????,???,???,????????
  ???,???????,????????,??????????????????????,??????
  ?????,??????

biblical chronology c.1037 - 967 BC
7

• The importance of distinguishing 3 notions
• Rational belief (????)
• Proportioning belief to evidence (????)
• E.g. many scientific beliefs
• Irrational belief (?????) / superstition (??)
• Not proportioning belief to evidence
• E.g. many blind faiths
• Non-rational belief (????????)
• No possible evidence in principle
• E.g. pure religious faith (??????)

8
A Counterexample to Proportioning Belief to
Evidence

• ???????? ?????????
• 2008?9?15???????
• ????????????????????????,???????????,????????,????
  ????????,??????????????????????
• ????????,????,??????????????????????,?????

9

• ????????post?,????????????!??????????say sorry!
  ??????????????????,???????????????,??????????????,
  ?????????????????????,???????,????????????????,???
  ??????!?
• ???????????????????????????????????????????,
  ??????????,??????????????

10

• ?????,???????????????,???????????
• ???????,?????????????????????????,????????????????
  ???,???????????????

11
Intuition (??)

• What is intuition? Is it reliable?
• (a) Merely subjective feeling / projection or
  wild guessing without grounds?
• Not reliable.
• (b) Skillful application of a combination of
  perception, introspection, memory, reasoning,
  etc., thats difficult to articulate?
• Can be reliable.

12

• E.g. Sherlock Holmess intuition?
• I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long
  habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly
  through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion
  without being conscious of intermediate steps.
  There were such steps, however. The train of
  reasoning ran, Here is a gentleman of a medical
  type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly
  an army doctor, then.

13

• He has just come from the tropics, for his face
  is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his
  skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone
  hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says
  clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds
  it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the
  tropics could an English army doctor have seen
  much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in
  Afghanistan. The whole train of thought did not
  occupy a second. I then remarked that you came
  from Afghanistan, and you were astonished (The
  Science of Deduction, A Study in Scarlet).

14

• Contribution from Hypersensory Perception
• E.g. Clever Hans
• Two experiments
• Cf. Weird Things, pp. 134-5
• http//www.skepdic.com/hsp.html

15

• (c) Other mysterious ways?
• Can be reliable.
• E.g. the intuition of an all time great
  mathematics genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan (????)
• According to G. H. Hardy
• Ramanujan was a mathematician so great his name
  transcends jealousies, the one superlatively
  great mathematician whom India has produced in
  the last thousand years.

16

• That his greatest contribution to mathematics was
  the discovery of Ramanujan.
• ?????????,??????????????,???????????????????????
  ?????????,?????,??????????,??????????????,????????
  ??????????
• ???????,?????,????,??,????????,??????????,????????
  ?????????????????

17

• Instances revealing Ramanujans incredible
  mathematical intuition
• (i) The discovery of hard-to-believe (yet
  revolutionary) formula in an intuitive way
• The Ramanujan Journal was published since 1997.

18

• (ii) The Hardy-Ramanujan number event
• A taxi cab number 1729
• The smallest number expressible as the sum of two
  cubes in two different ways (1729 13 123 93
  103)
• (iii) Ramanujans roommate once asked him a
  difficult problem
• Imagine that you are on a street with houses
  marked 1 through n. There is a house in between
  (x) such that the sum of the house numbers to
  left of it equals the sum of the house numbers to
  its right. If n is between 50 and 500, what are n
  and x.

19

• Ramanujan gave the general solution to the whole
  class of problems rapidly and talked about the
  rapidity
• It is simple. The minute I heard the problem, I
  knew that the answer was a continued fraction
  (???????). Which continued fraction, I asked
  myself. Then the answer came to my mind.
• A continued fraction is an expression like

20

• Ramanujans own religious explanation of his
  intuition
• He often said, An equation for me has no
  meaning, unless it represents a thought of God.
• He also said that the Hindu goddess Namagiri gave
  him mathematical formula in his dreams.
• The nature of Ramanujans truly extraordinary
  intuition remains a mystery.

21
Mystical Experience (????) (??/??)

• Mysticism Greeks root µ??, meaning to
  conceal.
• Typical features of mystical experience
• Usually result of practices like meditation or
  prayer under extreme conditions (abnormal bodily
  conditions)
• Feeling of experiencing or knowing ultimate
  reality (????)
• Daily experience is illusory or unreal.
• Transcends knowledge from normal sources
• Ecstasy, bliss (??)

22

• Feeling of unity (??) with God, Brahman (?), Dào
  (?), etc.
• Christian mystics have variously described union
  with God.
• - St. Bernard of Clairvaux (?????, 1090-1153)
  unification as mutuality of love
• - Henry Suso (?? ??, 1295-1366) as a drop of
  water falling into wine, taking on the taste and
  color of the wine.
• - Jan van Ruysbroeck (??????, 1293-1381) as
  "iron within the fire and the fire within the
  iron".

23

• Hindu mystics, Shankara (???, 788-820) Identity
  with Brahman reality is an indivisible whole.
• Taoists Part of Dào ?
• ?????????????
• Buddhism
• ?????? ????
• ?? ??????

24

• Mystical experience and knowledge obtained are
  ineffable (????).
• ?????????,????
• ???? ??????????,????,????,????,????,????,??????
  ?(?????????)
• ????????????????????????,????,????,?????

25

• St. Augustine (?????, 354-430)
• God should not be said to be ineffable, for when
  this is said something is said. And a
  contradiction in terms is created, since if that
  is ineffable which cannot be spoken, then that is
  not ineffable which is called ineffable.
• Strictly speaking, X is ineffable commits the
  fallacy of self-defeating (???????).
• May mean very difficult to express (to
  outsiders), then just like other experiences.
  Communication between mystics by, say, poetry.

26

• Case study Capras (???) The Tao of Physics
• Modern physics supports Eastern mystics
  descriptions of reality.
• (p. 25) Two basic themes
• Unity and interrelation of all phenomena
• Intrinsically dynamic nature of the universe
• Shiva's Cosmic Dance at CERN (????????)
• Shiva - ??, ???????
• http//www.fritjofcapra.net/shiva.html

27

• Can modern physics support Eastern mysticism?
• Criticism of The Tao of Physics (Capra, pp.
  336-40)
• 1. Mysticism is vague and fuzzy, and hence cannot
  be compared with science.
• ??? mystical experiences are always associated
  with profound clarity and enlightenment.
• ????? What about ineffability? What about the
  vagueness of description?

28

• 2. How can something so transient as a theory in
  modern physics be compared to mystical
  experience, which is supposed to be timeless and
  eternal?
• ??? Some core principles are preserved in theory
  change. E.g. theres uniform order in the
  universe was preserved for the change from
  Newtons theory to QM and relativity. Likewise,
  the two basic themes will be preserved. (Really?)
• 2.1. Related problem Physics cant confirm all
  Eastern mystical views of reality, because
  different mystics seem to disagree.
• Perennialism (????) reply therere general
  abstract common themes among different mystics.
• The problem of generality / abstractness

29

• All mystical experiences are the same different
  traditions just describe them differently.
• Problem Different descriptions ? good reason to
  believe experiences are different.
• Some mystical experiences are right while some
  are wrong?
• Maybe, but how can we distinguish them?
• Insiders would know? (????,????)
• Outsiders must be skeptical. Use science to
  confirm? (original problem). Any other ways?_at_
• ???????????????? (???) ????? ???
• 3. Mystics do not deal explicitly with the
  microscopic quantum world, whereas physicists do,
  so they talk about different worlds.

30

• ??? They just deal with different aspects of one
  and the same world matter mind. The
  principles of organization in these non-ordinary
  levels of perception are very similar.
• Satisfactory reply? But still different aspects!
• 4. Mystics deal with the spiritual level that
  includes the physical level, while the physical
  doesnt include the spiritual.
• ??? Although physics alone has nothing to say
  about other levels, science on the whole does. In
  particular, the theory of self-organizing systems
  is promising. The new physics is only a special
  case of this systems approach.

31

• _at_The acts of some mystics have shown that their
  descriptions of reality are right / have elements
  of truth.
• (1) Performing miracles, ??
• (2) Self-sacrificing acts, great love, ????
• Comments and problems
• Are such acts genuine?
• (1), (2) seem having force in supporting the
  statement. Pretty commonsensical.
• (1) Bacon (??) Knowledge is power.
• (2) no cheating maybe related to selfless
  mystical experience?

32

• What are the relationships between their acts and
  their mystical experiences?
• Can such relationships be tested?
• Normally, testing is claimed to rely also on
  the mystical experiences.
• Concluding remarks
• The claim that modern physics (or science)
  supports mysticism is doubtful.
• The acts of mystics are essential for judging.

33
Further Questions

• Bertrand Russell
• We can make no distinction between the man who
  eats little and sees heaven and the man who
  drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an
  abnormal physical condition, and therefore has
  abnormal perceptions.
• C.D. Broad
• One might need to be slightly 'cracked' in order
  to have some peep-holes into the super-sensible
  world.
• Can we explain away mystical experiences by
  referring to naturalistic causes?
• Any cases suitable for presentation?