something of interest

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I was struck by something I read on something called “the edge” which is www.edge.org

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy
when god change your mind, that’s faith
When facts change your mind, that’s science.

What have you changed your mind about? why?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data changes?
How have scientific findings or arguments change your mind?

Kropotkin

2

Emotions change minds. When people feel differenty about things their minds follow with all necessary reason. The difficulty in changing minds comes from the fact that if you assault the mind with facts, people feel attacked and offended. It is because people feel they are true, and truth, and no one deliberatly holds onto ideas they know to be false. If you attack thoughts you say a person is false, and they know better and so go into defense mode. This must be taken for granted, that people are good and true and reasonable, and they must be shown a better person in themselves that they can become that will help them to feel better about themselves.

3

Something else to change you:
You are thought. You are mind. You are awareness.
In is erroneous to state, “my mind”. As in “I changed my mind”.

4

I have changed the way I see life. why? When I was young I hated life living and everything. As a teen i was a defiant solitary pain in my family’s butt human. At the age of 13 I experianced my first family death, and the same year my parents had a rather nasty divorce. Life sucked. So i began the defiant hating phase of my life. It took a number of years family and friends deaths and people that loved me that never gave up on me, to love life again. Seeing so much physical death and family being torn apart with hate, while receiving so much love and patience your mind begins to put things in perspective.The last piece of change was my infant son being put into my frightened arms. My love for life and this deadly world was rock solid. I understood my life without understanding it.

As far as science and technology, I am a clinger to old things. I am forced into that part of the world kicking and screaming. While I enjoy mechanics, Gadgets bug me. I never can figure out what all the buttons are for on a TV or universal remote, if you push the wrong button you can never ever, get your show back on. I prefer simple on off switches. Please don’t ever make me talk to my house in order to get my lights turned on or my stove working, I will die alone in the dark starving. ](*,) [-o< :smiley:

5

I’m not too comfortable with the way you put things. They sound nice, but they just seem misleading. All three change their mind based on some sort of information they receive. The philosopher changes his mind based on the facts, and some rational principles. The scientists does the same, I think, but they’re just less inclined to overgeneralize from the information available to them (hah, the scientist is just a humble philosopher). The person with faith changes his mind in spite of contradictory facts and rationalist principles.

6

I changed my mind about the validity of christianity… thinking is what lead to this change…

It was not so much scientific facts that triggered the change rather it was logical inconsistencies within the religion that ultimately caused my conclusion.

7

The buttons are all on/off switches. And the buttons mother gives you don’t do anything at all. If you get my drift… It is, that feeling you have a choice is sometimes enough to keep you from real action. You vote, you walk, you protest, you talk; but you have no choice. If you push the change button enough, they disappear you, and you were never here.

8

Science is not based on evidence. It is based on a theory of antiquated tangibility. The fact that Christians, when asked, say that God created himself, is no different from a scientist saying that the “Big Bang” just happened. Although we can relate scientific evidence to it’s prevalence in our lives, science’s secular abilities define no more than religious perspective.

9

Only thinking can change my mind.facts and gods are just substances when thinking.

10

But science will change theory ( “dogma”); religion is stuck in it.
Religion is based on fear and science is knowledge.

The mind has a quirk and that is the ability to talk to itself.
The experience makes it seem as if sombody is there.
Nobody change his or her mind.

11

I know that song :sunglasses: Did not realize that anyone here understood that style, cool. Alice has her place in philosophy :smiley:
Never here is being somewhere here.

12

I tend to disagree with you there.
Referring back to epistemology, knowledge cannot be defined in terms of the universe.
In my mind, all knowledge is subjective.
Even the statements i am making now are subjective.
You can relate them only to your own life, and your own experience, that is why they are so.

The same goes for science, friend.
It can only be defined by its relation to our lives, and the ways we buy into it without proof. Like religion.

13

True everything we know is subjective.
As I keep saying “All we are is thought.”
Kant said something like- take the subject away and his subjectivity and everthing will disappear in his Critique of Reason.
Everybody sees the world different but [size=150]reason[/size] will lead us to a more correct view.

14

True. And now i agree.

15

There is nothing such as Fact.
There is only Understanding.