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Perplextus
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The Communication Barrier
« on: 2007-01-04 16:04:23 » |
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This post is to address David Lucifer's skepticism about the existence of a point of "communication breakdown" between theists and atheists, as expressed in the "Is Genuine Debate Between Theists and Atheists Possible?" thread.
The point at which communication becomes impossible is the point at which the two parties communication no longer share analogous experiences with each other. When a word cannot be recognized as referring to some internal content of one's mind, that word cannot have meaning.
I wish to maintain that the conversion from theism to atheism, though it can be described in rational terms as a rational process, is not PURELY a rational process. Like all human choices, such conversions rely equally as much on inexpressable non-rational factors, such as intuition and emotion. It is impossible to communicate the complete mechanism of conversion in terms that can be understood by someone who has not experienced this conversion; if this were not the case, language on its own would be a sufficient tool to facillitate religious conversion. Theists frequently maintain that atheists "just don't get it" when they discuss their faith; it would be equally valid for atheists to maintain the same about theists. It is, frankly, impossible for either side to FULLY communicate their motivations for accepting or rejecting religion, because many of these motivations spring from non-shared subjective/internal factors. However, on other matters which do pertain to shared experiences, communication IS not just possible but actual; that's why I can have many enjoyable conversations with my theist friends, so long as I avoid the subject of religion.
This is my position; Lucifer, please challenge it if you still disagree/are skeptical.
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David Lucifer
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #1 on: 2007-01-06 11:36:41 » |
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First I'll agree that no human exhibit "purely" rational behaviour, that is simply impossible for finite beings such as ourselves.
But I'll disagree on a few other accounts. I don't think intuition or emotion on non-rational necessarily. They may be subconscious, but they evolved because they generally lead to rational behaviour.
As I mentioned before many atheists were formerly theists (and vice versa). They can remember what it was like to be in the other camp and do indeed "get it".
Your argument that one can't FULLY communicate one's experiences may be literally true (and not just about religion), but that doesn't mean we can't communicate.
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Perplextus
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #2 on: 2007-01-06 13:40:18 » |
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First of all, I never said Theists and Atheists can't communicate in general. There are lots of things they can communicate about. One thing they cannot communicate (at least not in any meaningful sense) is what makes them believe or disbelieve as they do. What I mean by this is that it is not possible for either of them to create an understanding of their motives in each other. They might say to each other: "I understand your words, but I still do not understand your beliefs (or lack thereof)." I maintain that when one undergoes a religious conversion (or subversion/reversion), that constitutes something analogous to a Kuhnian paradigm shift in their individual consciousness: their understanding of their original reasons for maintaining/rejecting a faith has been altered, because they no longer maintain/reject it. Their understanding is thus put in new terms, the terms of their new (lack of) beliefs. In other words, they see their previous beliefs as "wrong", and when you recognize something as "wrong", what that marks is a lack of understanding of how it could be reasonably maintained...whereas prior to the conversion/subversion/reversion, they understood rather well how their beliefs could be reasonably maintained.
We can only communicate insofar as we share experience with one another. An atheist could no more hope to meaningfully explain his or her lack of faith to a theist than a person with "normal" vision could hope to meaningfully explain certain color-distinctions to a color-blind person.
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David Lucifer
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #3 on: 2007-01-07 21:24:06 » |
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Quote from: Perplextus on 2007-01-06 13:40:18
We can only communicate insofar as we share experience with one another. An atheist could no more hope to meaningfully explain his or her lack of faith to a theist than a person with "normal" vision could hope to meaningfully explain certain color-distinctions to a color-blind person. |
What about the huge number of people that became atheists because other atheists successfully communicated their lack of faith?
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Perplextus
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #4 on: 2007-01-08 13:04:30 » |
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Quote:
What about the huge number of people that became atheists because other atheists successfully communicated their lack of faith? |
I would say that those people were converted successfully precisely because of the experiences they shared with the Atheists communicating with them; in such cases, it was probably a matter of the Theists simply being "ready" for conversion, having the necessary internal experiences for autojustification but simply not having made the final jump. If someone can change your beliefs just by talking to you, you can't have been very firm in those beliefs.
But I see where you're going with this, with the whole idea of a spectrum between Theism and Atheism. You meant that there is a spectrum of "conviction" between the two positions, such that one can be a "weak" Theist and have many shared experiences with an Atheist, allowing effective communication and eventually conversion. I understand that I was appearing to make a more "binary" distinction than I meant to, and generalizing more than I should have. I apologize and will attempt to correct my language accordingly.
The point I was trying to make was that there are a lot of Theists out there who do not share a sufficient amount of experience with Atheists to allow for effective communication. I am not a psychologist, but I weyken it should be possible--at least in theory--to list and categorize the types of experiences that must be shared in order for an Atheist and a Theist to communicate effectively (which would almost certainly necessitate the immediate conversion of one to the other, such that the two communicating would swiftly become two Theists or two Atheists). Or, in other words, to pinpoint the degrees of Atheistic and Theistic conviction at which point communication becomes impossible (on the matter of belief or lack thereof).
Do you have a better hypothesis than a "lack of shared experience" that explains why I cannot effectively explain to my evangelical Aunt why my rejection of belief in God is reasonable and valid, and furthermore why she can't explain to me why her belief in God is the same?
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David Lucifer
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #5 on: 2007-01-13 13:22:51 » |
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Quote from: Perplextus on 2007-01-08 13:04:30
Do you have a better hypothesis than a "lack of shared experience" that explains why I cannot effectively explain to my evangelical Aunt why my rejection of belief in God is reasonable and valid, and furthermore why she can't explain to me why her belief in God is the same? |
I would guess that one of you is being logically inconsistent and/or self-delusional in the interpretation of your shared experience. Does anyone doubt that really bad things happen to really good people for example? That is simply and blatantly inconsistent with the notion of the Xtian god.
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Re:The Communication Barrier
« Reply #6 on: 2007-01-13 14:54:40 » |
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Quote:| I would guess that one of you is being logically inconsistent and/or self-delusional in the interpretation of your shared experience. |
But this begs the question: what would cause one of us to be either "self-delusional" or "logically inconsistent" and not realize it? Most people do not consider their views to be self-delusional or logically inconsistent, even if they appear so to others. Is it not the content of their experiences that gives them the internal justification for their self-opinion? Couldn't I simply respond to this by saying "they lack the shared experience of the necessity to be non-delusionally logically consistent?"
Furthermore, how would one distinguish, within one's own internal states, whether one was being logically consistent or merely under the delusion that one is being logically consistent? Is the phenomenological feeling of being logically consistent simply the absence of the feeling of cognitive dissonance (the feeling attached to attempting to maintain two contradictory views)?
And lastly, you seem to imply that experiences can exist uninterpretted--that two people can share the same experience but "interpret it differently". If we both see a car drive by, and you interpret it as a blue car but I interpret it as a green car, did we not just have two different experiences? Lacking the ability to repeat the experience for critical examination, how could you falsify statements about what either of us experienced?
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