Venn on Emotions and Religious Reasoning

[Matt Faunce]

John Venn on Emotions and Religious Reasoning

Excerpts from the lecture series, and then book, On Some of the
Characteristics of Belief, Scientific and Religious, by John Venn.

Pg.19 “Emotions must not be neglected in their objective aspect. They are a
part of human nature, and must therefore have their proper place in any
comprehensive theory of man’s position and destiny.”

Pg. 22-23 “No science includes more than a fragment, often a very small
fragment, of our human experience. Hence the widest of sciences, in the
common use of that term, falls far short of the all-comprehensive embrace
of moral and religious discussions. Again; if our scientific inferences had
led us to different conclusions, we have in most cases, a ready
verification by a resort to experiment. If we doubt the soundness of our
reasoning, we have but to ask, Is the fact so or not? And it is not often
that we have to wait long for a decisive reply to such a question as this.
A resort to experience, on the other hand, in matters where experience must
partly consist of our feelings, will sometimes seem only to aggravate the
confusion which it was intended to remove.

“Hence, when we step from truths of physical science to those of politics
and society, we seem to be moving off the firm land on to a sea which is
beginning to heave. Our emotions now come into the discussion, in the
double way already pointed out, and cause us some perplexity. Few persons
doubt that there is truth to be found on these topics, or suppose that we
shall fail to find it at the last. But the process of finding it is a slow
and disappointing one.

“Still more, of course, is this the case with religious truth. I should
rather say here that the process of appreciation is hard, since we believe
that the truth in its essentials has already been given to us. As religion
has reference to all men, at all periods of time and under all their
circumstances, the ramifications of any of its doctrines must of course be
infinite. And consequently the difficulty of grasping it with unwavering
force will be almost insuperable. The sum of the matter, then, as far as
this lecture is concerned, seems to be this; there are causes why religious
belief should be less fixed and uniform than scientific belief. These
defects cannot be wholly accounted for by prejudice, partiality, and sloth;
they have besides something of a real logical foothold. And this being the
case it is best frankly to admit the fact.”

Pg. 27 “When a truth is intended for all mankind, every form of human
experience, every feature of human nature, will be found to throw some
light upon it, and thus to confirm it. And so it results that wherever we
go, in our joy or our sorrow, we may find if we will, that the Spirit which
inspired the Scriptures has been there before us. If we ascend into a
heaven of joy, we may find it there, and if in our grief we descend into
the valley of the shadow of death it is there too.”

Pg. 42 “There is one well known opinion, that, in such circumstances, the
judgment of the soberminded man, the σπουδαιος, should be taken as
decisive.”

Pg. 42-43 Others would say, Each man can judge, or rather (for the reason
just given) cannot help judging, for himself. But let him decide in his
cooler moments. He must avoid the times when passion is roaring in his
ears, or indeed, when there is disturbance of any kind. Let him, in fact,
take a time of dead calm for the purpose. The objection to this lies, I
apprehend, in the fact that there is no such period of dead calm. The
advice seems to rest up on the assumption that our minds will, as a general
rule, find their way straight to the truth, with the exception of
occasional temporary disturbances. If so, avoid these, and there is nothing
to fear. But if the conclusions reached in my last lecture be sound this
advice is founded on error. We are never free from warping influences. At
the times when we think we are free, the chances are that we are exposed to
what are really but one class of them, namely, deadening influences. When
all in our lives is proceeding easily and pleasantly, men may claim that
they are free from bias, but that is the time of course when they will
least feel their need for anything beyond what is then found to be so
comfortable.”

Pg. 44-45 “Another course, and as it seems to me a sounder one, is readily
suggested by our previous train of reflection. Evidence on moral and
religious subjects is, as we have seen, exceedingly complicated, and also
(what is very important) has reference to different classes of our
faculties, that is, to our emotional as well as our rational side. Now the
causes of any persistent collision of judgments commonly lie in the fact
that certain men, or men at certain times, are liable to have one or the
other of these sides of our nature unduly quickened or unduly depressed.
Strike, then, a balance by appealing to the judgment of men under different
circumstances, and so avoid the errors into which each singly may be
liable. Empannel, that is, a more numerous jury, or, what is better still,
choose it from distinct classes of society. I think that most persons act
almost unconsciously on some such principle as this in some of the lesser
matters of life. When you are depressed, for instance, and things put on
their gloomiest aspect, and the judgment becomes infected with the bias of
the feelings, and so evils are more strongly anticipated than at other
times, have you never said to yourself, ‘I am not now in a fit state to
judge; I know that my mind is warped, and I will allow for bias’? This is a
perfectly sound process of judgment; the only complaint to be urged being
that we do not sufficiently make allowances on both sides. When we are in
all the glow of health and spirits, anything gloomy will seem too remote
just as before it seemed too near. To be equitable we ought to correct one
judgment just as much as the other.

“I cannot see any sound reason why one of these states should be selected
as more likely than the other to ensure a correct judgment. As things now
are we surely cannot call one of them more ‘natural’ than the other, nor is
one so normal that the other should be neglected. But let us pause for a
moment and see what an advocate of each might urge in his own behalf.”

https://archive.org/details/onsomecharacter00venngoog/page/n41/mode/1up?view=theater

--
Matt

[x]

You know, there is this one person on another part of usenet,
that has been repetitively asserting that 'H4O' is a proper
formula for water.

Ultimately, I thought of posting this response and then decided
not to, but I did quote Hobbes in the post I did not make.

Here is a quote of it:


Cavendish may have called it slightly different in the 1700s
when he did his experiments.

Is there ANY EXPERIMENT that would convince you that H4O
is false and H2O is true?

Hobbes 'Leviathan'
Part 1 - 'Of Man'
Chapter 8 'Of the Virtues Commonly called Intellectual, and
their Contrary Defects'

16 ... to have stronger and more vehement passions for any
thing, than is more ordinarily seen in others, is that
which men call MADNESS. ...

23. Again, that madness is nothing else, but too much
appearing passion, may be gathered out of the effects
of wine, which are the same with those of the evil
disposition of the organs. ...

24. The opinions of the world, both in ancient and
later ages, concerning the cause of madness, have been two.
Some, deriving from the passions; some from demons or
spirits, good or bad, that they thought might enter
into a man, possess him, and move his organs in such
strange, and uncouth manner, as madmen use to do. The
former sort therefore, called such men, madmen: but the
latter called them sometimes demoniacs ... .


Now there is someone called Dawkins who some times
calls himself an atheist, but does not clearly define
the god he does not believe in.

He wrote a book called 'The God Delusion' and much
of the thesis of the book is that persons who believe
in religion or a god in any form is in some way
mentally disturbed. He will then qualify that with
degrees, but it remains a thesis to a greater or
lesser degree.

He also came up with a concept of 'memes'.

Now I have periodically read Peter Abelard's
'Yes and No'.

I will put a 'Yes and No' question to you.

You can answer 'Yes', 'No', or both if you
want.

Are 'spirits' or 'angels' the same as 'memes'?

'Yes'?

'No'?

Maybe 'both'?

Explain your reasoning or quotes for either
or both if you would like.

[Matt Faunce]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme says “meme” is defined as

“an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person
within a culture

“Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to
culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by
the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may
be driven by the most successful memes. — Richard Dawkins”

So it’s my understanding that every idea that’s actually believed by more
than one person, so long as the belief wasn’t independently created in each
person’s head by the believer, is a meme. For example, “2+2=4” is a meme,
and every idea that’s commonly hypothesized, e.g., “like general relativity
superseded Newtonian gravity, general relativity will be superseded one
day” is a meme. Both “the Majorcan midwife toad exists” and, I’m sure, “the
Majorcan midwife toad doesn’t exist” are memes. So, both “angels are real”
and “angels aren’t real” are memes. The mere idea of an angel is a meme, as
is the idea of an elephant or jackalope.

--
Matt

[Matt Faunce]

That was a bit sloppy. For what is a meme, I included (1) what’s commonly
believed, and (2) what’s commonly hypothesized, but, what I left out of my
statement although included in my example of the jackalope, is (3) what’s
commonly held in people’s head as a fictional idea. All, so long as the

belief wasn’t independently created in each person’s head by the believer,

that is, all so long as the idea was spread from person to person. I think
that covers it.

Anyway, my answer is ‘yes’. But, so what? Did you have some other, perhaps
narrower idea of what ’meme’ means?

--
Matt

[x]

I would generally agree also.

People can be 'possessed by spirits' and people can be 'possessed by
memes' also.

The general idea however would be that some would mutate the concept
of memes to not include whatever specifically the religious term might
mean.

In other words, jackalopes are so unreal that no one could remotely
conceive of them in a similar manner.

It seems feasible to me that some could argue in that direction, even
if I generally would not.

[Matt Faunce]

John Venn starts his book on Empirical Logic with some of the basic
principles involved in the perception of real things. My understanding of
people’s non-perception of angels can be explained by drawing an analogy
between them and Venn’s idea of a dog’s perception of a rainbow (pg. 6) or
to the common 19th century Londoner’s perception of the “curious and
regular curvilinear patterns which present themselves when the wheels of a
rapidly passing carriage are looked at a little sideways, so that the
centres of the two wheels are not quite in the same line of vision” (pg.
7). It would be best to read from pg. 1 to the beginning of pg. 8.

The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic, by John Venn:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.214682/page/n24/mode/1up?view=theater

Assuming you’ve read those pages… Any real object is recognized only upon
synthesizing its component marks which are presented over time. It may be
that homo-sapiens is the stage in our evolution where we just get a glimpse
of angels. Perhaps if we evolve into a new species we’ll have a clearer
conception of angels. And/or, perhaps a new intelligent species will emerge
and gain that clear conception.

Imagine a person trying, only for a short time, to convince a newly arrived
space alien that rainbows exist. This alien, like Venn’s dog on pg. 6, has
needs, wants and a way of life that render a rainbow so insignificant that
he never noticed it before. This alien looks at the person as a madman for
repeatedly pointing to the sky after the rainstorm.

I can tell you that there are plenty of people out there who can’t
understand my love and passion for classical music. They can’t understand
when I tell them “To play music at the level that I do, I need a
considerable time to practice, and the only way I can get that time is by
making music my career, so that’s why music is my career despite my income
being so meager.” They think I’m mad! In turn, I think they’re stunted in
their evolutionary development for only listening to garbage music and not
being able to see the value in Beethoven for example.

--
Matt

[Matt Faunce]

You might have noticed that I switched from “perception” to “conception.” I
was running ahead of myself there, having these ideas in mind:

William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XX,
Conclusions, writes,

“[T]he theologian’s contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of
invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances,
and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life
the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is
primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are
controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of
something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”

There’s no such thing as a perfect square (four lines of exactly the same
length, meeting at four corners) in nature; it exists only in people’s
minds, but that doesn’t make it a subjective idea. If it were subjective
you could say “my perfect square is perfectly flat yet has four angles
summing to four more degrees than my circle.” You can’t truthfully say that
because a perfect square has objective qualities to it, despite it being a
purely mental thing.

[Matt Faunce]

Regarding what William James called “the hidden mind”, there are different
levels of it. At the deepest, scientifically recognized level there’s
instinct. An instinct is a behavior that’s common to a species. That
behavior, of course is directed by our mind. I think it’s coming from the
cerebellum. The next higher level, I suppose, is where there are thoughts
which seem instinctive but are really only common to people of one culture
or race but not another. (I’d have to think about it to come up with some
examples. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, and there are none.) The third
level above instinct is where there are thoughts that are the result of
early childhood learning. I think any of such thoughts, when they occur
subconsciously and in a fairly rare form, might be thought of as coming
from God or an angel. For example, good musicians are known to, on rare
occasions, astound themselves with a particularly good composition or
improvisation. I’m talking about those times when the musician lets go of
his “left-brain” thinking, and rather than crash-and-burn his music soars
higher than ever. They often say that their idea came from God, and I
believe them. I consider Beethoven to be a great prophet. I think these
musical ideas are largely elements of deep learning coming together and
connecting with the spirit of the world. I’ve read that when a professional
mathematician does math his cerebellum is working, but when a lay person
does math his cerebellum is relatively dormant.

Angels do God’s work. According to pragmatism, any thing is only known by
its effects and possible effects. There’s nothing to know about any thing
beyond its effects. For example, a Granny Smith apple has effects of being
about as heavy as a baseball, showing yellow-green skin, etc., but beyond
that, if you put it under a microscope or cut it open hoping to see what’s
behind mere effects, all you can get is more effects: you’ll experience the
look of the microscopic texture of the skin, or you’ll experience the
mesocarp (flesh), loculus (area that houses the seeds), and seeds by how
they affect you visually, audibly or by taste, feel, or smell. Likewise we
know God by his effects affecting us, which are our experiences of the
various parts of Reality. Angels are those effects of God which others call
“good luck” but which we feel on a very deep level are not random
occurrences. There’s a distinct difference in feeling between getting a
stroke of good luck and being graced by an angel. Sometimes angels work
through that part mind which is beyond our control, e.g., the exceptional
music making; other times they work through parts of the outside world,
like through other people or through nature, giving you what you need when
you really need it. Again, sometimes it’s luck and it feels like luck,
sometimes you don’t know, but sometimes you know it’s an angel.

--
Matt

[Matt Faunce]

In my post, My Philosophy, I defined God as ‘the ultimate reason for hope’.
Then I showed that Reality is ultimately good. So ultimately God is
Reality, and Reality is God. So each of us is a part of God.

Evil is anything that destroys or hinders hope. But evil is a part of
reality, so how can Reality be ultimately good, i.e., the ultimate reason
for hope, while there’s evil? It’s because whereas the goodness of Reality
continues to grow into eternity, evil is temporary, and eventually Reality
will use the previously evil experiences to propel us to even higher
goodness.

Satanists say that there must be evil for there to be good. This is an old
philosophical mistake. All you need for goodness is the possibility of
evil; you don’t need actual evil. Eventually there won’t be evil actualized
anywhere.

--
Matt

[x]

You know, there is also semantics, or what is meant by different
words.

This can be a phenomenon with words like 'angels', 'gods', 'souls',
'religion', 'philosophy', 'physics', 'science' or other words or
symbols, as well as the words 'proof' or 'logic'.

I remember some of those Venn diagrams in college a while back.

They were a lot simpler than that second algebra. You know,
not the first one that you generally learn in high school before
calculus, but the upper level college 'algebra' with the same
name that you often learn after calculus.

In the college that I went to a while back, you could drop out
of a class and get a refund with no bad grade if you dropped out
at two weeks. I dropped out at two weeks for that second 'algebra'.
I am thinking that dogs, like most mammals, have no green cone.
This might help with night vision. It might be that all or only
some primates have a green cone. Dogs might see something different
when observing rainbows. A blind person might read about rainbows
using braille or hearing someone speak about them.