Zenny wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:17 pmSo,from your point of view,what is your criterion for truth?
I believe in certain non-falsifiable claims because they seem reasonable to me. I have other personal reasons for believing in these non-falsifiable claims, but I'm not really willing to discuss them on an often-hostile web forum. The non-falsifiable claim is the existence of the Buddhas and the Āryan saints
(and, yes, I'm aware of all sorts of issues and hangups, bad associations etc., that people have with the term "Āryan" and the word "saint") and the authenticity of their realizations. Their realizations are called "the Dharma" and it pre-exists them and is not invented by them. These are things that I believe in that are criteria of truth for me. I'm sure that they're ideology to you and whatever else you'd consider them. That "the Dharma" is a criterion of truth for me does not mean that I need to believe in every single thing called "the Dharma." Hinduism is also called "the Dharma" and I don't believe in that, largely because I've no connection to it. Nothing has ever made me think, "I bet these guys have things right." I think Hinduism is interesting, but am not convinced that "their Dharma" ought to be for me personal criteria of truth.
Zenny wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:20 pmCoëmgenu wrote: ↑Fri Jul 30, 2021 4:16 pmConsider, when someone is baffled by something complex and unclear, particularly when that complex unclear thing is nonsensical instead of sensical, they aren't actually convinced by the complexity. What people do, I'd wager, is select some simple sentiment(s) that they can understand from within the muck that they don't understand and stick to it as a matter of faith in the muck. Why? The muck is purported to be something fancy, but it also has general simple sentiments within it that are easy to cling to.
OK. But why even be drawn towards muck?
Clear sentiments need not be mixed with unnecessary admixtures.
Well, the easiest answer to that is, IMO, in the last sentence of that post that you responded to:
"Why? The muck is purported to be something fancy, but it also has general simple sentiments within it that are easy to cling to."
We can't take things like the fluency heuristic too far. Why? The fluency heuristic is an example of the fluency heuristic. It is problematically self-referential. That people are likely to believe in simple explanations as truth because they are simple is itself a simple explanation for widely divergent human behaviours. It is "simple" to believe in. We have to remember that the fluency heuristic is a bias, not a principle of good reasoning. If the heuristic labels itself a bias, that's an issue.
There are too many other reasons why people might be "drawn towards muck." Two broad categories are "they think it's not muck" or "that it is 'muck' it mistaken." As for why someone might think that muck is non-muck -- they are confused and think that they've worked out 'a system' to what is essentially muck in truth. The human brain likes to look for patterns and regularity. As for why someone might think that non-muck is muck -- they are confused and that they don't understand the non-muck makes them insecure. They believe it is muck because they have to, lest they deal with their insecurity at fundamentally not understanding the non-muck.
I don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye. Things that I think are non-muck are things that you think are muck.