One important point of that perspective is the recognition that however much each of us want to believe that we only function from a reality mindset (our why we believe is exclusively rational and evidence based); most of us actually do some mythology based as well.
It is hard to be honest about it and recognize that much of what I believe is not as reality evidence based as I’d like it to think it is.
And of the portion that is - to maintain the understanding that what I belief are the facts is actually only a best guess of the actual facts based on evidence I have at this time. My facts are with various degrees of confidence and doubt are provisionally held, open to revision if sufficient alternative evidence surfaces.
It’s the perspective problem. Religious brains believe they are objective. Even 17th century Franciscans when they sought grotesque martyrdom. Each brain perception is a simulation.
The brain is a logic engine with an innate absolute referent that allows it to correctly evaluate all sensory input.
The brain is a self organizing logic system with referent created by experience. Sensory input is evaluated based on experience.
If we are close to case 1, the world population would have a narrow view that is close to reality.
If we are closer to case 2, then the world population would have a normal distribution of perceptions of reality. At one extreme some physicists may have a pretty good idea of what’s real. At the other extreme some folks would be seeking martyrdom or perhaps a space ship hiding behind a comet,
I really don’t understand where you are coming from and I don’t see that the two options you give represent a true dichotomy or are the only options for how a brain may work.
The world is an oblate spheroid. That is an objective fact and is independent of a person’s perspective. The scientific method is the means by which we understand what we can label as “facts” and also the means by which we guard against biased thinking.
The fact that some people “perceive” reality to be other than it is trivially true. Reality doesn’t care, facts don’t care, and depending on specific circumstances such people may well die or otherwise suffer because of it.
I don’t think I accept that there are discrete “doors”
The means by which I accept a fact are those which show it to be demonstrably true regardless of my cognitive biases or pre-dispositions. That it works whether I accept it or not or whether I even exist or not.
That really isn’t rocket-science (but it is the foundation of all science and is really the only way that we can come to truly know anything about the world)
The scientific method shares some commonality with your description of a “door 2” but that does not mean that it exists purely within it or that it cannot also share commonality with myriad other, as yet undefined, doors.
I don’t find your imprecise philosophical statements at all convincing.
I would like to think that a truly scientific method of finding reality would involve cause and effect. Much of which is presented to us as science seems very shortsighted and does not meet the criteria to be presented as factual.
I remain unsure as to what point you are trying to make.
I don’t think there is anything “outside” of the human experience that is addressed by the scientific method. Seeing as that method is a means to explain the world as we experience it.
Yes, and our method allows us to observe and measure the physical world. We have the good fortune to have been raised with this belief. You, and I, have been told that it is true. And, we feel that the scientific method gives us the means to confirm facts.
But, it is something we were taught, not something we were born with. When you say you know a fact, that is something you were taught. The current concept of fact has only been around for three or four hundred years.
Why is it important? Because we need to understand the WHY. Do I make my decisions based on an innate absolute sense of (true/false or right/wrong), or are my decisions based on a learned standard?
If absolute then everybody in the world knows the same absolute standard and if they deviate they are acting against their inner nature (Door 1). The WHY of our belief is our nature. We cannot change.
If learned then the world will exhibit a normal distribution of beliefs about true./false, right/wrong. (Door 2). The WHY of our belief is the result of experience. We are molded by culture.
WHAT we believe follows from the above. Either we are following some inborn path (1) or everything we do is based on our accumulated experience (2).
I believe the point they are trying to make is that you likely have only personally tested an exceedingly small amount of scientific facts yourself, and that anything else you take as a fact is based on you trusting that other people have truthfully conveyed information that they have learned from their observations.
For example, you believe that the world is an oblate spheroid - that may be an objective fact that is independent of a person’s perspective, but why do you, personally, believe that it is an objective fact? Have you taken any measurements and performed any calculations to confirm this for yourself? Or have you read literature on it and seen pictures, and believed that information to be credible? Most people trust science because in theory, everyone can go out and do the experiments to verify for themselves that something that they learned from someone else is true. However, in reality, only a small number of people actually do the experiments, and other people trust that what they are saying is correct. We trust them because other people who have also done the experiments back up what they are saying, and it seems implausible that the world of science that we know is made up of a gigantic web of conspiracies and lies.
But ultimately, I think most of the things we believe are objective facts are only that way because we have implicit trust in other people. Science is an enormous chain where each link has been tested by different people countless times and found to be solid - yet, any given person will have only tested a few links in that chain, and everyone just trusts that everyone else who has checked other links in the chain were doing it right (since, everyone assumes, if someone was doing it wrong, others would have figured that out when they tested that same link, and you can go and test the link yourself if you want to be sure).
I’m going to stop you right there because that is all that needs to be said. That is the only way that we can come to anything approaching an objective fact.
The rest of what you say is talking about what people believe and not on the nature of an objective fact and that doesn’t interest me.
no, we don’t feel it, we prove it. What we learn through the scientific method either works in the real world or it doesn’t. What people believe about it has precisely zero bearing on it.