Thread: Are feelings and intuitions a valid source of knowledge?

Originally Posted by JoannaB

.. I have personally experienced him with a sixth sense which I believe to be as real as my five senses even though I cannot prove it to anyone other than myself.

Ok, so it cannot be verified or demonstrated to be true.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

And for me that is not just a feel good feeling but it is truth. I believe that God truely does exist. That I do not just believe in the idea of a God, but rather that there really is a God external to me as well as within me.

Yes, belief. I'm totally with you so far.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I believe that in spiritual matters faith and conscience are the sources of knowledge, and they can reveal truth, albeit a truth which is very personal.

Of course! I never meant to imply that you can't have a personal belief that your intuitions are correct. When I say they're not verifiable, that means other people can't see your intuitions, and when I say they can't be demonstrated to be true it means pretty much the same, that you can't prove their truth to other people. So I guess you really have been misunderstanding me all along.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

For me the word "objective" has mostly negative connotations,

There's nothing either positive or negative about objectivity. It's just a term that has a particular meaning. And we've already agreed that we're not going to slip back into the "we can't really know things are as we perceive them" argument because we're forced to live our lives with the assumption that it really is as we perceive it, and if we stop doing that then everything becomes meaningless. At that point there's no use arguing about things that we perceive anymore, is there? If you really do want to use that argument then go ahead, but at that point the conversation is over.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I think a large part of the problem is one of translation. No, not because English is not my native language but because due to my experiences and my understanding of the world versus your experiences and your understanding of the world, I think most of the words we use come with completely different connotations, and when you say a word then I interpret it based on my understanding of that word even though I know that your meaning is different, and that is the case with so many words we use that it becomes much more difficult to communicate.

Yes, that's exactly why I've been making such a massive effort to try to really understand what you mean when it's clear we're using a term differently.

Originally Posted by JoannaB

I know that you have said (or at least I heard you say, though I may have misunderstood) that this is because my definitions of the words are wrong and yours are right,

Seriously? You're actually going to say that after I worked so hard to understand exactly what you meant by knowledge in a spiritual/religious context and then adjusted my own use of the term to match yours? You did say above that in a spiritual/religious context knowledge has a different meaning than it does in a factual/scientific context, that it's use is broader and less strict. So I accepted that and said that as long as you explain that to atheists, who take the word knowledge to mean something verifiable and demonstrable, then you won't have any problems. I've been working hard to accommodate you when we have a difference of opinion on the meanings of words. For example, if you have a different understanding of what verifiable or demonstrable mean, then please say so, and we can easily find the right terms, ones we can both agree on. I've clearly explained above what I mean with both of them, and they both involve other people being able to experience what you experience and corroborate that what you observed is also what they observed.


I want to make sure we can get over this definition problem, so please list any words that you feel mean something different from what I understand them to mean, and we'll work out a way to clear up communication. I've explained exactly what I take verifiable and demonstrable to mean - are we in agreement on those terms?