Astrology and Us

[redacted]

You are right. Language is largely metaphoric. So it behooves us to understand what a metaphor is, and what are the limitations of a metaphor.

Having said that though some words do refer directly to reality. You might start with the Periodic Table and move through an actual table and onto the Sun.

Children learn language by first associating words with real things. As they mature they learn that words can describe relationships. And finally they move onto metaphors which are comparisons of relationships.

So metaphors are a fair way from words and real things.

The difficulty is, I think, is that words can refer to real things and also be metaphoric.

And of course a comparison is not a real thing.

And just as an electron is a wave and a particle, so words describe things and comparisons.

And look I have nothing against the suspension of disbelief whether it's Creationism or MBTI.

But it seems silly to me to call Creationism, science, just as it is to call MBTI a personality test.

And I know everyone here wants to get on without dissent so I wonder why I bother. Except I know this is the way cults operate - they offer social acceptance and belonging if you leave your brain at the door.

In the temple of MBTI there is a big box of brains just inside the front door.

I rest my case.

Your case has nothing to do with mine, since you're using 'metaphor' differently than I am. Even with your definition, though, how can you say "cognition" is connected to reality? Our bodies are made up of cells, which are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms. Where does cognition come in? If cognition is an okay term, so are Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuition. They're just arbitrarily defined subsets of cognition.

Or, even better, how is "personality" connected to reality? Your argument is fine, but it applies to much more than the words that I'm defending.

Plus, every word is a metaphor. There is no such thing as "connecting to reality", since we have no access to reality.

Dissonance you gave nothing but your personal opinion the same as Jack and Xander have been doing. What you don't say is how anyone can scoff at astrology when it was key to Jung deriving type, and MBTI followed suit? Now that's obvious. Don't you people read about this subject?

I don't care about Jung or his beliefs -- nothing to do with the terms that he defined. Just because someone has a cool idea doesn't mean that it came from a "valid" place, or that the person's other beliefs hold any water.

I'm not just asserting my opinion. I stated a bunch of reasoning, used metaphors, and asked people if there were flaws in my stance. Are there? Is there something I'm missing about astrology? If so, let me know. Because, honestly, I'm interested in having a discussion, not a meta-discussion.

 

["?"]

I don't care about Jung or his beliefs -- nothing to do with the terms that he defined. Just because someone has a cool idea doesn't mean that it came from a "valid" place, or that the person's other beliefs hold any water.

I'm not just asserting my opinion. I stated a bunch of reasoning, used metaphors, and asked people if there were flaws in my stance. Are there? Is there something I'm missing about astrology? If so, let me know. Because, honestly, I'm interested in having a discussion, not a meta-discussion.

Hell based on your statement I am more concerned about you missing the point about type in saying you care nothing about Jung. You do know that no Jung = no MBTI as we know it?

 

[redacted]

Hell based on your statement I am more concerned about you missing the point about type in saying you care nothing about Jung. You do know that no Jung = no MBTI as we know it?

What's the point about type?

 

[Mole]

There is no such thing as "connecting to reality", since we have no access to reality.

Yes, there is a sense in which this is true.

And that is if we perceive by making distinctions.

For instance the machine in front of you right now makes one and only one distinction. And that is the distinction between 0 and 1.

And it does make this distinction very, very fast, over and over again. But still it is only making one distinction. Everything you see in front of you now is made with one and only one distinction.

When we succeed in building a quantum computer it will make a number of distinctions concurrently. But still they will only be distinctions.

And it seems we perceive by making distinctions. For instance a picture becomes visible through the distinction between the foreground and the background.

So it is fair to say that all our senses are calibrated to respond to certain distinctions - and so we do not perceive reality directly.

However this doesn't hold us back. As all of mathematics is based on the injunction: make a distinction.

And mathematics describes the world around us from quantum mechanics to gravity. Mathematics is the language of God.

And if we perceive by making distinctions, then how natural for us to speak in metaphors. For metaphors are distinctions between relationships.

This is clouded by the fact that we start learning language as children in a concrete, literal fashion. It is only as we mature that language can refer to relationships. And then finally we can see that language can refer to distinctions between relationships.

So metaphors are the final sophistication of language.

But on the path to becoming sophisticates, it is natural to confuse the three levels of language.

 

[entropie]

^yeah ignore me, I do that to myself very often