According to mystical based beliefs described in A Textbook of Theosophy by C.W. Leadbeater:
> When a man thinks of any concrete object - a book, a house, a landscape - he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually perceptively affect the man of whom he thinks.
These mental bodies are not considered by the textbook to be bound by time, given they are "astral bodies" for which, under certain conditions, time and space don't matter.
I think the primary problem with positivism is the knowledge about the universe is never fully attained, so it feels more like a confused reasoning process. The assumption the scientific method will explain everything someday is irrational. When is that going to happen? With more work? What positivism really is, is a commitment to a bunch of work in the future to "prove" something is this and not that. The future never arrives.
Mysticism is the flipside of that. A mystical approach builds a metaphor to exist that "makes sense" but can't really be tested or analyzed by scientific methods. Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true. Maybe that includes visualizing something over and over again?
Between these two extremes sits a philosophy that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge, and that both can be used to improve our understanding of the world. This philosophy emphasizes the need for both scientific and spiritual knowledge in order to create a complete picture of reality.
Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved. It's a little like a virus in that regard, growing without bounds or purpose, other than to try to avoid the mystical outlooks at all costs.
Mysticism is a not an "understanding of the world" but a way of framing our knowledge of the world and coping with the unknown and the unknowable.
The realm of the unknown and the unknowable shrinks as our tools advance but there are very good reasons to think it will never disappear as there are both provably unknowable truths amd facts that are practicaly impossible to learn.
> Faith takes over there, where just believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.
This only applies to a limited set of things (the unknowable), getting enough people to believe the world is flat won't make that a true belief, no matter how many people have how much faith.
The types of things that faith can make true are subjective, sociocultural or related to our inner lives.
> Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved.
In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.
There is a long history of faith pairing quite productively with the scientific method. The network of scientific knowledge is primarily drive by one thing: curiosity, not any sort of animus against the mystical.
>> Unfortunately, the scientific method is a bit annoying sometimes, given it's absolute insistence all things may be disproved.
> In no way, shape or form does the scientific method suggest this, let alone insist on it.
You are right about this. The scientific method doesn't insist things are disproved. It makes a practice of disproving things until there is faith that it isn't disprovable. It doesn't continue forever, but the practice of doing it with another thing continues after, doesn't it?
Well okay, but when the scientific method produces knowledge, the voracity of that knowledge can be checked by an observer. When a mystic convinces a large number of people that their opinions are in fact, truths, that is not a process that can be checked by an observer, and the “knowledge” produced has nothing tying itself back to reality.
The process cant, but the knowledge can be. You seem to be arguing against dogma, not a mythopeotic view. And fair call, religious power structures do a lot of harm.
A critique of a strawman of empiricism, is not really a justification for an alternative truth system (mysticism.).
Yes, there are things that are unknowable, even with the tools of empiricism.
But pointing out this issue, in no way supports the idea of using a non-sense ideology in its place, or even ascribing any value to such a thing.
> that holds that there is value in both kinds of knowledge
No, there is no knowledge in mysticism. And is it a bad argument to point out a supposed problem in empiricism, as a justification for a different system, when that other system doesn't deal with the problem any better.
> believing something irrational to be true, makes it true.
Believing something to be true, does not make it true, unless you redefine the word "true" to a nonsense definition of "Well a true thing, is whatever we believe to be true. Gotcha, I win! I just created a self-consistent tautology, by playing word games, and making up a new definition! You can't call me wrong, because it's a consistent, self referential belief! That intro to philosophy class sure was useful!"
The essay to read is “The Will To Believe” from William James.
This is where the term “leap of faith” was coined. That illustration shows that, at least where self-confidence is concerned, belief in one’s own capabilities can greatly influence the outcome. Do not read this as a rebuttal to your last point; it’s a nuance, and may be limited to one’s own self-conception.
That essay also discusses the circumstances where it makes sense to respect non-rational[1] beliefs:
> Genuine option – "we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind"[0]
All of those terms are precisely defined in the essay, and the Wikipedia article has a decent lightning summary. The point is, when you are faced with coming up with a personal philosophy or set of guiding principles, you are forced to figure it out, and science is not (yet or possibly ever) capable of providing answers to those questions for most people.
[1]
I prefer the term “non-rational” here because “irrational” has connotations of “going against rational thought” whereas “non-rational” implies “areas which are not covered by rational thought.”
> A critique of a strawman of empiricism, is not really a justification for an alternative truth system (mysticism.).
That's over my pay grade, but yes, I understand what you are saying.
I think that "knowledge" in the case of mysticism is just "knowing" something to be true or not, but not having the rational understanding of it. Maybe that's still off, so thank you for helping define it better.
Regarding the last comment, I was saying that some believe that believing something to be true makes it true, but I'm not so sure about that for myself.
The predictive power that most people have (at least with normally functioning brains, for some neutral definition of normal being the baseline) is surprisingly good. Executive function requires making many such predictions and forecasts every minute. If I had to give a rough estimate, I’d say slightly greater than a coin flip for future event outcomes.
Yes. The explanation “it was all made up by one or more writers” sufficiently covers not just the precognition, but also the hallucinations and even the existence of the oracle.
> When a man thinks of any concrete object - a book, a house, a landscape - he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually perceptively affect the man of whom he thinks.
These mental bodies are not considered by the textbook to be bound by time, given they are "astral bodies" for which, under certain conditions, time and space don't matter.