I assume much the same things about this as any other sense: it’s there to give information about the world, but trickable. I mean, how tired you feel is a good measure of how long it’s been since you’ve slept, but you can drink coffee and end up feeling more energetic than is merited. So if I want to be able to tell how much sleep I really need, I should avoid caffeine. That doesn’t mean the existence of caffeine makes your subjective feelings of your own energy level arbitrary or worthless.
I assume much the same things about this as any other sense: it’s there to give information about the world, but trickable.
Interestingly, this sounds like the way that I used to view my own spiritual experiences. While I can’t claim to have ever had a full-blown vision, I have had powerful, spontaneous feelings associated with prayer and other internal and external religious stimuli. I assumed that God was trying to tell me something. Later, I started to wonder why I was also having these same powerful feelings at odd times clearly not associated with religious experiences, and in situations where there was no message for me as far as I could tell.
On introspection, I realized that I associated this with God because I’d been taught by people at church to identify this “frisson” with spirituality. At the time, it was the most accessible explanation. But there was no other reason for me to believe that explanation over a natural one. That I was getting data that seemed to contradict the “God’s spirit” hypothesis eventually led to an update.
I assume much the same things about this as any other sense: it’s there to give information about the world, but trickable. I mean, how tired you feel is a good measure of how long it’s been since you’ve slept, but you can drink coffee and end up feeling more energetic than is merited. So if I want to be able to tell how much sleep I really need, I should avoid caffeine. That doesn’t mean the existence of caffeine makes your subjective feelings of your own energy level arbitrary or worthless.
Interestingly, this sounds like the way that I used to view my own spiritual experiences. While I can’t claim to have ever had a full-blown vision, I have had powerful, spontaneous feelings associated with prayer and other internal and external religious stimuli. I assumed that God was trying to tell me something. Later, I started to wonder why I was also having these same powerful feelings at odd times clearly not associated with religious experiences, and in situations where there was no message for me as far as I could tell.
On introspection, I realized that I associated this with God because I’d been taught by people at church to identify this “frisson” with spirituality. At the time, it was the most accessible explanation. But there was no other reason for me to believe that explanation over a natural one. That I was getting data that seemed to contradict the “God’s spirit” hypothesis eventually led to an update.