Aphorism of the Day: Why me? is as honest a question as it is useless, given that no one deserves anything, least of all what they get.
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It really is amazing how prone we are to overlook the obvious, especially when our knowledge of a field is genuinely deep. The question, Why philosophy? should rank with the most profound, most discussed questions within philosophy, but it isn’t. If you make a living being stymied, surely you would want to ask why you are stymied!
And yet, it’s scarcely considered, let alone mentioned. The answer, I’m sure most philosophers would tell you, is too obvious to be worth considering. Why philosophy? Because we don’t know. And since so much of philosophy is given over to the question of knowledge, they would argue that a great deal of philosophy is concerned with its own import and status. The problem is we just don’t know what the hell ‘knowing’ is.
The question, Why philosophy? in other words, follows the question, What is knowledge? Questions must be answered in the proper order to be answered at all.
Sounds sensible. But what if they got it backward? What if the question, Why philosophy? is actually prior to the question of, What is knowledge?
If you look at the history of philosophy you find a rather remarkable process of what might be called ‘reaching and yielding.’ Over the centuries, philosophy has retreated from countless of questions and problematics, namely, those incorporated within the natural sciences. Why have they retreated? Because the questions asked eventually found empirical resolution. Knowledge came to the rescue…
See? the philosopher can say. I told you so.
But what if we scaled back our answer? What if we said something more simple, but perhaps equally mysterious? What if we said the questions asked found empirical resolution because information came to the rescue? The idea here would be that philosophy is the kind of inquiry that humans turn to in impoverished informatic conditions, when they have enough information to formulate the question, but not enough to decisively arbitrate between its potential answers. This would be why philosophy is something that generally moves in advance of the sciences. When we initially encounter a problem, we necessarily have limited informatic resources to work with, and so, like children disputing shapes in clouds, have no way of distinguishing the patterns we think we see from the patterns that actually exist.
Nature, in this cartoon, is a kind of bottomless, multi-stable image. Scientific measurement and experimentation are the ways we isolate signals from the noise of immediate nature and so accumulate information. Scientific instrumentation is the way we access information from beyond the sensory horizon of immediate nature. Scientific institutional practices are the way we isolate signals from the noise generated by human cognitive shortcomings. Mathematics is the way we code and so manipulate this information. And philosophy, ideally, is the way we provide the information required to get these processes of scientific information gathering off the ground.
Questions, an old slogan of mine goes, are how we make ignorance visible. Questions, in other words, are how we make information regarding the absence of information available. Before questions, informatic sufficiency is the assumptive default: when you don’t know that you don’t know, you assume that you know all you need to know. The ancient Sumerians never worried about near earth objects or coronal mass ejections or so on for the same reason we don’t worry about any of the myriad things our descendants will fret about: they simply lacked information regarding their lack of information.
Why philosophy? Because we lack information. We are finite systems, after all, and you might expect that any intelligent alien species, as finite, would also have their own science and philosophy, their own histories of reaching and yielding. But what makes ‘information’ a better candidate for answering our marquee question than ‘knowledge’?
For one, it seems to enable a more nuanced account of the relation between philosophy and science. To ask, Why philosophy? is to also ask, Why not philosophy? which is to say, Why science and not philosophy? The account provided above, I would argue, reveals the conceptually unwieldy, cumbersome nature of ‘knowledge.’ Knowledge is an end product, the result of information gathering. As such, it’s explanatory utility is limited–extremely so. For example, you could say that philosophy is a form of human inquiry that turns on found information, what we simply have at hand when we raise a question–‘armchair information,’ you might say.
Does ‘armchair knowledge’ make any sense? Of course not. We call it ‘armchair speculation’ for a reason. Information, in other words, allows us to span the gap between mere speculation and knowledge with a term that admits comparative gradations. Answers posed in conditions of informatic insufficiency we call speculation. Answers posed in conditions of informatic sufficiency we call knowledge.
For another, information need not be semantic. Information, unlike meaning, can be quantified, and so expressed in the language of mathematics, and so amenable to empirical experimentation. We can, in other words, possess theoretical knowledge regarding information. Moreover, it reduces the risk of question-begging, given that meaning is perhaps the ‘great question’ within philosophy. If it turns out that meaning is the problem, the reason why we can only speculate–only philosophize–knowledge, then using knowledge to explain why we must resort to philosophy simply dooms us to speculation regarding speculation.
And lastly, information provides an entirely new way to characterize the history of philosophy, one that seems to shed no little light on the theoretical problems that presently bedevil a great number of philosophers. With information, we can characterize the retreat of philosophy and the advance of science in terms of complexity: the more complex the natural phenomena, the more information scientific knowledge requires. Thus, science has only now breached the outer walls of the human brain, the most complex thing we know of in the universe. Thus the preponderance of philosophy when it comes to matters of the soul.
In a certain sense, this narrative is obvious: Of course the complexity of the brain forced science to bide its time, refining and extending its repertoire of procedures and instrumentation, not to mention its knowledge base, before making serious inroads. Of course the soul became the stronghold of philosophy in the meantime, the one place it could reach and reach without worry of yielding. But what is surprising–even downright counterintuitive–about this tale is the fact that we are our brains. Of all the noise that nature has to offer, surely the signal most easily plucked, the information that hangs lowest, comes from ourselves!
And yet, arguably, nowhere are we more philosophical.
If philosophy is our response to informatic poverty, our inability to gather enough of the information required to decisively arbitrate between our claims, then philosophy itself becomes an important bearer of information. It is an informatic weather-vane. In this case, philosophy tells us that, despite all the information we think we have at our disposal via intuition or introspection, we actually represent a profound informatic blindspot.
Somehow, for some reason, the information we need to theoretically know ourselves is simply not available. Since the default assumption is that we are awash in information regarding ourselves, then something very peculiar must be going on. Essentially we find ourselves in the same straits vis a vis ourselves as our ancestors found themselves in relative to their environments prior to the institutionalization of science. We have plenty of information to theorize–and theorize we do–but not enough information, at least of the right kind, to resolve our theoretical disputes. In other words, we have only philosophy and its vexing consolations.
Thus the crucial importance of the question, Why philosophy? The fact that we endlessly philosophize intentional phenomena tells us that we quite literally lack the information required to gain theoretical knowledge of intentional or semantic phenomena. It’s important to note that we are talking about theoretical as opposed to practical knowledge here. When philosophers like Daniel Dennett, for instance, argue the predictive power and utility of intentionality, they seem to assume that intentionality as theorized possesses predictive power, when in point of fact, they are discussing predictive capacities that humans possessed long before the ancient Greeks and the birth of philosophy. The fact is, Dennett’s ‘intentional stance’ is a theoretical posit, a philosophically controversial way to theorize what it is we are doing when we predict what other systems will do. The fact is, we don’t know what it is we are doing when we predict what other systems will do. We just do it.
In other words, you have to assume the truth of Dennett’s theoretical account, before you can assert the predictive power of intentionality. But, as we have seen, we obviously lack the information required to do this–even though most assume otherwise. The question, Why philosophy? reveals that the information available to intuition and introspection is far more impoverished or distorted than it appears. If it were adequate, then first-person reflection would be sufficient for a first-person science, as certain psychologists and phenomenologists thought around the turn of the 20th century.
Why philosophy? in other words, allows us to side-step the default-assumption of sufficiency that plagues us when we lack (or fail to take into account) information regarding the absence or inadequacy of information. It reminds us that we are at sea with reference to ourselves.
And most importantly, it provides us with another series of questions to ask, questions that I think have the potential to revolutionize consciousness research and the philosophy of mind. We quite obviously lack the information we need, so the question becomes, Why?
Why do intuition and introspection provide only enough information for philosophy? Is evolution a culprit, or in other words, what kind of developmental constraints might be at work? Is neural architecture a factor, which is to say, what kind of structural constraints are involved? Given what neuroscience has discovered thus far, what kind of informatic constraints should we expect to suffer? Could ‘reflection,’ the act of bringing conscious activity (phenomenal or cognitive) into attentional awareness for the purposes of conscious deliberation, constitute a kind ‘informatic bottleneck,’ one that systematically depletes and/or distorts the information apparently available? Could intentionality be chimerical, a kind of theoretical hallucination? What brain systems cognize this information? Is there a relationship between the kinds of cognitive mistakes we make in the absence of information in environmental cognition and our various claims regarding conscious experience? How might informatic shortfalls find themselves expressed in conscious experience?
This is the perspective taken and these are the questions asked by the Blind Brain Theory. If the information that neuroscience is patiently accumulating eventually bears out its claims, then the stronghold of the soul will have finally fallen, and philosophers will become one more people without a nation, exiles in their armchairs.
Before I say anything I must admit that I only read the first third of the post. The thing is I have been interested in philosophy from a very young age and the questions that plagued me were always one of metaphysics, why this thing we call “reality” is the way it is. And I’ll be damned if I found any answers to this or any questions from a philosopher. Philosophy if anything is only the science of questions, yes questions are important but only as important as the answers they inadvertently lead to. In all my study of philosophy the only thing I learnt was futility. And that’s just fucking depressing an boring too.
To tell you the truth I’ve found more from my study of mysticism. Most people think its just some cheap assed mumbo jumbo but I’ve found quite fascinating things in mysticism.
There was a fascinating little thing that you wrote in the Prince of Nothing, where during training Kellhus spends long times on end repeatedly reciting first by tongue and then only in his mind a word. I wanted to ask you from where did you come up with that, is that like a christian hermetic concept?
Belief is easy. It’s the low road: everybody believes something or another. Perhaps there is something important and profound in the mystic tradition – perhaps not. The bottomline is that short of thinking you’ve won the Magical Belief Lottery, you will have no idea one way another. And this just means that mysticism possesses no answers whatsoever, only claims that people adopt according to their inclinations and desires – what they think fascinating.
Doubt is the harder path.
I actually came up with that Kellhus meditation sequence after reading about the differences between indefinite and definite articles – philosophy!
Thanks for this post. Jung would of called it synchronicity. You just really cleared some up some fogginess in my thinking about the relationship between philosophy and science.
Danke, Ricky. What were you thinking?
Fantasist: Your comment about how you’ve gotten more out of mysticism than philosophy reminded of an essay I read from a neopagen, talking about his spiritual experiences:
“Speak of archetypes and semi-independent complexes. Feel free to hypothesize that I’ve merely learned how to enter some non-ordinary mental states that change my body language, disable a few mental censors, and have me putting out signals that other people interpret in terms of certain material in their own unconscious minds.
Fine. You’ve explained it. Correctly, even. But you can’t do it!
And as long as you stick with the sterile denotative language of psychology, and the logical mode of the waking mind, you won’t be able to — because you can’t reach and program the unconscious mind that way. It takes music, symbolism, sex, hypnosis, wine and strange drugs, firelight and chanting, ritual and magic. Super-stimuli that reach past the conscious mind and neocortex, in and back to the primate and mammal and reptile brains curled up inside.”
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html
As the author of this piece points out, while science is better than mysticism at describing the self, understanding and changing your mind is still the same as it was thousands of years ago. I can’t help but wonder what the word “spiritual” will mean when/if science finally conquers the mind. Just another word for blissful ignorance? Perhaps philosophers and mystics, in an effort to find relevance, will carve out little spheres of ignorance it live inside, safe from a excess of truth.
I might even join them. If scientists told me they could predict my every personality trait, everything I could possibly love or hate, from just a brain scan, I’d probably refuse. And they’d probably just nod, and say “That’s what our model predicted you’d say. Just so you know, you made the right choice. In the long run, you’ll be happier this way.”
Personally I prefer neurotheology
All the fun without the beliefs! Plus, with better neuroscience, there’d be more “mystical experience” options available. Why not?
what the word “spiritual” will mean when/if science finally conquers the mind.
I wonder if science will conquer the notion of conquer?
Perhaps instead it’ll suddenly be a mountain of dread responsibility? Science has done nothing – it revealed. What will you do now, given that before you need do nothing on a range of subjects prior, for sheer ignorance of them. Where science shows it has done nothing, so instead of it being that thing over there (called science) doing this stuff, it’s actually all at ones own doorstep?
“That’s what our model predicted you’d say.”
Seriously, if they are really willing to make claims about a binary outcome as if they knew, when there’s simply a massive 50% chance of getting it right by sheer luck, you have to wonder if they are the scientistis, or simply some scientists specimens.
I agree with you there, Doubt is the harder path. It makes for a difficult and in my case a depressing path. Sometimes, I just wish I could blindly believe, that would have been so much easier.
And one just can’t say: “doubting is the better path even though its hard cause when its all said and done you know the truth and that’s all that matters” because the curse of doubt is that all you know is that you don’t know shit.
I am a doubter that’s why I enjoy you philosophic types but I being a doubter say its the worst fate one could wish for. Because happiness sprouting from illusions trumps depression from truths(or total lack of said truths) any day of the week.
Either that or I just take things too seriously……
but I being a doubter say its the worst fate one could wish for. Because happiness sprouting from illusions trumps depression from truths(or total lack of said truths) any day of the week.
Depends how hard you work – ie, if your in a work hard / play hard cycle. In that sort of cycle, yeah, you need some serious happyness to make up for the gut busting work. Particularly if you burn up decades of your life on working hard…to even consider anything less suddenly makes those decades dreadful (and thus a destroyer of simple joys anyway).
There are real meditations that go EXACTLY in the same manner as you came up with “after reading about the differences between indefinite and definite articles”, and people came up with those centuries(if not millennia) ago.
Don’t know if they were reading about neuroscience, psychology and indefinite and definite articles then. LOL
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Seriously though, there must be something we’re missing.
Sorry to disagree with everyone, but with the wisdom born from atheism, I’d have to inform you that you’re all wrong.
Belief is always the worst choice to make, and putting your faith in belief is just perverse. The simple reason is that there is no religion which you can depend upon to answer the really important questions in life, whether that religion be science, mysticism, philosophy or just plain old-fashioned religion.
Excluding those religions which include hearing voices in your head, can anyone name a single belief which can answer all the really important questions in life. And I’m not taking about the questions which we’re always being told are really important but no-one actually gives a shit about, like the meaning of life or the origin of the universe. I’m referring to questions like choosing between going to your best friend’s wedding or writing that all important exam, whether to go to that concert that might just be the greatest experience in your life or to go to work like you’re supposed to and keep your job. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll have to admit that these are far more profound questions than whether or not the cosmos was squeezed from the posterior of god.
And if you’re still being honest about things, you’ll admit that you’re secretly atheists too. When faced with such important questions, you’re not going to look for the answers in your scripture of choice, whether that be a bible or scientific literature, because honestly, that’s just crazy.
So do yourselves a favour and admit your inner unbelief and get all the other bullshit out of the way.
Newb, I am sorry but you my friend are exactly the sort of person I was talking about when I was talking about believers. Yes, you don’t believe in religion but you are very certain but a whole load of things. And that certainty defines you as a believer. You are certain that you know what are the most profound questions in life(not just your life but everyone’s life) and thus are certain that your answers are the most profound ones too. Everyone else is deluding themselves with bullshit, you are certain about this too.
This is where you and doubters stand apart, a doubters has only theories which he thinks may be correct but also knows that its quite likely that they are not, he’s is no position to be “certain” about his own “beliefs” let alone everyone else’s.
I think I’ll second Fantasist.
The simple reason is
What follows isn’t a reason, it’s a claim. If there’s anything that marks a raw believer, it’s how claims simply become reasons. It’s disturbing how professing not to believe simple makes the belief hidden and thus even further from scrutiny. Keep your friends close and your beliefs closer.
That or if it was a sarcasm post, it’s kind of disturbing for how long it goes for. Mind you, some people write whole books, so what do I know?
You’re right. I was just kidding. I wouldn’t be a very good atheist if I went around believing I knew what was right for everyone else.
It is quite long, but once I get started, the ideas start flowing…
Still, I felt like it raised a few important questions, and how better to goad a response than to poke at all the bears all at once. Except that the only thing anyone responded to was my bad sense of humour, not the questions it framed. It makes you wonder…
What were the questions?
Vali:
I agree partially with you that you MAY be able to “reach past the conscious mind with super-stimuli”. But I don’t agree that that’s the ONLY way to get to other mental states.
For all my wishes to attain to blind belief it surprises me how much CERTAINTY annoys me. My problem with your opinion is again your certainty.
When you say “can’t” , “just can’t”, its just vexing cause we have no personal experience to base this opinion on. How many of us have even tried to “program the unconscious mind that way” via any of the methods you’ve quoted yourself to form definitive opinions on whether the mind can be “programmed”.
And I agree that “science is better than mysticism at describing the self” but mysticism was never aimed at description it was aimed at experience. I am in way saying that mysticism is better than science because they can’t be compared, their aims, their targets are very different.
It’s kinda off topic, but I was wondering if there’s a parallel somewhat in fiction readers, in the way some/many are very picky and particular and laying down political judgements. Because this, kinda mechanistically, means they stay out of the focus of the book, while they keep judging the book. A kind of stronghold where they can act as they will? Or maybe I’m just bitter – the other day I was thinking about other media (game design) and the whinging demands people make about what a game hasta have or even how game designers have to feel and as I realised what these demands said about the people making them, I realised it wouldn’t be addressed as a subject of the media (unless you happen to spot how it blocks that, basically through only one thing being judged at a time). Yet at the same time, once seen, it suddenly seems rich ground rather than a dire situation anymore – this is where they let it all hang out! Judgemental and self involved. A place to get some real traction! Before I was always seeing all these gatekeeper requirements of so and so graphics, so and so polish to a game, so and so precious lifespan dedicated to their minutes. And I thought how do you say anything when any one of these gate keepers might just shut down what you’re saying? BUT – just turn on the gatekeeper! How can they close the gate because of graphics, for example, when you’re giving them shit for being so particular about graphics? Suddenly they are back in the spotlight! Or maybe I’m wrong – it just feels like going from thin ground to lush ground with lots of game (sure, it’d be often kinda self referential ground. But ground is ground). Anyway, sorry for posting too much again!
What questions?
Whether metaphysical questions are really more important than everyday questions, those which ideologues would term mundane or insignificant, but which essentially define our individual existences?
Whether science, religion and philosophy may not be anything more than intellectual pornography, moral methamphetamine, an escapism from the gravity of mundane existence?
Whether any metaphysical belief can ever attain even the most basic significance to its adherents, not in terms of statements of belief, but actual daily existence?
The kind of questions which people seem very good at ignoring.
If you dial the scope out to something wider than a cosy first world existance (not that everyone in the first world really gets that), especially in terms of ‘which essentially define our individual existences’. So you’re a slave, or a child soldier, or a whore, or perhaps less exciting, some of the many dismall, soul swollowing hard labour tasks out there and you will be socially ostracised for doing badly at it (let alone stopping!).
Do these define your life? Why think any bigger? Why attempt to draw from a broader canvas?
Whether any metaphysical belief can ever attain even the most basic significance to its adherents, not in terms of statements of belief, but actual daily existence?
I think the books ‘open world’ and ‘closed world’ ties into some angle of perception. As in a ‘closed world’, possibility (or atleast those massive swaths all around ones own notion of a world) become dead to you. Even if they turn out to be utterly true, but you closed off from them from just assuming they are false. So how about phrasing it in another respect that metaphysical belief affects more in how it leaves some capacity for an open world? A sort of crutched version of a partially open mind?
Then again we seem to have religious wars every five minutes based on the potentiality being converted to certinality. But that still answers your question, as war is kinda significant to daily existance.
The question revolves around the abstraction of metaphysics. How can concepts which are so removed from our individual day to day existence supposedly be so important to us that we can’t live without them? How can knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin relate in any way to question like whether or not to get insurance on your car? And if there is no real relation, should we be concerning ourselves with it?
I don’t have the answers, but I certainly think that these are important questions.
As to open minds, I cannot see how metaphysics can make a person more open-minded. From personal experience, I would say that broadening one’s mind by experiencing more of ordinary life would make one more open minded. Metaphysics on the other hand historically seems to be the home territory of closed-minded dogmaticism.
Lastly, maybe religious wars do have some kind of religious motivation, but I don’t think so. The Islamic Jihad for instance is often seem as an epitome of religious warfare, but when faced with the choice of traveling 100 miles across the Arabian gulf to convert the heathen masses in Africa or traveling a 1000 miles to raid Constantinople, the richest city in the known world, guess which one they chose. The same can be said of the recent American wars in the Middle East, as with most religious wars across history.
Certainly there are some questions metaphysical or not, which have insignificant influence over our lives. But there are some metaphysical questions that have enough influence to be considered. Also, small beliefs stacked together can produce significant changes in one’s actions also.
Hmm, I’m not sure about the broadening minds. I guess real life experience helps… but it’s all about ideas, I think, so I’d say both reading and talking about ideas is good. And it would be optimal to do both.
Also, you’re right, religious motivation is not the only motivation, and perhaps not even the strongest. But it does influence to a certain extent, and without it it would be harder to raise such an army (whether that would be enough to stop the war I don’t know). Also, there are beliefs that are not just metaphysical and that’s one point I think mister Bakker is trying to make with his PoN trilogy. Like how power of money comes from belief. And such things. Some of those beliefs, if they were scrutinized by the masses might produce a conclusion that would change beliefs that would in turn change actions and that end result might be world in peace (for instance).
How can knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin relate in any way to question like whether or not to get insurance on your car?
I may have given an extreme example with child soldiers, but I assumed the concept would then be scalable. Perhaps your labouring for your car, unquestioning exactly why insurance just hikes up and whether your unquestioning actually feeds that cycle? Perhaps your inside a box with it all? Exactly what are you going to use to get some distance and perspective on what your doing, seeing it from a different angle and a greater height? Oh, I know, you can use the car insurance adverts – cow teeth smiles, actors pretending to be you. Does that seem like you’ve forfilled whatever is needed and you can get your signing pen out….that’s the problem – indeed, yes it does seem so. Or no? Cows teeth are enough for you?
I cannot see how metaphysics can make a person more open-minded. From personal experience, I would say that broadening one’s mind by experiencing more of ordinary life would make one more open minded. Metaphysics on the other hand historically seems to be the home territory of closed-minded dogmaticism.
So you always go to the source which always seems to affirm your own open mindedness, never disconfirms?
It is that ordinary life and metaphisics are two dogma which don’t get along, contradicting each other, disconfirming each other.
It’s very difficult to have ones own sense of open mindedness affirmed when straddling both. And in such a way, probably more open minded.
Lastly, maybe religious wars do have some kind of religious motivation, but I don’t think so. The Islamic Jihad for instance is often seem as an epitome of religious warfare, but when faced with the choice of traveling 100 miles across the Arabian gulf to convert the heathen masses in Africa or traveling a 1000 miles to raid Constantinople, the richest city in the known world, guess which one they chose.
Seem to be going off topic, but anyway…
I love how quickly the buck passes – ‘guess which one they chose?’. Religion is kind of like a gangster who, as soon as the ‘who chose this?’ police raid, he’s out a side door instantly. “OH, THEY chose it…Bugsy wasn’t at the club house at the time at all!”
Let’s skip the boring old pattern of ambiguity gamed defences and just ask, much like Richard Dawkins “rabbit skeleton in the wrong fossil record disproves evolution” self accepted theory disproval method, do you have a method by which you’d accept the idea of religion being involved?
Fantasist said: “And one just can’t say: “doubting is the better path even though its hard cause when its all said and done you know the truth and that’s all that matters” because the curse of doubt is that all you know is that you don’t know shit.
I am a doubter that’s why I enjoy you philosophic types but I being a doubter say its the worst fate one could wish for. Because happiness sprouting from illusions trumps depression from truths(or total lack of said truths) any day of the week.”
So many things I want to reply to, but some darkness is stopping me…
Anyway, this part caught my eye very much. I think it’s not correct that if you say you doubt that you don’t know anything. You know that you don’t know. You don’t believe in illusions. Even if it’s so little, it’s true (presumably). We don’t know anything for sure in life, but to some at least, doubt seem the most likely way. It’s all we got.
Yeah, I know it hurts to know the truth. It pains me when I find about something that I don’t believe in but it is more likely to be true than my belief. I think we have to push ourselves past that pain. Because that’s one necessary “evil.” Some of those truths aren’t about the creation of the universe that doesn’t have that much of an impact on our daily lives. There are some truths, like knowing that the good guy we believe in is actually using us for he’s own ends, that are genuinely useful and might enhance our lives contrary to the illusions we formerly held.
And that’s why I agree with Mr. Bakker that doubt is the better path.
Doubting is definitely the coolest!!!
And the coolest thing of all about doubting is that you never actually have to commit to anything at all.
Like the one time my girlfriend looked me in the eyes and said, “I love you.”
And I look her in the eye and said, “I doubt you too, pumpkin. I doubt you more than anything in the whole wide world.”
Brings a tear to my eye every time.
For those new to the blog, I highly recommend reading Roger’s guest posts about being adoxastōs. It roughly translates to being ‘open-minded’ in an epistemological sense. It does not imply that you cannot make pragmatic commitments, such as saying “I love you” your GF. It does mean, however, that you can entertain interesting hypotheses like Schwitzgebel’s view that you’re actually not as certain about your internal phenomenological states as you might want to believe.
(for example,you might honestly be telling your GF you love her, but you don’t actually understand what that means, or have an accurate internal representation of the associated mindset)
Ever since reading Roger’s posts, I’ve endeavored to adopt this stance as often as possible, especially when dealing with extremely thorny philosophical issues.
Link
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/to-unknow-our-knowing/
Kinda like…?
Heh, yes, pretty much.
Newb:
Ordinary life vs metaphysics. That’s your argument. Well, have you stopped to consider that there are those of us for whom questions about metaphysics are more basic nay essential, nay more ordinary than say insurance.
We live within our circles and we think we can define “ordinary” with any degree of accuracy according to what we believe to be ordinary.
I for one am incredulous as to why one would believe insurance to be of far greater import than say why we see this world the way we see it. You have your ordinary questions and I have mine.
Pompous little creatures as we are, we must prove that our questions are of far greater import that the other pompous creatures who waste their time with intellectual pornography.
nenad8:
Did you even have a point? Because you are talking about a specific mundane example where your doubt helped you out.
I was talking about questions about the nature of reality, existence, purpose….
If one genuinely cares about a question he likes to find out an answer its as simple as that and if you care deeply enough not knowing hurts you.
You said “Some Darkness is stopping me”
Are you like a Bakker fanatic, turning Bakker’s thoughts from the Darkness that comes before and turning it into some form of religious belief? Because if you are then that’s genuinely hilarious.
Ad hominem, Fantasist. If you want to shut down debate, just don’t reply.
No disrespect to Bakker fanatics intended,I am unashamedly one myself but
You are right I kinda got personal there. Caught fair and square….