loseyourname said:
I wouldn't quite go that far. Scientists rely on deductive logic to derive expected implications of their hypotheses. The difference between a scientist and a pure rationalist is that the pure rationalist will stop at that point, whereas the scientist seeks to confirm his hypothesis by attempting to observe the results that it logically entails.
I am prepared to say, by the way, that this is the way all investigation should be conducted. One should always seek confirmation (along with falsification) of any suspicion they might hold or idea they might form.
But "confirmation" in terms of
Induction?
Besides, my point is that, philosophically speaking, scientists are a "step past" pure rationalists. It is this concept that leaves philosophy of mind as the "grounding", and everything else as that which is built up from it.
The only philosophers that think the hard problem is a dead end are the ones that think that there is no hard problem.
The eliminativists would probably word it slightly different. They think there is no "hard problem" only in that there
needn't be one. Rorty, for example, traces it back to its historical roots, and tries to treat the problem before it even becomes a problem.
In short, it's not like this is a disease inflicting all of philosophy. I also don't think it has anything to do with a quest for certainty. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Things like the hard problem become a failing of philosophy because people are still enamored with the Cartesian idea of the "natural light of reason." Basically, they just trust what they can intuit and then make up silly arguments to back up their intuition.
This is all true. But the purpose of Descartes' concepts of "reason" and "intuition" were to establish that which could not (or, at least, should not) be called into doubt.
Trying to find firm grounding in things that cannot be doubted, but are simply true, is as old as Plato, which is why I go back to Plato and Aristotle for the first "Wrong Turn". That Descartes'
First Philosophy led him to think he'd found that grounding for certain truth in intuition and reasoning is merely the reason that philosophy looks as it does today. It could have screwed itself over in a much different way, if Descartes had never published, but it would still have been on the wrong path since Plato.
Are you certain? If you are, then you must have some idea of what you mean by that. That isn't to say that the human species has come to a consensus on the matter, but still.
No, my certainty is merely my disposition to play on that side of the board, so to speak. It is a language-game, and my certainty (or current "belief", if you prefer) simply determines which "side" I'm on.
Well gee, then we don't need philosophy, do we? If you're going to turn it into literature, why not do away with it entirely? If fideism is correct, doesn't that imply that different schools of philosophy already have their own unique language-games and, within the rules of each, the statements they make are correct? On what absolute basis does Wittgenstein say that they are not?
You don't need basis to negate a claim. Only to make one of your own.
As to fideism, that's not what Wittgenstein and co. are encouraging. Faith is not the best basis any more than anything else is. Wittgensteinian philosophers are simply asking that people stop trying to ground all pursuits in one common grounding. This doesn't make sense for the concept of "game" or "language" and it doesn't make sense for the infinite different language-games.
Many still do. If that is all you are proposing for philosophy, then you are simply proposing something that is already being done.
I'm not suggesting that philosophy relegate itself to merely deciding what "truth" means, or what "knowledge" is. I'm just saying that it would help to clear that up before making claims as to what is "true" and what can be "known". I know that many philosophers are attempting this, but most of them are doing so within a neo-Cartesian framework. The skepticism of the Pyrrhoneans has been exchanged for Kantian skepticism about which concepts fit our intuitions best, and how well our intuitions reflect concepts.
How many philosophers do you think we have exactly? I'm willing to bet it's in the bottom five percent of all professions in terms of job holdings.
That may be enough.
Of course our jury system is intrinsically flawed. All political institutions are intrinsically flawed. That isn't to say that it is logically impossible to have a perfect justice system, but it is definitely a very difficult undertaking. Nonetheless, our system is built on the idea that we should strive to be as perfect as is possible given what limitations we have. I do happen to think that that is a good principle on which to base a system of justice.
That's all very fine, idealistically. However, the jury system is based on the concept that whatever a group of the accused's peers can be persuaded to believe is "true" enough to sentence him. That's a crude and ingratious way of putting it, but I hope you get my point.
If you were to propose another, and it were accepted, well, so what? Now society will have agreed that another criterion for "truth" is sufficient or "better" than the previous, and who's going to tell them otherwise? Do you see what I'm getting at?
Fair enough. I will, however, take the opposite position that were it not for the post-Socratic quest for truth and rigor in investigation, we would never have made the social and technological progress that we have.
That's what I said. But was that "progress" the "right" progress, or should it have turned out otherwise? Who decides?
I would, of course, contend that you are wrong and that any belief otherwise is absolutely ridiculous. If we relied generally on religious explanation of cause and effect, we'd still be stuck with animism and polytheistic determinism, in which the natural world operated not according to any particular laws, but rather at the whims of capricious unseen beings. If (and I'm only saying if) science could fully explain the laws of the natural world in such a way that all events could be explained and predicted according to these natural laws, what possible reason could someone have to believe that there was additional causal explanation that needed to be given? The only question I can see remaining a question forever is why there should be existence at all.
Well, if we were to side-track the thread thus, and I were to continue responding -- hypothetically speaking -- I would probably say something like:
What of the religions that hold to gods (or a God) that work within the bounds of the laws they set? What about the gods that like order and laws? Newton, Mendel, Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein, etc ad nauseum were all concerned with knowing "the mind of God". They studied nature and developed their theories because they thought that God had established a certain way that things should work, and that they would be able to better understand the mind of the Creator by observing His creations.
Indeed, without this religious belief (in a God of order) there would very likely be no science, since almost all the great scientists before the 20th century not only believe in Him, but did their work specifically
because they believed in Him.
I, for one, am happy to admit that neither science nor religion can answer that one. Even God, if such a being did exist, could not explain his own existence.
That would be a
huge side-track, so I won't even pretend to go there.
I will answer that religion is not equipped to answer these questions either. In fact, the very idea that these are questions that need to be answered is a byproduct of a form of thinking far more infectious and insidious than the Cartesian kind.
The idea that these questions need answering is a
religious one. If you don't like it, don't play that game. No one's forcing you. However, if you don't like the concept that things just are the way they are, and that questions about purpose are meaningless, then you will have great difficulty playing science's game.
Exactly my point. An arbitrary text from antiquity is picked out and believed for no apparent reason to hold the truth. From this point, religious people then move to defend this truth against all appearances to the contrary. If religious people were more scientific in their thinking, they could employ the same hypothetico-deductive method. Work out the logical implications of God loving you, then find out if these hold. Simply believing it to begin with and then twisting all prima facie contradictory events to meet a pre-existing bias is hardly sound thinking.
Don't go there, I'm begging you. I will discuss religion as a separate game from science, and I will defend that each game has equal value (or, rather, each game has value to its own players). But I can't discuss the failings or acheivements of specifically Biblical thinkers, for personal reasons as well as the rules of the Forum.
Biblical thinkers hold that they have the truth by virtue of understanding the only bit of writing that God ever authored. Scientific thinkers hold that they might someday attain the truth by studying how things appear to them, and using Induction. They are different games, and your arguments only prove further that one who prefers one game should not trouble himself with judging another game by virtue of the rules of his own (it would be like saying that a move in Chinese Checkers is foolish because it discounts the obvious ability of the opponent to "jump" the moved piece (since such a thing matter in Checkers, but not in Chinese Checkers)).
Here is another good example of how poorly religious people think. Nowhere in the book of Genesis is there ever a reference to "Satan" or indeed to any malignant fallen angel of any kind. There is only a reference to a talking serpent, "the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made" (Gen 3:1). It seems to me that it is saying that God created an animal with the ability to deceive men and that this animal subsequently deceived men. Furthermore, any logical enquiry conducted by Adam and Eve at this early stage of their existence could only result in the conclusion that the serpent was correct, because indeed he was. God was withholding knowledge from them. In fact, the passage includes a curious reference to knowledge that only "gods" are allowed to have. I can see why the translator might have difficulty with this, since the word used in Sumerian texts on which the creation myth seems to be based is a plural word (Sumerians were, of course, polytheistic). Since you're into philosophy as literature, why not go out on a limb here and interpret the serpent as a hero that was only trying to liberate early humans from oppressive beings claiming to be gods? I realize that other books of the bible do not mesh well with this interpretation, but since the creation myth seems to be based on literature from an entirely different civilization and era than the rest of the bible, why assume that it should mesh?
2 Timothy 3:16. I'm sorry, I can't address this argument further.
You're going to have to interpret that for me, or at least put it in context. From what you've quoted, it only seems that Jeremiah is saying that man should not do anything of his own accord. If God wanted men to be automata that mindlessly followed him, why give them a choice at all?
Jeremiah was simply saying that moral choices (the choices about what is morally right and wrong) belong to Jehovah, and that man has no business making such decisions on his own. It's chapter 10, verse 23, if you want context. This is all in the "creation myth" as well, since "tree of knowledge" isn't a complete name. It was actually "the tree of the knowledge of good and bad".
It wasn't part of the language game of the people who authored the creation myth. Indeed, it was not even part of the language game of the early Jews who authored the old testament. Do you really think that going the Christian route and postulating ad hoc that restitution will be given in the next life is the way to go? For the sake of consistency, should we not at least use the same language game as the author of the arbitrary ancient text we have chosen to base a belief system upon?
In the "creation myth", the first prophecy is uttered (Genesis 3:15), and it is not until Revelation that it is interpreted. The Bible claims divine authorship, so, to play its game is to play the game of viewing the whole Bible as the writing of God. It is internally coherent only if you allow different passages to interpret each other (and not add anything of your own).
I'm having trouble here. Just for the sake of consistency, God is still considered to be omnipotent by modern Christians, no? In light of this, what reason was there for God to incarnate and then sacrifice himself?
He incarnated His
Son, not Himself!
You mean they are part of the Christian language game. They don't seem to have been part of any language game until at best 130 AD.
It is all there, in the Bible (Old and New Testament). If you want more information, PM me or E-mail me. I cannot discuss this here.
I really have to stop now.
Sure, I'm open to that possibility. If I can ever be shown, or find on my own, a better method of acquiring knowledge, then I will use that method.
Your still talking about "better" methods. Why?
This is all, of course, predicated on the basic assumption that I should be striving for as much certainty as I can get. This seems to contradict your prior stance. Your prior stance seemingly dictated that I simply work on my ability to be convincing, something that I think I am already pretty good at.
And so modest too
.
I'm not suggesting that you see which game gives you more certainty. I'm suggesting you choose a game (rather than continuing to think that you can play chess with checker-pieces).
Within my own language game, I'm already correct, so under that framework, what reason is there for me to maintain an open mind?
There isn't one, and that's the beauty of it. Philosophy, in a post-Wittgensteinian framework, doesn't need to convince you of anything. If you choose to play any of the games that fall under the domain of "pursuit of knowledge/wisdom", then philosophy can only tell you the rules for that particular game. If you don't like them, do what my sister does: make up rules as you go along. All that means is that you aren't really playing "chess" merely playing your own game with chess-pieces.
