erraticwisdom

Comments

1. Intuition being an imperfect mapping of those things we feel are accurate enough, I don’t think we should ever become too enamored of it as a means of rebutting skepticism. There are lots of those “proofs” that 1+1 = 0 or whatever, that appear, intuitively, valid, which aren’t. It’s only the skeptical inquiry into premises that highlights the sometimes subtle logical fallacies.

   Here again, the real struggle is with balance. Is there a degree of skepticism which defeats reasonableness, beyond which nothing can be hoped to maintain relevance or value? That kind of begs the questions often underlying the inquiry anyway, i.e. “What, if any, is the purpose of existence or life?”, in that you almost need to assume an answer to that to be able to discriminate between how much skepticism is too much.

   I get caught in those loops a lot, and sit and can’t seem to get anywhere, and get frustrated. I’m still not sure how best to handle them.

   Daniel Black

   Nov 2, 10:00 AM #

2. “Is there a degree of skepticism which defeats reasonableness, beyond which nothing can be hoped to maintain relevance or value? That kind of begs the questions often underlying the inquiry anyway, i.e. “What, if any, is the purpose of existence or life?”, in that you almost need to assume an answer to that to be able to discriminate between how much skepticism is too much.”

   Exactly, and if you say there isn’t a purpose to life (or are at least not certain there is), then where are you left? It’s something I too find almost hopelessly frustrating.

   Thame

   Nov 4, 03:10 PM #

3. Because there is no ‘purpose’ to life, it does not follow that there is no ‘meaning’ — life is not meaningless.

   Moore’s ‘refutation’ is quite absurd. We cannot completely rely on our senses but at the same time, we cannot rely on our reasoning. It has to be a combination of both, they are not mutually exclusive.

   E.g., if we rely on our senses, the path the planet Venus takes shall at times appear retrograde, which is not so. Nor is reason exempt from delusion, just look at the elaborate and beautiful system conjured by Ptolemy in his Almagest to make sense of what we saw and what was actually taking place in the heavens.

   Balance, as was said above is the key. Equilibrium, the golden mean.

   Juan

   Nov 5, 06:46 AM #

4. “Because there is no ‘purpose’ to life, it does not follow that there is no ‘meaning’ — life is not meaningless.”

   This might be some semiotic gerrymandering, but I see your point. If we shift to your nomenclature, then, we’re still left with the same point: We must have at hand either an answer or assumed answer to the question “What is the meaning of life?” on which to formulate some index of what is and what is not too much skepticism.

   I would ask, not at all rhetorically, how it’s so obvious that life, that existence, has meaning, in a generalized fashion (as it seems you’re indicating). If we leave it up to each agent to decide for herself on what, if any, meaning is carried in existence, I’ll buy that; but that just puts us back in that same square one (unless I’m missing something).

   As to the refutation, I haven’t read much of the literature (and none of Moore’s), but I wonder if the refutation was intended less to hold its own as a refutation, and more just to spark the discussion(s) in the first place. So far as I can tell, each of us imbibes from our senses a stream of data from which we distill patterns, from which patterns we build models of varying accuracy. For a time, the model fitting storm systems into pantheons of deities worked well enough; and, for a time, Ptolemy’s system worked well enough. The tough part, the working part of development of these models, is a refinement of what constitutes “well enough”. In the late 18th century, a bicameral system seemed like a good idea, and the electoral college, too. In the early 21st century (if not before), they seem not to support the political weight of 300 million Americans (forgive a little myopia).

   To touch on another of Thames’ threads, this is where “science” (maybe we should coin something with lighter connotation, like “recursive philosophical refinement”, but, like, better, and stuff) seems to pull ahead of other methods of building worldviews. While I can’t think of anything approaching perfection among systems of philosophical development, I’ll sign up with the one that doesn’t rest on its laurels, the one that reaches across the topology of its constituent agents in search of its flaws and their fixes.

   I told my son this evening, after he told me he’d gone to church Sunday, that even if you don’t ascribe to the beliefs, you do yourself a disservice if you don’t seek out the fruits of others’ labors in pondering and postulating about the nature of what is and any possible place we have in it. I liken it to grid computing, with each brain another node. There might be a lot of detritus, a lot of stuff that doesn’t work (right now), so you collect and discard and sort what’s left.

   Okay, that’s tangential, but I’m not so apologetic that I’m going to erase it. Juan, I seriously do, for the reason noted above, want to know how you come to conclude that life has meaning independent of a purpose.

   Thanks for your input and providing a forum.

   Daniel

   Daniel Black

   Nov 14, 12:53 AM #

5. Meaning is relative. It’s based on our own individual experiences and how we interpret these.

   I don’t see how this puts us back at square one though. Can you elaborate.

   Also, do you find comfort in knowing that there is such a thing as truth — i.e., something indelible and eternal.

   Juan

   Nov 19, 06:12 AM #