Originally posted by finneganThe only one who is insecure about their sexuality is you you dear Sir/Madam, since you cannot tell me with absolute certainty what your sexuality is. Why can't you tell me with absolute certainty whether I should address you as either "Sir" or "Madam"?
As I recall, you asked not me but Ghost of a Duke a number of questions which appeared to me to be based on a confident belief that he would have no choice but to give an absolutely confident and unambiguous answer. While all were deficient for your purpose (you really are barking up the wrong tree and failing to gasp the issues properly) I was especially ...[text shortened]... lity that I am frightened of being mislabelled. Perhaps you have some anxiety around this topic.
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkWhy go to the trouble a creating a new identity in these forums if you are only going to slowly regress to the old one?
The only one who is insecure about their sexuality is you you dear Sir/Madam, since you cannot tell me with absolute certainty what your sexuality is. Why can't you tell me with absolute certainty whether I should address you as either "Sir" or "Madam"?
Originally posted by vistesd
“Plato and Kant are religious philosophers, imbued with a characteristically religious certainty about the fundamental and ubiquitous reality of goodness; their real world is the moral world. In our post-Kantian world, where religious faith wanes and truth gains so much of its prestige from scientific method, this is harder to do.
I don’t know Murdoch, but I’m not sure that here isn’t some confusion here.
Certainly there is. I thought it would be useful (to me) to review how I got here. On page 4 of this thread, sonship argued
“Maybe so. But if a materialist atheist view is right - no credit to you for choosing to believe so. Somehow your chemistry deterministically fissed and bubbled atoms in your grey matter to make you think that. / There is no nobility in your "choosing" to judge Isaac on the altar as morally wrong./ "Good" atoms somehow are prevailing over "bad" atoms along the lines of your central nervous system and brain matter. / It all a material reaction. / isn't that the case with atheism ?
I replied “No that is not the case with atheism, though there has historically been a school of thought labelled Positivism that tried to make this profoundly reductionist model of science credible. It is nonsense and its advocates are idiots in my view. Feel free to mock them, but label them correctly as "Positivists," not Scientists, Materialists or other terms that allow very different philosophies...”
I later cited Heisenberg saying: “The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.” This is of course an unmistakable reference to the mistaken reading of Wittgenstein on which Positivists (still, despite being told they are wrong) often rely.
I later – with Fetchmyjunk taking up the baton from sonship – explored why what Wittgenstein said was almost the diametric opposite to what the Positivists believed he said. To make more sense of that debate, I found the descriptions in Iris Murdoch’s book illuminating. I do not have to swallow Murdoch’s own philosophy whole in order to enjoy her writing. She was a good teacher. What I specifically enjoy in her writing – generally – is her irritation at people who make metaphysical claims while pretending to reject metaphysics, or philosophical claims while claiming to reject philosophy. So she likes to draw out from a writer like Wittgenstein the implied philosophical positions that have to be in place in order for him to make the claims he does make.
For Murdoch, I suppose, the question would be: “What does he have to believe in order for him to hold this view?” That process, I think, lies behind some of the specific phrases that you wish to interrogate in your post. For example, your paragraph about truth and value sort of dives into the debate at midstream. Are we debating what Wittgenstein wished to debate (does truth correspond to fact?), or are we debating the way Murdoch represents it (Does Wittgenstein impose a rigid is-ought distinction?), or are we debating what Murdoch believes (it is impossible to make a statement about truth without activating a value judgement, ao the rigid is-ought separation is mistaken)?
Inside a longer post addressed to my arguments above, sonship wrote: “So then who is your favorite Atheist thinker purporting that transcendent abstractions of a non-material nature do exist - IE. a transcendent standard of right and wrong which was here even before man existed or evolved? / If Reductionism to materialism is only done by idiots then whose your champion to argue something not material is there to judge ethical matters in reference to ?” It is buried in a longer post and I have only just noticed it, which is a pity, as it seems a fair enough challenge. I do not feel that I was arguing in favour of any particular philosopher, so much as exploring the defects of Positivism and the mistake of allowing Positivists to stand for the scientific or materialist camp, as it were, when debating with Evangelical Christians. It was logical in the context to have that discussion around Wittgenstein and his mystical, or magical, thinking.
Obviously, there exists a vast literature and debate about morality and ethics in Western philosophy, that has largely proceeded either independently of theology, or in explicit opposition to religious dogma. Part of this philosophy does the necessary work of pointing out how much of theology and religious thinking is in fact, historically and logically, dependent on prior work in philosophy that has nothing whatever to do with any specific religion. Religious people who refuse to examine the historical and philosophical grounds for what they believe are not serious. It is just wrong for sonship and others to imagine that “materialists,” “scientists,” or “atheists” are incapable of subtle thinking in these matters. You might, if so inclined, produce a devastating refutation of all that I have written on this topic without, as a result, feeling obliged to conclude that in that case it is time to become a born again Evangelical Christian. There are a lot of interesting lines to pursue before we have to settle on what sonship asked for: “...your favorite Atheist thinker purporting that transcendent abstractions of a non-material nature do exist...” The choice is vast.
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Originally posted by finneganThe question of whether Absolute Truth exists blurs into whether Certainty is possible. The truth of any particular assertion is obscured by uncertainty. All the conceivable shortcomings of our senses, our memory and our rationality make almost everything we perceive or think, hopelessly uncertain. That inevitability is the Human Condition.
Surely you do not think that debate is only useful between people who think they have absolute certainty on the topic????
There is a glimmer of light left for us fortunately...if you doubt everything uncertain, then you are left with two unassailable truths that are both Absolutely True and Absolutely Knowable...The Existence of your being right now [Descartes 'I Am'] and the existence of your perceptions (qualia) also only in the here and now.
If you try to use logic to build on those truths to extend certainty any further, you will fail... Once you prove something to yourself, is your memory that you just proved something really true? Are you absolutely certain you are completely rational? This Universal coverage uncertainty makes the all rest of philosophical inquiry moot.
Your only hope of escape from this dilemma is if there is someone with the powers of a God; a supreme being who has the reality making power to go beyond the limits of the Human condition.
Originally posted by FetchmyjunkAre you really relying on Descartes to support your belief system? Wow. I am not saying he is not interesting and even a useful point of reference. It might help to get him half right before you go further down this curious path you have chosen.
The question of whether Absolute Truth exists blurs into whether Certainty is possible. The truth of any particular assertion is obscured by uncertainty. All the conceivable shortcomings of our senses, our memory and our rationality make almost everything we perceive or think, hopelessly uncertain. That inevitability is the Human Condition.
There is a g ...[text shortened]... a supreme being who has the reality making power to go beyond the limits of the Human condition.
Originally posted by finneganI quoted a statement make by Descartes which happens to support the idea that absolute truth does exist. I am not solely basing my belief system on everything he said.
Are you really relying on Descartes to support your belief system? Wow. I am not saying he is not interesting and even a useful point of reference. It might help to get him half right before you go further down this curious path you have chosen.
Do you disagree with his statement?
If so could you clarify your position? If you say that absolute truth does not exist, you imply that in some sense, that all knowledge is subjective or relative, and that no piece of information could be independently and objectively verifiable.
Logically speaking, saying that absolute truth, or any truth for that matter, doesn’t exist, is contradictory. For example, if you assert absolute truth does not exist, then if you’re right, wouldn’t your statement then be an absolute truth? In other words, wouldn’t it be absolutely true, that absolute truth doesn’t exist? This assertion would then be a logical contradiction, because such a statement would be completely self defeating. You cannot say that truth doesn’t exist, because in order for this to be right, it would have to be true. The only logical option is that truth does exist, and if truth does exist, absolute truth follows thereafter.
Originally posted by finneganYou might, if so inclined, produce a devastating refutation of all that I have written on this topic . . .I don’t know Murdoch, but I’m not sure that here isn’t some confusion here.
Certainly there is. I thought it would be useful (to me) to review how I got here. On page 4 of this thread, sonship argued
“Maybe so. But if a materialist atheist view is right - no credit to you for choosing to believe so. Somehow your chemistry determi ...[text shortened]... ng that transcendent abstractions of a non-material nature do exist...” The choice is vast.
Surely that is a general “you”, and not directed to me personally? I surely have no such refutation! 🙂
I am privileged to have been your ping-pong partner for a few brief volleys—during which my own questioning was stimulated.
