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epistemic rants, profundities, epihanies and garbage.
God, i've been so bored today. I ought to have finished reading the history of the peloponnesian wars by thucydides by now but it's just so uninticing. it's the only book in between me and meno right now. but other then this despair things are good.
I went to bike shop today with steve and bought some egg beater clip-in's but i don't have the right shoes so i'll have to wait until i have some money to buy them. My morning ride today was canceled due to rain boo
So there's an epistemological problem that i've been confronted with. After reading Hume, Descartes, Chisholm, Leher, Moore etc. the question always comes up, "is there a good argument for belief in ____" call it the external world as that is by far the most basic/highly disputed belief in epistemic debate. to rephrase, "is there a justified true belief that elegantly evades the skeptic attack?" (called P) And the resounding answer is maybe! It depends on your assumptions. I mean, of course it seems that one can not truly "know" with certainty that he is not dreaming, or that he is actually a brain in a vat being electronically stimulated (matrix-ish) and that he actually lacks a body at all. All of these skeptic postitions however unlikely they seem to the intuitive habitual mind strike modernity (and postmodernity) right to the jugular. the Moorean proof (Here's hand and here's another hand, these hands are external to me, therefore an external world exists) is appealing but really does not satisfy a pure reason approach to the skeptical position... and to make this blog alot shorter... neither do any of the other objections to skepticism. pure reason (whatever you assume that is) is always lead to skepticism.
The reason for this is a tough one i think but i also think it boils down to this; the question P is ultimately a paradigm question. you can't be a follower of jesus and not believe in the external world . . . you just can't. and the problem is that the philosophical movement starting (at least as far as i know) in modernity tragically assumes that binary human logic is some sort of faculty by which man can escape the grasps of religion, presuppostion, and culture. all hail logic as the method by which we can discover truth! but really, logic isn't sufficient. the immediate student of intro to logic will respond here that i used logic to come to that conclusion. unfortunately this is where i must battle flaws in the language. but it is merely that; a flaw in the language. i don't need the assertions of aristotle to be able to observe the inconsistencies in the paradigm. i don't need logic to observe that logic, as a complete set of axioms, is inconsistent with itself (see goedel's incompleteness therom). it is self evident that it doesn't support itself.
conclusion: pure reason really is a paradigm just like any other. it has axioms and assumptions that can't be proven at all. some logicians say that the only certainty lies in statements like a=a, but to some logicians a=a means NOTHING! it's not qualified! So to propose question P is really qualifying itself with "in your set of beliefs, P?" so if the skeptic were to respond that some premise of P is uncertain or circular, their actualy response is, "your set of beliefs don't cohere with mine" but when the skeptics are backed by "pure reason" it makes your basic beliefs in things like 'i exist' look stupid. it really is as futile as "my religion says that your religion is wrong" well guess what? so does every other religion. what then? taking the kierkegardian leap of faith seems the only "reasonable" thing to do. pick a paradigm that satisfies as much criteria as seems sufficient to you and jump in. don't pretend to be apart of world view while all the while keeping your foot in another. if you do, what you believe means absolutely nothing. For some they "jumped'" into the paradigm of human reason and are led to skepticism. I picked christianity with the full knowledge that it might be wrong. but when i jumped in i accepted certain assumptions on faith, but that same faith allows me to know for sure that what i believe is true. and to the logic-digm that's circular but to a christian it's not. sometimes i still try to live with one foot in and the other out. and it's during such times that my faith in god almost has lost its meaning. we act based on what we believe and when i act counter-christian or "sinful" or whatever, it's because there really is apart of me that doesn't believe christianity as much as i want to. when i sin because i think it'll make me happy it's because there's a level on which i don't believe christ will make me happy. all this to say that more i follow christ the more i want to. and when i don't, so much the worse. I (and i really think we) should live in the existential moment and dive fully into our paradigm, and for me that means every day i need to delve deeper into my faith in christ and let that become and intricate part of my being.
I went to bike shop today with steve and bought some egg beater clip-in's but i don't have the right shoes so i'll have to wait until i have some money to buy them. My morning ride today was canceled due to rain boo
So there's an epistemological problem that i've been confronted with. After reading Hume, Descartes, Chisholm, Leher, Moore etc. the question always comes up, "is there a good argument for belief in ____" call it the external world as that is by far the most basic/highly disputed belief in epistemic debate. to rephrase, "is there a justified true belief that elegantly evades the skeptic attack?" (called P) And the resounding answer is maybe! It depends on your assumptions. I mean, of course it seems that one can not truly "know" with certainty that he is not dreaming, or that he is actually a brain in a vat being electronically stimulated (matrix-ish) and that he actually lacks a body at all. All of these skeptic postitions however unlikely they seem to the intuitive habitual mind strike modernity (and postmodernity) right to the jugular. the Moorean proof (Here's hand and here's another hand, these hands are external to me, therefore an external world exists) is appealing but really does not satisfy a pure reason approach to the skeptical position... and to make this blog alot shorter... neither do any of the other objections to skepticism. pure reason (whatever you assume that is) is always lead to skepticism.
The reason for this is a tough one i think but i also think it boils down to this; the question P is ultimately a paradigm question. you can't be a follower of jesus and not believe in the external world . . . you just can't. and the problem is that the philosophical movement starting (at least as far as i know) in modernity tragically assumes that binary human logic is some sort of faculty by which man can escape the grasps of religion, presuppostion, and culture. all hail logic as the method by which we can discover truth! but really, logic isn't sufficient. the immediate student of intro to logic will respond here that i used logic to come to that conclusion. unfortunately this is where i must battle flaws in the language. but it is merely that; a flaw in the language. i don't need the assertions of aristotle to be able to observe the inconsistencies in the paradigm. i don't need logic to observe that logic, as a complete set of axioms, is inconsistent with itself (see goedel's incompleteness therom). it is self evident that it doesn't support itself.
conclusion: pure reason really is a paradigm just like any other. it has axioms and assumptions that can't be proven at all. some logicians say that the only certainty lies in statements like a=a, but to some logicians a=a means NOTHING! it's not qualified! So to propose question P is really qualifying itself with "in your set of beliefs, P?" so if the skeptic were to respond that some premise of P is uncertain or circular, their actualy response is, "your set of beliefs don't cohere with mine" but when the skeptics are backed by "pure reason" it makes your basic beliefs in things like 'i exist' look stupid. it really is as futile as "my religion says that your religion is wrong" well guess what? so does every other religion. what then? taking the kierkegardian leap of faith seems the only "reasonable" thing to do. pick a paradigm that satisfies as much criteria as seems sufficient to you and jump in. don't pretend to be apart of world view while all the while keeping your foot in another. if you do, what you believe means absolutely nothing. For some they "jumped'" into the paradigm of human reason and are led to skepticism. I picked christianity with the full knowledge that it might be wrong. but when i jumped in i accepted certain assumptions on faith, but that same faith allows me to know for sure that what i believe is true. and to the logic-digm that's circular but to a christian it's not. sometimes i still try to live with one foot in and the other out. and it's during such times that my faith in god almost has lost its meaning. we act based on what we believe and when i act counter-christian or "sinful" or whatever, it's because there really is apart of me that doesn't believe christianity as much as i want to. when i sin because i think it'll make me happy it's because there's a level on which i don't believe christ will make me happy. all this to say that more i follow christ the more i want to. and when i don't, so much the worse. I (and i really think we) should live in the existential moment and dive fully into our paradigm, and for me that means every day i need to delve deeper into my faith in christ and let that become and intricate part of my being.