I don't personally understand how it is possible to reject unanswerable questions.
to arrive at the determination that a question is unanswerable you would first have to:
a. read it
b. fail to find an answer — Kaarlo Tuomi
The world is eternal.
The world is not eternal.
The world is (spatially) infinite.
The world is not (spatially) infinite.
The being imbued with a life force (i.e. the soul) is identical with the body.
The being imbued with a life force is not identical with the body.
The Tathagata (a perfectly enlightened being) exists after death.
The Tathagata does not exist after death.
The Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death.
The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.
It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.
Objectivity means always proceeding on the assumption that things can be solved.
It doesn't mean that you already know how to solve it.
I don't know how many times I have to repeat that. — Pfhorrest
What does that even mean?
Things are either true or false.
Orthogonal to that, they're either known or unknown.
So they can be known true, known false, true but unknown, or false but unknown.
Whether you know it or not has no bearing on whether it's true or false. — Pfhorrest
You might be interested to know that there is a history of 'undetermined questions' in Buddhism. These mainly concern what we could translate as metaphysical questions. — Wayfarer
When you report your (sincere) love of ice cream, you're reporting your brain state (attitude). Brain states are commonly regarded as having material physical existence. — ChrisH
The synthetic a priori is the closest you can get to assumptions yet to be solved. — 3017amen
Really? So life is all objectively logical? Surely you don't believe that do you? — 3017amen
Point is, unanswerable questions can be rejected logically, but if those questions are about the nature of your existence (or any existence), they become unanswerable metaphysical questions. Therefore, why should you reject them, when they lead to other discoveries? — 3017amen
“I don’t know” is always an acceptable response, but “we can never know” never is. — Pfhorrest
I’m saying to reject the notion that any question is unanswerable to begin with. — Pfhorrest
Not sure I understand your question.Using your concept "attitude" and "sincerity" along with my concept "love" how do we reconcile materialism with those concepts from conscious/physical existence? — 3017amen
An individual who reports a specific attitude, professes sincerity, or claims to be in love is reporting their own feelings. Feelings are mental states. Mental states are brain states. Brains are physical. — ChrisH
I wasn't attempting to explain consciousness.An individual who reports a specific attitude, professes sincerity, or claims to be in love is reporting their own feelings. Feelings are mental states. Mental states are brain states. Brains are physical.
— ChrisH
Let's see, I'm not sure that captures the explanation of consciousness, or does it? — 3017amen
whereas religion is not a way to answer questions, it is a guide to how to live your life, so religious advice to stop wasting time with such questions makes sense if you should be growing rice or pruning cherry trees or combing your daughter's hair or something but I don't think it really applies to philosophy which is specifically about answering questions. — Kaarlo Tuomi
how should a philosophy deal with matters that some consider to be fairy stories, some think of as a matter of belief, and some think of as a matter of recorded history? — Kaarlo Tuomi
Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies. — Joseph Campbell
Here's a thing; if a question is not just unanswered, but unanswerable, it is not rational to make up an answer anyway. — Banno
...just opening up new ways of thinking about your question rather than providing a definitive solution to a problem. — Banno
that is you want philosophers to be able to answering the question by changing the subject. — Banno
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