That's because you're those three monkeys, all in one. — baker

Prove it.

Got ya. If life is about anything at all it seems to be about versions of truth.

My post was a cutesy and a bit too obscure statement that truth, knowledge, facts, and beliefs are not something we normally use directly in our day to day lives. — T Clark

Yep. Agree. Matter of fact, I tend to do everything by blundering through. For me one of the points of a site like this is to see what else is going and if some rigor is worth the effort.

Well the issue is not so much how we feel about the issue but what the evidence is. Do we have any reliable evidence of minds existing without bodies? Do we have any evidence of personal identify being possible without experience; a body and mind? People sometimes get too hung up on words like 'you' and 'identity' and are taught habits of classification that reify ideas in sometimes absurd ways. I don't think of the idea of self as solid but more as an insubstantial, fragile series of recurring patterns and evolving tastes and behaviours that can be diminished and formed by any number of external influences and organic failures.

I'm not sure what is intended by your remark, but you can flesh it out if you feel like it. I am personally familiar with these religions being friendly with other religions and even encouraging education about other religions to their members. T — Ennui Elucidator

I'm inclined to agree. I've had significant contact with a range of religious faiths - churches, temples and synagogues and running alongside ethnocentrism and in group chauvinism is also a vast wellspring of generosity, hospitality and solidarity, galvanized by best kinds of ecumenical commitments.

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

Gustave Flaubert

I hear you. It's a tough scenario. Sorry, by the way, I should have been clearer this is a hypothetical (like the golf example but more's at stake) my daughter's not in this situation... I do have people around me in similar positions.

I'm on the golf course. I look at my lie. I look at the flag. I turn to my caddy and say "What do you think?" He reaches in the bag, pulls out a club, and hands it to me. I turn to make the shot. Now... What do I care about? I don't care if he believes it's the right club. I don't care if he knows it's the right club. I don't care if it's a fact it's the right club. I don't care if it's the truth it's the right club. Just give me the fucking club. — T Clark

Not trying to be a dick but how about this? My daughter has a one year old son. She has embraced an Evangelical form of Christianity and believes vaccination is a conspiracy and prayer will suffice to keep her and her boy safe. I believe in vaccination. Do I care and accept this situation as 'her version of truth/facts'? Do I care if it's the right decision? What would you do?

Thank you for that very considered response.

Put simply - I can look like a raging tyrant, an ineffective debater, or a non-participant. I happen to think not-participating is generally the best choice. — Ennui Elucidator

I agree, it often does seem to boil down to this.

For all of these words, the broader point remains - differences in facts are typically emblematic of differences in values/paradigms that are irreconcilable. I cannot, by mere words alone, force someone to change their deeply held beliefs that permit them to maintain claims about the world that appear counter-factual. — Ennui Elucidator

That may be the nub of it.

In the West we often argue that education solves problems like these (the assumption I guess is that cosmopolitan, progressive values are an inevitable by-product of education) but I believe this is an overestimation of the role and value of education. A bigoted and bellicose society has also been amongst the best educated and most cultured, as Germany 1933-1945 demonstrated. And there's the other matter of what constitutes education - is it predominantly an exercise in values transmission or original thought (which is also a value)?

Let the world impose itself and the “facts” will out. — Ennui Elucidator

Is this last sentence a hint at hope and solutions?

But his 'stove's Gem' invective is not against Kant per se, but against cultural relativism and post-modernism - 'perspectivism' in the vulgar sense. Jim Franklin, who was also around the Uni at that time and who is now a UNSW academic, has ventured this analysis. I don't think much of it, myself. (Franklin also has written some very interesting things on Aristotelian philosophy of maths. — Wayfarer

Thanks. Boy, that Aeon piece did stir the possum around here.

That's a given.

I personally don't know about the observer effect in QM. I know Wayfarer argues that it is important, highlighting some of the people who think observation is important. — Manuel

I was referring more to the work of people like Evan Thompson and Michel Bitbol and the fabled 'blind spot' or observer problem - we seem not to see that the scientific worldview itself is a human perspective, not an objective one. Reality is only that which we are able to identify from a human perspective.

Wayfarer has posted this several times.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience

I'd like to read a physicalist response.

That's helpful, thanks. I was asking exactly this - both.

it generally gives me stuff that I prefer (even if I find the circumstance distasteful). — Ennui Elucidator

I'm assuming you mean the geopolitics of oligarchical capitalism?

The world imposes itself on me and I try to mold it to my desires using whatever contrivance available. All “facts” are understood contingently and abandoned/modified as necessary. — Ennui Elucidator

Fair point. So in the unlikely occasion that you could be having a debate with an Islamic fundamentalist about not allowing females to attend university, how might you go about providing a counter narrative?

I have no way to prove this, but wanted to get a few reactions.

Any thoughts? — Manuel

Not a criticism, but isn't this a fairly frequently postulated idea? It isn't just our senses that are at issue here but consciousness itself. Hence the work of phenomenology and its move away from the idea that we have access to an objective reality to their notion of intersubjectivity. @Wayfarer often points to the observer problem in science - human beings use their senses and conceptual frameworks to construct a version of reality which appears to be tentative and fallible and subject to revisions.

I personally find myself staring Stove's Gem fairly often.

In the light of your comments, how do you contextualize a phenomenon like, say, climate change and what to do?

“He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

:up:

Is it possible for any religion to offer nothing but calm and non-judgement?

Dawkin's fight seems to be with fundamentalism not religion. I think he is right on most points even though I find him stentorian and tedious.

We might laugh about their religion being archaic, but they aren't the ones hanging from the helicopters. ;) — stoicHoneyBadger

I'm not sure anyone is laughing because the whole point is that fundamentalism is dangerous and leads to very unfunny violence and bigotry - especially when funded by Pakistan or the Saudis.

Dawkins focuses on the fact of Islam, or Christianity or any other religion being factually incorrect. But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion? — stoicHoneyBadger

This is an old notion and led to the idea of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria wherein Stephen Jay Gould argued that religion and science do not contradict each other because each have separate magisterial, or domains of teaching authority.

But who would think that moral guidance and social cohesion comes from throwing acid in the face of a girl for daring to learn to read and beheadings for apostasy? I'm fairly certain that if religions were tolerant and open minded people like Dawkins would vanish.

Looks like I haven't done a good job with you. — T Clark

Probably more the case that I don't see what you see, even with patient explanations.

You're right, TC, but what hope for us all if politics, on whatever side, becomes immune to facts and will only accept and disseminate beliefs of increasing bizarreness? There's work to be done.

I always thought that one job in life was to try to believe as few false things and as many true things as possible. I can cheerfully believe I don't have diabetes and refuse all treatment. And die.

Lao Tzu - The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

Some guy - Hey, Lao Tzu, you're talking about something that can't be talked about. What's with that?

Lao Tzu - Tao as a thing is entirely illusive and evasive. Evasive and illusive. In it there is image. Illusive and evasive. In it there is thinghood. Dark and dim.

Some guy - This is such bullshit.

Lao Tzu - Go fuck yourself. — T Clark

Nicely done, TC. It does however make me feel quite justified in walking away from any kind of fathomless, inscrutable writings. What possible use can they have (for me)?

Have to say (and this is not a criticism) I find it interesting that you can reconcile this with your model of pragmatism.

As a big budget, mainstream movie for a general audience I think the first film was clever and visually striking. I really enjoyed it at the time. Saw the second, not the third.

How about taking your own advice and actually get to know a person? — baker

What a curious reaction. And here I am thinking this is a site dedicated to making comments on comments.

If wisdom arises from experience over time then are we just concerned with knowledge or at a more fundamental level something akin to satisfaction or even survival? What do you think? — Shawn

I'm thinking satisfaction and consolation, not mere survival, but the former may inform the latter.

It's a fact for me, because I can feel my pain, but it's not a fact for you, because for all you know, I could be pretending. — Olivier5

Indeed. And therein lies the problem. It's experiential not observational.

Okay so we agree that a fact is an accurate observation, then? — Olivier5

I don't know. I'm not a philosopher.

If you have a stomach ache, I can't observe that but it is still a fact. A person's emotional state is not always observable.

Ok. I thought I read you say that. No worries.

Not sure what a "religious fact" would be? Do you have an example? — Olivier5

No idea. I have no religious beliefs. But you do. So I am wondering on what basis you hold these. Or do you run two sets of books?

So how do you determine if religious claims are fact or fiction?

Could be that some philosophy is a self-immersating habit, while some of the rest is a cure for the first. Like bad music and good music, bad food and good food. — Zugzwang

How do we tell good philosophy from bad philosophy? More philosophy?

I can see how philosophy might help us by offering more useful models of considering the world and better ways of managing uncertainty and fear. This could count as therapeutic. But I can also see how philosophy might lead to 'analysis paralysis' and greater confusion and a constant churning through ideas in a futile search for truth. Do we regularly see the latter at work on this site? It looks that way to me. I'm not sure about the former. My strong intuition is that people don't always seek out philosophy to rehabilitate their world views but tend to gravitate towards that which confirms and augments their existing assumptions.

A fact is an accurate observation. — Olivier5

So if it can't be observed it isn't a fact? Are you an empiricist?

My point is that as long as one is looking for happiness outside, one is going to be faced with an endless amount of problems. Even if you were to opt for the final solution (as some in the past did) and executed it in full (as those in the past haven't succeeded), so that you'd be left only with like-minded people, you'd still be living on a planet where there are volcano eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, dangerous animals, unwelcome genetic mutations, limited natural resources, and at that a planet that is on collision course with some asteroids, in a solar system whose sun will eventually explode. IOW, living on such a planet and looking for happiness outside, you'd still be miserable. — baker

Well, I never took you for an optimist. This reads like early Woody Allen.

And yet despite everything you say there I have known many people who are happy and found happiness readily achievable. And they weren't rich or powerful. They just went about their business taking an interest in some matters and not others, working, raising a family, gardening, reading and finding humor in many things. And sure, it's hard to do this is a warzone or when sick, but frankly it isn't impossible.

Maybe. How would we know? It certainly wouldn't be a surprise, or out of character, if he was one. It seems to boil down to whether we think T's a not very bright, deeply flawed man or a dynamic master manipulator. For me it doesn't much matter either way.

In some ways, I think that knowledge is socially constructed and is not absolute. — Jack Cummins

Isn't all of human knowledge derived from human perspectives and experience? So I'm not sure how it can be anything but tentative, constructed and far from absolute. I'm not even sure what absolute knowledge would mean - can you provide an example? Are you heading towards transcendence and such? Glimmerings of higher consciousness? You'd need to establish that belief in such a thing is warranted.

Not everyone who gets branded as a narcissist is one. — baker

Of course not. Not everyone branded a genius is one, etc...

Ok. It's always an interesting question, but as I say I don't think people in general really care that much. Knowledge is about what is useful to us and that which can be established 'for certain' is not really a concern of most folk. Me included.

I tend to hold a view that knowledge is tentative and fallibilistic and changing. Some knowledge can be used to create and predict things. As a time limited human being with a job and obligations, attempting to understand the ultimate nature of reality is unnecessary to my experience of life.

Sorry but I'm tired of guessing. — Olivier5

Really?

My point, (which was clear and is really unnecessary in this otherwise interesting discussion) is that if Jesus was not real then Christianity, as is practiced by 2.5 billion people, is false.

You seem to hold a rather naïve view of life. Which is probably why it seems everything always comes down to powerplays for you. Thoughts?

Having worked closely with people who live 'dysfunctional' and distressed lives - who suicide and overdose and slash themselves with broken glass and tend to be dead by 40 - I see little evidence of strategizing and play acting.

I am sorry that I have started poorly, and it may be that my thread will not work at all. My point is probably that many think we have such great knowledge in our grasp. I am not denying that, but I think that it is possible to become inflated and not recognize the limitations — Jack Cummins

I hold a different view and don't think that knowledge features prominently in people's lives. I think most people are content to know that which is helpful in sustaining a livelihood and pursuing some interests or hobbies. The rest of human knowledge is for those who need to use it or care to learn it. I certainly sympathize with this view. (The mistake, as Jack London's Wolf Larsen bemoans, is in ever opening the books) The enlightenment view that everything can be known and that a person can become a Renaissance man with the right reading and tuition is surely gone, except in certain subcultures.

Jack, I wasn't sure if your question was about epistemology - your use of 'we' referring to human beings - or if you meant 'we' as in people generally.

I tend to think of knowledge as being like a hardware store - there are tools and materials crammed in every aisle and I will never need or use more than 1% of what's there.

Actually you haven't described this difference. — Olivier5

Perhaps you haven't understood it.

Here it is again -

Not really relevant - what matters about Socrates is a method of doing philosophy. We lose nothing if he turns out to be 'made up'. With Jesus there's rather more at stake. — Tom Storm