The Futility of Reason

[Nick_A]

uwot wrote:

As the great Richard Feynman pointed out, all we know is what is wrong. Like many scientists, he took Popper seriously. We know, for instance, that the biblical account of creation is wrong. Even if god did create the universe, he didn't do it in the way Genesis suggests. There was no global flood, although the ubiquity of such stories suggests that there were ancestral stories that related to the end of the last ice age, when the straits of Gibraltar and the Bosporus were breached and the Mediterranean and Black Sea resulted, a process that might well have taken 40 days. There is no archaeological evidence of Exodus, etc, etc.

we may be wrong but is it possible to improve our efforts to impartially experience reality so we can profit by admitting we are wrong? I had just linked to C I R E T which is dedicated to a more meaningful and complete quality of reason. For those open to think out of the box, it opens new doors. Of course being open is a great threat to our ego and habits that have already decided right and wrong so only a few are willing to think out of the box.

[Reflex]

All science really has to say about 'reality' is that it is that which is responsible for the phenomena. What reality is, is anyone's guess, but the only people who claim to know are fools or nutters.

Reason has only the shadows dancing on the walls of Plato's cave.

The room is round, but it still needs to be furnished to make it livable, it still needs reason. (See the video I linked to,)

[Reflex]

Reflex you seem to be the only one here open to the idea that fragmentation which science concerns itself with obscures meaning rather than revealing it. This is the beginning of the moral project for C I R E T which I previously linked to but will do again. I find it hopeful that there are those who understand the relationship between science and the essence of religion who share on the means to connect them.

http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/index_en.php

Thanks. There's a lot to take in at that website. Problem is, I don't speak or read French. I have to say that I am a little surprised how similar the excerpt is to to what I've been saying, though not with as much elucidation.

[Reflex]

All science really has to say about 'reality' is that it is that which is responsible for the phenomena. What reality is, is anyone's guess, but the only people who claim to know are fools or nutters.

That's pretty much the point. At some point, reason encounters a doorway through which it cannot pass. Using reason in the effort to go beyond that point is futile, but that does not mean the threshold cannot be passed by other means.

[Nick_A]

Reflex wrote:

Thanks. There's a lot to take in at that website. Problem is, I don't speak or read French. I have to say that I am a little surprised how similar the excerpt is to to what I've been saying, though not with as much elucidation.

At the top right of the link you have the option to click on French or English. Then if you scroll down a little you see several flags. The Preamble can be read in any of these languages by clicking on the flag.

I'm glad that you felt this. I had the same sensation when I discovered meaningful esoteric ideas several years ago. It was as though there was something very familiar about them. If you are ever drawn to learn the older source of such ideas send me a PM. It isn't right to discuss such things in public. Negativity can enter and ruin the impressions one can have when they are read with an open mind. I just ask that you converse only with those you trust to respect the value and volatility of a greater quality of ideas. Negativity and ridicule only hurts others by depriving them of the opportunity to experience them. You would never experience for example people in a Buddhist sangha being rude. It gets in the way of trying to experience what Buddhism is offering. The more serious we get, the more responsibility we have to respect ourselves and others.

[Greta]

Reflex you seem to be the only one here open to the idea that fragmentation which science concerns itself with obscures meaning rather than revealing it.

It's the constant fragmentation of reality and increase in complexity that confuses us ("obscures meaning").

The scientific method merely reflects reality as best it can. That's it's job. Science is a tool and is best used for the tasks for which it was designed. You don't use a hammer to undo a screw and vice versa. Science is not the philsophic Swiss Army knife you seem to expect it to be.

Nick, you talking about people being "open" is weird since you yourself subscribe to unchanging dogma. I guess it makes sense that those who are more impervious to reason would decry it.

[Nick_A]

Greta wrote:

Nick, you talking about people being "open" is weird since you yourself subscribe to unchanging dogma. I guess it makes sense that those who are more impervious to reason would decry it.

Would you please explain this unchanging dogma that I subscribe to. I'd like to learn what it is.

[Greta]

Good timing, Nick. I'm interested in the TRUTH (apparently unchanging) that you and Reflex have that the rest of us don't - see below.

There is no TRUTH that reason can capture; no TRUTH that exists somewhere, having a definite form and specific content; no TRUTH that everyone will recognize if only found; no TRUTH reason can embrace and thereby solve all our problems.

And there's certainly no more truth in the superstitious writings of primitives and goat herders of the Iron Age than in the studies conducted today.

No ultimate truth anywhere. No ultimate truth for all. Truth is a human construct of infinite variability.

Yup LW, that's the situation.

Besides, which TRUTH are we talking about? Is it the TRUTH that Reflex and Nick are going to bask in Jesus's radiance in Heaven for eternity like a pair of sunbaking iguanas while the rest of us are all cast into oblivion? Apparently oblivion is the punishment for not placing your faith in claims made in the Middle East 2,000 years ago. Seemingly one is not supposed to embrace ways of thinking that pertain to other times and locales.


So Nick, if you and R are going to claim knowledge of the TRUTH then it helps to actually prove it. If you aren't prepared to explain the TRUTH as best you can then we can assume you are just playing a game of oneupmanship.

No doubt most here appreciate that the esoteric is exceptionally hard to explain but that's no excuse not to try, especially when claiming special knowledge of the TRUTH. The usual cop-out is a refusal to lay "pearls amongst the swine". Let's see if you can do a little better (or not) than that.

[Reflex]

Negativity and ridicule only hurts others by depriving them of the opportunity to experience them. You would never experience for example people in a Buddhist sangha being rude. It gets in the way of trying to experience what Buddhism is offering. The more serious we get, the more responsibility we have to respect ourselves and others.

I'm not in a Buddhist sangha and life is too important to be taken seriously.

Greta wrote:

Nick, you talking about people being "open" is weird since you yourself subscribe to unchanging dogma. I guess it makes sense that those who are more impervious to reason would decry it.

Would you please explain this unchanging dogma that I subscribe to. I'd like to learn what it is.

You were saying...? Discourse with someone who is not open to the truths that lurk beyond the rational mind (Kant's noumenon) is impossible.

In other words, belief in a God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment that there is little danger of my losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the former can ever be taken from me.

I wonder why skeptics never refer to the above excerpt from Kant's Critque of Pure Reason?

[Nick_A]

Greta wrote:

The usual cop-out is a refusal to lay "pearls amongst the swine". Let's see if you can do a little better (or not) than that.

First tell me what you think this passage means.

[Nick_A]

Reflex wrote: I'm not in a Buddhist sangha and life is too important to be taken seriously.

I must admit you've lost me here. I'm not a Buddhist either but I can still agree in the way a sangha values a respectful attitude when sharing ideas. What do you mean by life being too important to be taken seriously? If you mean pretending seriousness when a person is really expressing imagined self importance as what happens in philosophy, I agree. But pretending seriousness is not seriousness so I don't know what you mean.

[Reflex]

Sounds like you're grasping at straws, Greta. I'm not Christian.

[Walker]

No ultimate truth anywhere.

Is this sentence phrased as an ultimate truth to purposely make it false, thus making it an ironic statement of futility?

One could even say the falsity of the statement is inherent to the statement, like a snake swallowing itself.

[Reflex]

Reflex wrote: I'm not in a Buddhist sangha and life is too important to be taken seriously.

I must admit you've lost me here. I'm not a Buddhist either but I can still agree in the way a sangha values a respectful attitude when sharing ideas.

Given the context of their situation, so do I. In the context of my situation it would be pretense, and I don't like pretense.

What do you mean by life being too important to be taken seriously? If you mean pretending seriousness when a person is really expressing imagined self importance as what happens in philosophy, I agree. But pretending seriousness is not seriousness so I don't know what you mean.

By that, I mean exactly what I said. I'm not going to be sullen and depressed just because I can't have sex as the result of cancer. And how can I be expected to take seriously someone who pretentiously implies that I'm a Christian and dogmatically argues that reason is not futile, and then goes on to say that the most important fact about reason is that it is clueless about reality?

[Lacewing]

No ultimate truth anywhere.

Is this sentence phrased as an ultimate truth to purposely make it false, thus making it an ironic statement of futility?

One could even say the falsity of the statement is inherent to the statement, like a snake swallowing itself.

You can go in circles with it if you want. Whatever entertains you.