Re: Empirical Beliefs & Hypothesis; Do they terminate in some beliefs that need no further justification, go on infinitely - on belief being justified by other that then need justification, or circle back upon itself in some way - constituting a sort o
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Posted by stan on August 22, 2008, 1:24 am
Please log in for more thread options Publius wrote: >
>>>The argument goes astray with #4. If I perceive a red apple, then I
>>>believe the apple perceived is red. That belief is not a conclusion >>>derived from any premises, but from the percept itself. Empirical >>>beliefs are self- justifying; I cannot doubt that I am perceiving >>>something red in the shape of an apple. I may well have doubts about >>>what causes that percept, but I cannot doubt that I have it. What may >>>be causing it is another question. >>
>> What causes "red" is the predominant wavelength of the light that >> bounces off the apple. That can be measured and quantified, if there's >> any doubt. >> >> There's nothing subjective about "red." >
> What is subjective is the impression experienced by the observer when > perceiving light of that wavelength. > >> You'll never get anything done if you keep getting tangled up in
>> fuzziness. >
> You also won't get much done if you blindly adopt gratuitous assumptions. In what way is empirical dependence known to be limiting? More to the point, how do you know it is limiting? How can you or anyone know that the current assumptions are "gratuitous"? The human mind can produce the thought that empirical evidence and the conclusions are incorrect but how do we know the human mind isn't incorrect? Because the human mind can't be proven correct it's not possible to use a human mind to reason that empirical evidence is wrong and the human mind is correct. Without some way to know that the human mind is incabable of creating incorrect ideas, you can't use human ideas to prove anything about the human mind. You can speculate that the reasoning seems valid so it's probably correct but that's like reasoning that a bullfrog probably would't bump his but if he had wings. I choose to accept that reality exists and that our senses are mostly valid ways to experience reality. I choose to accept that our experiences are somewhat limited and incomplete in a sense and that we have much more to experience and discover. I accept that our experiences may even be so limited that like the blind men experiencing an elephant our perceptions and beliefs may be very misleading and in the general case even wrong. I accept that the human mind is fallable. Now if I understand you correctly, my gratuitous assumptions are wrong. Are you saying that I should shed all these assumptions and that if one day I have a particularly vivid thought that gravitational forces will no longer hold me on this planet? Or that maybe I could fetch a cold beer without getting up. I've actually tried that one many times with absolutely no success. Can you teach me master? By the way, some really really smart people had this discussion a very long time ago. I'll leave as an exercise for the reader to go find out how it went. Sorry, I won't give the answer away. I had to endure philosophy as a way to broaden my experiences they told me. I won't deny anyone else that the experience of a philosphy class. I can very honestly say that when the professor came in wearing a pair of pants that were very bright neon yellow and introduced himself as having a PhD in philosophy from Harvard I never wanted to bolt from a class so bad in my entire life. I stayed but I had a very real empirical anxiety experience. Talking to other students and looking around the room I can say with high confidence that all of us had very nearly the same subjective reaction. | ||||
