The real discussion: Values (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, December 28, 2015, 17:10 (3035 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: My highest value is placed upon epistemology: How we know what we know. -DHW: We had a long discussion on epistemology, because we tried to set up an epistemological framework that would remove many of the misunderstandings that continue to dog our discussions. 
MATT: I don't disagree, but for the participants here... it seems most of us don't disagree with the basic ideas of epistemology posited in that thread. However, David, is willing to include ideas in his epistemology that I am not. The personal experience of another being, are simply not something that I'm willing to include in a *universal* epistemology. -For me epistemology concerns the nature and boundaries of knowledge - not what we think we know, but whether and how it is even possible to know anything. Knowledge to me implies something absolute, and so we have to draw a distinction between knowledge and belief. That's why the common definition of agnosticism (“the impossibility of knowing whether God exists or not”) seems to some of us to be obsolete: nobody KNOWS - though people may BELIEVE they know - so we are all agnostics. In everyday life, we tend for practical reasons not to think in absolute terms, but if I remember rightly, we agreed that the nearest we can get to “actual” knowledge is a general consensus on what is true among those who are aware of the matter in question. For instance, there is general consensus that the Earth goes round the sun, but not that God exists.-MATT: Why should society at large adopt an encompassing view that allows untestable claims the same weight as the testable?-I'm not sure how one can test any claims relating to the divine versus chance origin of the universe, life and consciousness, but in any case I would put it the other way round. It seems right to me that human beings are allowed to adopt whatever view they like, so long as it does not harm other people. Society consists of individuals and should not adopt any single ”encompassing view” of origins - that is the route to oppression and persecution.
 
Dhw: Although we often have to take decisions in life, I just wish people would acknowledge that there are nearly always at least two sides to an argument!
MATT: My excursions in my generation and in the one just behind me is precisely this: There may be two sides to a coin, but both sides of that coin come with thousands of years of baggage... baggage that seems okay to previous generations, but not baggage we are willing to accept on the generic notion of tradition...-My own and every other generation I have known has always been deeply divided on matters pertaining to religion and origins. What you call ”baggage” may still be valid for millions of people, and since there is no general consensus on any of the theories, ultimately we fall back on subjective values. We draw comfort from intersubjectivity, but that is not the same as truth.
 
ROMANSH: I think when we have this kind of discussion we are very much stuck in the psychological ... ie the perception of our perceptions. I can't help thinking a little bit of reductionism won't go amiss here. I don't think it will give the "Big Answers" but it might give some insights rather than squabbling about our perceptions.I assume a materialist world, primarily because I have no evidence of a dualistic existence. In this materialist world my thoughts which include any faith, belief or knowledge I may profess, seem to be an arrangement of fundamental particles and fields ... whatever.-I sometimes get the feeling that by reductionism you actually mean materialism, and what you mean by insights is the belief that all things can be traced back to material causes and effects. If this were so, there would be very little to discuss. We would simply conclude that science will eventually prove that life, consciousness, psychic phenomena, emotional, aesthetic and mystic experiences will one day all be traced back to material causes. That in itself is a matter of faith, and so has no more current validity than the belief that there are a dozen or so dimensions, other universes, and/or other forms of being beyond those that we know (or think we know).
 
MATT: The materialist world is the only game in play. In epistemology, any other description of reality is necessarily bereft. Logically consistent--perhaps. But in regards to being the police of what is *actual* knowledge, as opposed to speculation, materialism for me has no legitimate competitor.-Bereft of what? (And for ”actual knowledge” see above.) I regard epistemology as an attempt not to describe reality but to describe how we arrive at our different concepts of reality. Materialism is one of those concepts, from which believers may derive conclusions that are no less subjective than concepts relating to personal experience. It may be rightly argued that in many contexts materialism has been proven right (thunder and lightning are not the product of war between the gods), but in others we CAN only speculate. We have to face up to the possibility that the material world may extend far beyond what we think we know, but we cannot discount the possibility that the material world is not all there is. Until every mystery has been definitively solved, epistemology - it seems to me - leaves us with a choice between faith of one kind or another and open-mindedness.