The real discussion: Values (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 02, 2016, 00:45 (3250 days ago) @ dhw

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.
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> 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).
> -^^Reductionism is usually used as an epithet by Intelligent Design proponents to be synonymous with materialism. Yet for the few things of faith we would be required to take by assuming materialism, we drop many, many, many more. To me, materialism represents epistemological conservatism at its best.-> 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.-Epistemology's goal is to provide the foundation to force us to justify how we know what we know. To me it is a directed study. Otherwise we could just assume Agrippan Skepticism and deny knowledge is possible. "Actual knowledge" is knowledge independently verifiable and free from cultural bias. (It must be true no matter the culture involved.) Materialism does require some speculation, but I will ask you the question, does it make us speculate more or less compared to other alternatives?

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"