Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Order of Rank?) (Humans)

by dhw, Thursday, March 03, 2011, 19:13 (5013 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: No discussion of epistemology can be without a subjective order of rank.-You have summed up one of the major causes of disagreement between all the contributors to this forum, as is clear from your comment on NDEs/OBEs, David's response, and the following statement: "I lean materialistic, meaning, I err towards the objective at every conceivable point." By what criteria do you identify the materialistic with the objective? David has pointed out that information obtained during OBEs/NDEs has been verified by third parties, which he therefore categorizes as objective evidence, but which you dismiss: "they completely lack any objectivity at all". Similarly, you ask, of David's conjectures, "how reasonable is this?" But what criteria do you have for judging what is and isn't reasonable? There is no escape from the subjectivity of ranking!-You are hoping "we can move this discussion to one where everyone's basic assumptions and normative positions can be scrutinized by everyone else [...] and do this at the very root. (Epistemology.)" That, as I see it, is precisely what we are doing, and all our discussions eventually lay bare the epistemological basis of our opinions. We have between us agreed that on a common-sense (as opposed to philosophical) level, knowledge ... which comes as close to objective truth as we can hope to get ... only exists as a consensus. Where there is no consensus, we have belief. In matters of belief, subjectivity is inescapable, and there are no criteria beyond those of common sense to establish any kind of hierarchy. How we define common sense must in itself be a matter of consensus between the participants in a discussion. -You ask why we dismiss some ideas (the Sagan dragon, or St Anselm's ontological argument for God) and not others (David's UI, or the Young Earth Creationists ... though I thought all of us had dismissed the latter). In my gallant but sadly neglected post of twenty-four-one, I tried to compile a list of factors that influence belief. The dragon would not engage any of these, the ontological argument is an attempt to appeal to reason which I personally find totally unconvincing ... and evidently so do you ... and I am personally more inclined to believe the findings of modern science (based on knowledge, reason and observation) than the YECs' interpretation of an ancient text (based on other beliefs and probably intuition and outside influence). All three dismissals arise from subjective evaluations of the various claims. I neither dismiss nor accept David's arguments for a UI because knowledge, observation, reason and other people's experiences make it clear to me that there is an area of existence that must have an explanation, and his is no more and no less unreasonable (subjective judgement) than any other. As for "the very root", can we really dig any deeper than the "subjective order of rank"?-I'm really sorry that you wrote a complete response and then lost it. Infuriating, especially as we were obviously waiting for each other. But as a Beckett fan, I'm probably more used to it than you, since I never expect Godot or even xeno to arrive!