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

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, March 06, 2011, 22:08 (5010 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: (to dhw): Why do you do it? [...] Why [do] we rank some property higher than others? [...] Why do we decide to reject some arguments and not others?
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> MATT: (explaining Buddhist philosophy to David): [...] distinctions between cause and effect are delusions. [...] There is an infinite network of causes and effects. [...] The only way to understand what you're studying is to understand it as a unity of cause and effect.
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> Answers to "why" questions usually begin with "because". If you're trying to understand why people hold certain priorities, or have certain beliefs, or perform certain actions, how can you possibly avoid the sequence of cause and effect? Can you think of a single answer to your own questions that will not involve that sequence? The fact that there is an infinite network of causes and effects, and each cause is an effect of an earlier cause, does not mean that the distinction is a delusion. It simply means that whatever factor you are considering has a dual connection, like any link in a chain. 
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> We can, of course, argue that EVERYTHING is a delusion, but then we might as well stop talking altogether. David says "I know we do not see reality as it really is", but nobody "knows" that. It's a contradiction in terms. How do you know you don't see reality as it really is if you don't know what reality really is? The fact that our understanding of reality comes about through our limited senses and language need not necessarily mean that what we perceive and verbalize is not real, or is not reality as it really is. Try stepping in front of a bus and you'll soon find out.
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> The claim that "the only way to understand what you're studying is to understand it as a unity of cause and effect" would rob us of virtually every technological, medical, and scientific advance we humans have ever made. Of course our understanding will only be partial ... as you say, the network is infinite ... but without that clear distinction we will be confined to the present state of things: the car will never start again, the disease will never be cured, I shall never know the cause of thunder.
> -You went down the wrong rabbit hole here...
This goes back to my distinction on what it means to know something. Not to just hear it. Not just repeat what someone told you, but to know. Knowing is a marriage of all the causes and all the effects that make up that object. It's a deep understanding, NOT a superficial one. Science's job is to give us workable knowledge--NOT truth. You're describing workable knowledge. -All of the bits of knowledge you discuss here, are instances where you don't really need to know everything there is to know about them: when a doctor prescribes you medicine, he's really playing a probability game. Based on what picture he creates between what you've told him and his tests, he gambles on the right course of action. He knows that if his action doesn't work, he needs to search down another path. If it works though, who cares if he didn't really arrive at the true cause? (Many kinds of bugs are killed with the same antibiotic... and if they all have similar symptoms, you don't really know the cause... it's often not cost-effective.)-> David says "everything I know has a cause". I agree. Matt, can you tell us of anything that does not have a cause? But David is also riding the trail with Messrs Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the old first cause bandwagon. I think the only response we brother agnostics can give is that if there is a first cause, no-one can possibly know what it is.-The real question isn't "Is there anything without a cause?" it is "Is there anything that isn't both a cause and an effect?" Chew on that for awhile. It's a completely different way of looking at things. Buddhists and Indians both think that this foundational thought is the first step to understanding the universe at large.

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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.\"