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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 08, 2011, 15:06 (5008 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO-MATT: It is self evident that causes and effects are truly inseparable? Useless how? Read my signature again; that's what we do with language and science. We get shades of the universe. But there's other perceptions; it's just a question of whether you think they're valid. -Absolutely right: we get shades of the universe through language and science. David gets shades of the universe through his faith in a first cause. Your ancient Indian sage gets shades of the universe through shutting out past and future. I get shades of the universe through incorporating the past in my thinking, tracing causes and effects. Why should one shade HAVE PRIORITY over another? [Foxy plan in full swing.]-MATT: If cause and effect are two perceptions of the same thing ... the irreducible thing ... they are only two perceptions of a single object. The single object is reality. The perceptions are not.-Agreed. Perception is not reality, and we don't know what reality is. But are you saying we should abandon our perceptions? No matter what approach we adopt ... and that includes the approach of your Indian sage ... we cannot know that it will bring us to the reality of the object. Fortunately, we are able to apply certain tests that will confirm that our perceptions do correspond to aspects of reality, as you would have found out if you had stepped in front of that bus.
 
MATT: According to Eastern tradition, understanding the root nature of the cosmos as unity, as all causes and effects simultaneously, is the rock from which differentiations of cause and effect are built. It's just a bit more explicit than it is here in the west. -No problem: the present universe is the sum total of all past causes and effects. But now you are acknowledging differentiations of cause and effect when earlier you said "distinctions between cause and effect are delusions". It's getting dark down this rabbit hole.-MATT: Truth was perhaps a misleading word for me here. Science gives us workable knowledge. Actionable. Just enough to transform our environment. But you seemed to me to be mistaking "what works" for "what's true" and by extension "what's reality." Reality can never be fully understood this way, to the extent that any individual is capable of understanding reality.-'Truth' we agreed was unattainable, and is therefore irrelevant in this context. The fact that technology works proves that there has been an accurate connection between cause and effect. I don't know why you link that to 'truth', and reality can never be fully understood in any way. My insistence on the sequence of cause and effect is by no means confined to science. Every action, emotion and thought is part of the same sequence.
 
MATT: Science is understanding reality by creating a chain of causes and effects and comparing them to what we see. We build a model from language and see if observations make sense. But even going back to my pool cue description, it only captures a small shade of what's going on--only that portion that can be described by language. -There is NOTHING we can do that will enable us to capture more than a "small shade of what's going on". Why would denying the sequence of cause-effect/cause-effect, shutting out the unreal past and future, rejecting our human tools of language and perception, give you a "deeper understanding" of reality, unless you believe there's no connection between reality and our perception and description of it? What makes you so sure that this way of capturing small shades is less "real" or less "deep" than your Indian sage's way? WHY DO YOU GIVE ONE WAY PRIORITY OVER ANOTHER? (The fox is leading you to the hutch...)-But ... very important ... I don't want you to misunderstand my overall position. Just as there are different levels of argument, there are different levels of reality. What I would call the philosophical level (and there is no disagreement between us here) concerns the unity of all things, which David experiences through communion with his God, which you may experience through meditation, which I experience (intermittently) through creative work, music, Nature and emotion. It also concerns the impossibility of total knowledge (which would = truth), and the unreliability and inadequacy of all our means of grasping reality, e.g. perception, language, intuition. But there is also what I would call the common-sense level of reality: the sequence of cause-effect-cause, perception and language (because despite their inadequacy and unreliability, they do grasp aspects of reality, and we can prove it), and other human constructs that enable us to organize our lives (not to be confused with "truth"), because the human present is as real as the unified presentness of the universe. How we balance these two levels will depend on our personal priorities ... or ORDER OF RANK. (The door of the hutch is open.)