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Theories: All Along the Watchtowers. |
Posted by
W0rmW00d on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 12:16 AM PST
Isn't it funny how you always know that you are right? There is very little doubt, you have reasoned it through and all of the steps make sense, each action has an equal and opposite reaction, every cause has an effect and every effect has its corresponding cause.
The thing is that you weren't right. It all made sense and you weren't wrong, you just weren't right either. The odd thing about right and wrong is that they can go either way at any time and it doesn't matter how secure you were in that knowledge, it just no longer applies.
Every time one makes a decision it works fine until you start to think about it. Questioning your motives, what you hoped would change for you and for everyone else doesn't help. It is always your intent which is pure, anybody who disagrees is entitled to their point of view, but they don't really understand, do they?
Ok, enough of the introductory punchy sentences, here is some flesh for dem dry bones:
There is a logical fallacy 'P but I do not believe P' which seems to me, in my infinite wisdom, to be amongst the most important points in understanding people. Obviously, every decision made is based upon what you think and believe at the time, to do otherwise would be sheer folly. It would be saying P but I do not believe P. The problem is that one's mind, if it is to be open, must always be in flux, and if it is to always be within a state of change then there can be no consistency, which opposes the instinctive understanding of the self as an enduring body.
How does one choose which ideas to absorb and accept and which to reject? This choice requires a pre-defined basis which must have come from somewhere or one must be childlike and accepting of everything, which is an unworkable lifestyle. The chooser would be open to all influence, malign and benign, safe and dangerous or whatever else was wished upon them. There seems to be a dichotomy.
This article won't even attempt to solve the problems involved, I can't do it for you or I would be the influencer and it would no longer be your decision, which is the whole point, really, isn't it? What I am doing is expressing the confusion that this problem generates within me.
I try to be open to all new ideas. I speak dogmatically, but think openly and am constantly questioning myself, usually thinking that I must have been wrong. I have studied philosophy, both academically and otherwise for many years and it is essential to excercise a rigour of thought while still allowing flexibility as I am sure that most of you will already know. I have finally reached a stumbling block; if I am to set a rigid, defining cutoff then I will be closed to a potentially useful, or potentially right idea. One is always taught to search for an absolute, but all absolutes are ethereal. At what point do you close off an idea? There are so many uncertainties in this world (and most of the certainties are based on the uncertainties) that there is no way to know which to accept. Does one go with the most convincing? the one with the most circumstantial evidence? the one which contains the most of what one already believes?
All seem to boil down to a question though: Why?
The damn why, which is to be the bane of all thinking people's existence. Why do two opposite fields repel? Well why does that happen? Well, what causes that? Cause and effect are the twin bases for most of modern science, but the cause is getting hazy, and the effects harder to find. How about a less definite study, say morality. It may not even exist, but it is so ingrained that one can do little about it. Right and wrong are here to stay. The hell of the final hurdle seems further with each passing moment, not closer.
When God died he left a gaping void (literal as well as metaphorical meaning intended) into which pours the intellectual curiosity of the masses. Some can focus, and some cannot. It is those who cannot who live with the confusion. If one wants to know everything then one must learn everything, from top to bottom. I think you see the problem. Where is the top? how deep is the bottom? and, shitting hell, what if we find it?
Back to P and I don't believe P. Because of the inversion rules it is entailed that 'not P and I believe P' is also a fallacy. My problem is that it is no longer possible to tell whether P or not P. Every thing I do is judged wrong by another, when I open my imagination to their point of view I see that too. To be the perfect moralist, scientist, philosopher, or any other of the contemplative arts one must sacrifice rigour of thought, which does not allow for conceptual perfection because of the mutability of thought. This leaves me with the possibility that there is no absolute, no definite, nothing recognisable to a person brought up within Christian, western, Americo-European society. Everything I have been told was wrong or uncertain, and I'm not even sure about that. As the great man said, 'There is too much confusion, I can't get no relief.'
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All Along the Watchtowers. | Login/Create an account | 17 Comments |
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Re: All Along the Watchtowers.
by Kira on Feb 08, 2006 - 09:34 AM
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One, I think you are confusing knowledge and belief. The perfect scientist could give up "rigor of thought" in order to come up with wild theories, which could then either be proven or disproven by experimentation and fact. This would not affect his status of perfect scientist in any way. The same situation does not apply for a moralist or a philosopher who dwell in the realm of belief.
Two, people and their beliefs do not exist in terms of binary opposition. There is a wide, complex spectrum between "believe P" and "don't believe P" which is what makes issues of morality more complex than simple right and wrong.
Three, speaking of binary systems...opposites attract, not repel. It's hard to take the rest of your pseudo-intellectual babble seriously when you get what even Paula Abdul knows is right, wrong. While I applaud your effort, another great man once said, "You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything."
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I Drink, Therefore, I Am
by Monolycus on Feb 08, 2006 - 01:36 PM
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We can assume, as did Descartes, that nothing is provable and that we can know nothing with any certainty that goes on outside of our own heads if we want to spend the entirety of our lives in a neonatal fog. If we wish to advance beyond an intellectual infancy, however, we must (probably arbitrarily) accept that things can be known. "P" or "~P" is in no way affected by my belief in it. By questioning the accuracy of my senses as regards "P" or "~P", all that I can hope to achieve is to impede myself from communicating effectively (and thereby from experiencing compassion, love or empathy... upon which my happiness as a social animal is contigent).
Professor H.G. Frankfurt (Princeton) recently published a wonderful book entitled "On Bullshit". In it, he concludes that bullshit (as opposed to deliberately lying) is simply having no regard for the truth or falsity of what one is speaking about. There are certainly shades of grey and levels of subjectivity which give nuance to what we are expressing, but at the end of the day if we can not agree that there are ways to determine the truth or falsity of a proposition, then we can neither make any statement with the purpose of telling the truth nor the purpose of deceiving. In short, anything we say about anything can only be bullshit. (This is, incidentally, precisely the reason I feel that discussions with self-proclaimed nihilists are such a waste of time.)
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Re: All Along the Watchtowers.
by callei on Feb 08, 2006 - 03:41 PM
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i just want to take one paragraph and talk about how these comments seem to me...
“How does one choose which ideas to absorb and accept and which to reject? “
This is a serious issue that we all face, especially as children. Most ideas that we have, we have merely absorbed and have never challenged in our own minds or lives. This is what being a teenager is all about; defining the basic rules, social, personal, political, religious, economic, and so on, by which we choose to filter all future information that we perceive. That is when we decide what level of hypocrisy we will accept in ourselves and others and what we see as success. It is also when we start thinking about the filters and information that we have already gathered and why we use the filters that we do and what that information really means to us. Let me give an example here. Say that we know the phrase “bad boy” and as a teen, we start to think about what that really means to us. What kind of bad? What age of boy? Why is he bad? Does that make him desirable, scary, outcast, or likeminded? It is also when we start to see that the absolute rules that we have accepted in our youth are more flexible and immaterial that we used to believe. We have to choose what kind of people, situations, and affiliations we desire to have as part of our lives. These choices will, in the end, decide what sort of moral, ethics, value system we eventually decide to use. I think we choose the tangibles before the intangibles rather than deciding on some philosophy or system of knowing then go and find out what that means in real life.
“This choice requires a pre-defined basis which must have come from somewhere or one must be childlike and accepting of everything, which is an unworkable lifestyle. “
If, as a teenager, one managed to avoid creating the foundation for the future, or picked an option that doesn’t fit or suit, then we must return to that teenage state and reassess our choices. Many people do choose to live a more, as you put it, childlike life style and they find it quite workable, probably because they choose to make that lifestyle work for them. I would like to point out that one doesn’t just become one thing or the other. There is a state of flux between having a point of view and not having appoint of view.
“The chooser would be open to all influence, malign and benign, safe and dangerous or whatever else was wished upon them. “
Very few people care enough to wish much of anything on anyone else. It is possibly accurate to say that the person that chooses to be have lots of faith in people, be easily amused, follow the rules, and hold hands when they cross the street, will be as open to whatever influences are physically close at hand, just like everyone else be they priest or cynic or scientist (probably the most optimistic career choice a person can make) or welfare mother.
“There seems to be a dichotomy.”
The way that you are looking at it, missing all the steps that happen between being 3 years old and being 13 or 30, does make it seem a dichotomy. It isn’t really, but, in the act of over simplifying the maturation process you have managed to make to points on the circle be opposite each other. Also, children are cunning, willful, decisive, certain, absolute creatures, not namby-pamby wishy-washy gullible fools. Children are quite sure about what they think is right or not and what they like and who they want to know. Only adults, certain kinds of drug addicts, some kinds of mentally retarded people, or very ill people tend to be “childlike” in the sense that you mean.
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Re: All Along the Watchtowers.
by gothicmorman (litty_klj@hotmail.com)
on Feb 14, 2006 - 01:16 PM
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I totally get what you mean! I start thinking and then get so stuck on points of view and what ifs and but thens because I try not to be closed minded - I try not to define cutoff points but since beleif and fact and the univerise is infinite I can't tell if I keep going forever or if im going in circles and eventually my mind tries to split off into so many paths that say to myself "why the hell am i thinking about this - didn't i just decide the other day that i wasn't going to think about things that end up hurting my mind anymore without some kind of protective mind barrier thing?" but god forbid that because it just doesn't work. i can't put up the damn blocks because you can't just rule out points of view - just think of everything you miss by doing that!!
I can't stop thinking about things that end up hurting my brain though because I can't stop thinking alltogether. I enjoy the hell out of it.
It will never end though we will all just keep thinking along and defining things then realizing that definitions don't hold up and going to back to whatever point we want to call the beginning then realizing its not really the beginning and etc etc.. it won't end but that is a good thing. At least there is ALWAYS something to do. ^.^
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