Philosophical personality test

[reason]

Seems to me that this is just a method to do philosophy and not a system in itself. Yet again, so are the rest of them. Foundationalism, as used here could also be applied to many things as well as to itself as it posits how ideas are to be discovered and does not specify what is discovered.

I am quite unsure what distinction you are attempting here to draw between method and system. Furthermore, the fact that foundationalism can be turned on itself, and I would argue fails to pass its own standards, is quite irrelevent to your question of what pancritical rationalism has to say about metaphysics and ethics.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

How did you get, 'Indeed faith is part of healthy rationalism' from 'while real thought always starts with scepticism, it ends with foundationalism and fideism'? I have scarcely ever been misinterpreted as thoroughly, especially given that I was alluding to precisely the opposite, suggesting that faith, foundationalism, manifest truth, apriorism, etc. are when rationality fails us, when criticism is brought to a halt, when arbitrary dogmatism reigns.

The notion that faith is a necessary, nevermind a 'healthy,' component of any theory of rationality is why the sceptic always wins the argument, since to arbitrary commitment (enslavement?) to your preferred authority is often seen as the only recourse. This is what pancritical rationalism seeks to resolve, allowing the rationalist to be nondogmatic without contradiction and to retain his integrity in the face of sceptical arguments.

Faith is necessary in order to accept the proposition that we think is 90% likely to be true as the truth that we can work with. It is much less complicated that it sounds. Apriorism is very difficult to refute, as Kant made a very strong case for its necessity. If you do that, you're back to many of the problems that Hume has faced. I do believe at this point that in virtue of Kant's synthesis of rationalism and empiricism (apriori and aposteriori) systematic knowledge is rendered possible. Otherwise Hume was right since we cant fall back on induction or causality, we just know that things happen and have no idea how they happen. Yet noone really believes this, they think that induction and causality have value of some kind, yet little did they know that this can only be justified in acceptance of Kant's apriori. Otherwise we have no reason to believe that what is in imagination can in any way be connected to what we perceive through the senses. Yet what we have arrived at with the great Kant, is mitigated rationalism: we can have an apriori picture of the truth (like Galileo said that Mathematics is the language that God wrote the universe with), or even an apriori map of how the universe works (like mathematics is one of), and to figure things out we need to discover where exactly we are on the map. Knowledge comes from correlations between our aposteriori discoveries with the course we've charted apriori. (Nonetheless... even a simple scientific hypothesis is good enough evidence of apriori as it has not been tested at the moment it was born in your mind). Accordingly, ideas that have been confirmed aposteriori are epistemically superior to those that were not. It is only in virtue of our apriori ideas was aposteriori thinking born, because at one point somebody came up with this idea of how empirical evidence is the most reliable guide to truth and at first this was nothing more than an idea in one's mind. We have plenty of reasons to believe that certain 'apriori systems' symbolize the way the world works and they are immanent within nature, not within our mind, but are there for our minds to discover, just like mathematics for instance.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

I am quite unsure what distinction you are attempting here to draw between method and system. Furthermore, the fact that foundationalism can be turned on itself, and I would argue fails to pass its own standards, is quite irrelevent to your question of what pancritical rationalism has to say about metaphysics and ethics.

Foundationalism, realism, skepticism... etc... all of these that were listed here tell us more about the thinker's philosophical attitudes and not specific philosophical beliefs... they are definitely more akin to a method than to an already charted out system. Yet clearly they all could be used to build a system yet they are not very indicative of what kind of a system could be built with them. In this respect a foundationalist, who is very different from a realist could end up having a very similar system to his counterpart despite the profound methodological differences.

 

[reason]

Faith is necessary in order to accept the proposition that we think is 90% likely to be true as the truth that we can work with. It is much less complicated that it sounds.

I didn't say that I found it complicated. I said that I need not have faith in any position, neither do I desire to have faith in any position, since my subjective feeling of faith has no bearing on whether that position is true. Neither do I believe any of my postions are 90% likely, nor 30%, 45% or 99% likely. In fact, I am entirely stumped, how you propose such a measurement should be carried out?

Apriorism is very difficult to refute...

I strongly disagree, indeed the arguments are old, at least as old as Sextus Empiricus and perhaps older, these are the old arguments for scepticism. The logical problem arises from justificationism, i.e. the search demand that positions be justified, that we provide reasons, foundations, support, etc. for our beleifs. This demand inevitably leads to an infinite regress, since the standard cannot be satisfied without an appeal to faith. In other words, the regress is stemmed by a dogmatic assertion, Kant simply coined the euphemism, "apriori." Thus Kant's transcendental idealism does not solve the problem of knowledge, Hume said that induction cannot be valid unless we assume the principle of induction dogmatically, and Kant's "solution" was to assume it dogmatically.

Yet noone really believes this, they think that induction and causality have value of some kind, yet little did they know that this can only be justified in acceptance of Kant's apriori. Otherwise we have no reason to believe that what is in imagination can in any way be connected to what we perceive through the senses.

I do not believe inductive logic exists, I find it quite uneccasary, and I even the principle of causality is superfluous.

 

[Alienclock]

Polygamist

Serial-poly-humorist

Spiritualist

 

[SolitaryWalker]

I didn't say that I found it complicated. I said that I need not have faith in any position, neither do I desire to have faith in any position, since my subjective feeling of faith has no bearing on whether that position is true. Neither do I believe any of my postions are 90% likely, nor 30%, 45% or 99% likely. In fact, I am entirely stumped, how you propose such a measurement should be carried out?

I strongly disagree, indeed the arguments are old, at least as old as Sextus Empiricus and perhaps older, these are the old arguments for scepticism. The logical problem arises from justificationism, i.e. the search demand that positions be justified, that we provide reasons, foundations, support, etc. for our beleifs. This demand inevitably leads to an infinite regress, since the standard cannot be satisfied without an appeal to faith. In other words, the regress is stemmed by a dogmatic assertion, Kant simply coined the euphemism, "apriori." Thus Kant's transcendental idealism does not solve the problem of knowledge, Hume said that induction cannot be valid unless we assume the principle of induction dogmatically, and Kant's "solution" was to assume it dogmatically.

I do not believe inductive logic exists, I find it quite uneccasary, and I even the principle of causality is superfluous.

Hang on a second. Here is apriori in a nutshell. I first make a hypothesis for my scientific experiment, and there is my apriori. It doesnt move on to aposteriori untill I've tested it out with empirical evidence. Everybody believes in apriori, just not everybody acknowledges that, without it would not be possible for us to say that we have valid thoughts. Kant's solution to Hume's problem was much simpler than it appeared to be, as close to simplistic as you can get. He basically told Hume that he must have believed in apriori all along otherwise he would not have completed his attack upon metaphysics as he then would not have been able to acknowledge that he is having meaningful thoughts.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school of metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Really!? Than we should throw your Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding to the flames to--for it does not contain a number and or any experimental reasoning.

I agree with your figure about probability, we just have to say that whatever we perceive to be most likely to be true we should tentatively accept as the truth, but not just stop right there. So if proposition A we deemed to be 5% likely to be true, B --10% and C 11%... we will have to accept C as the truth for now, but this will be far from exhaustive as we know that we have a long way to go to absolute knowledge, which I believe to be unattainable, doubt we will ever have a 100% there. Even if we are at 95... we shouldnt stop there, we will just have to keep digging.

 

[reason]

Foundationalism, realism, skepticism... etc... all of these that were listed here tell us more about the thinker's philosophical attitudes and not specific philosophical beliefs... they are definitely more akin to a method than to an already charted out system. Yet clearly they all could be used to build a system yet they are not very indicative of what kind of a system could be built with them. In this respect a foundationalist, who is very different from a realist could end up having a very similar system to his counterpart despite the profound methodological differences.

That is closer to what I originally thought you meant, though contrasting the words method with system is highly misleading, since the two are listed as synonyms in the dictionary. That still doesn't settle my confusion regarding why you decided to bring it up at all, since I am quite aware pancritical rationalism, in its most stripped-down and basic form, has very little content. That is intentional, since the pancritical rationalist is one who may entertain any position. For example, the pancritical rationalist should not grant apriori superiority to naturalistic theories over supernaturalistic theories when explaining phenomena.

 

[reason]

Hang on a second. Here is apriori in a nutshell. I first make a hypothesis for my scientific experiment, and there is my apriori. It doesnt move on to aposteriori untill I've tested it out with empirical evidence. Everybody believes in apriori, just not everybody acknowledges that, without it would not be possible for us to say that we have valid thoughts. Kant's solution to Hume's problem was much simpler than it appeared to be, as close to simplistic as you can get. He basically told Hume that he must have believed in apriori all along otherwise he would not have completed his attack upon metaphysics as he then would not have been able to acknowledge that he is having meaningful thoughts.

I was referring to Kant's assertion that particular truths about the universe were granted to us apriori, for free. These truths were those such as Euclidean geometry or Newtonian mechanics, these synthetic truths allowed us to transend idealism and interact with the thing in itself, not as passive information dispensers as Hume envisaged, but as active participants who bring our own ingredients to the recipe. This argument does nothing to defeat the old sceptic arguments, since there is still no justification or reason to believe any analytic position, nor any position that we have been granted these apriori synthetic truths.

Really!? Than we should throw your Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding to the flames to--for it does not contain a number and or any experimental reasoning.

Quite true, Hume condemns his own argument, but this doesn't mean Hume's argument was flawed. I believe Hume's argument was indeed valid and he successfully demonstrated that his own method of "rational" investigation is inadequate to pass its own tests. Kant simply ignored this problem, he did not solve it.

I agree with your figure about probability, we just have to say that whatever we perceive to be most likely to be true we should tentatively accept as the truth, but not just stop right there. So if proposition A we deemed to be 5% likely to be true, B --10% and C 11%... we will have to accept C as the truth for now, but this will be far from exhaustive as we know that we have a long way to go to absolute knowledge, which I believe to be unattainable, doubt we will ever have a 100% there. Even if we are at 95... we shouldnt stop there, we will just have to keep digging.

I believe this very talk of 5% or 90% true to be wholly futile and irrelevent. In short, unless you know that which is true already, how are we to take a measurement of how far a position disagrees with it, and if we knew the truth already, why would we need to?

 

[SolitaryWalker]

Quite true, Hume condemns his own argument, but this doesn't mean Hume's argument was flawed. I believe Hume's argument was indeed valid and he successfully demonstrated that his own method of "rational" investigation is inadequate to pass its own tests. Kant simply ignored this problem, he did not solve it.

You're right that induction could be accepted only on faith, dogmatically, but this is what we need to do just to move on. As we can not justify this phenomena through an adequate correlation between apriori and aposteriori. Yet again Kant certainly has offered a suggestion about how we can build a philosophical system despite the lack of aposteriori certainty. I think we can reasonably accept his tenet of apriori concerning that 2 plus2=4 can be deemed true with apodictic certainty only apriori, yet in the real world this is not possible to justify(Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica is the case in point), once again reinforces the viability of Hume's discovery

I believe this very talk of 5% or 90% true to be wholly futile and irrelevent. In short, unless you know that which is true already, how are we to take a measurement of how far a position disagrees with it, and if we knew the truth already, why would we need to?

I believe this very talk of 5% or 90% true to be wholly futile and irrelevent. In short, unless you know that which is true already, how are we to take a measurement of how far a position disagrees with it, and if we knew the truth already, why would we need to?

You're right about that so we should just say that we are going to work with whatever seems most likely to be true at the time, as we do not have the absolute figure to relate it to.

I was referring to Kant's assertion that particular truths about the universe were granted to us apriori, for free. These truths were those such as Euclidean geometry or Newtonian mechanics, these synthetic truths allowed us to transend idealism and interact with the thing in itself, not as passive information dispensers as Hume envisaged, but as active participants who bring our own ingredients to the recipe. This argument does nothing to defeat the old sceptic arguments, since there is still no justification or reason to believe any analytic position, nor any position that we have been granted these apriori synthetic truths.

I dont think that there is any apriori knowledge, I know that Schopenhauer didn't believe in him, doubt that Kant did as Schopenhauer implemented his methodology. Innate truths are left behind with Plato, transcendental idealism is widely misunderstood and this is one of those ways in which it is. It posits that the noumenal reality is entirely inacessibe and neither Kant nor Schopenhauer thought that they could have any knowledge of it and at best we can have the phenomenal. The phenomenal reality is subjectively conditioned, yet our knowledge of it can only be acquired through experiences. Even to chart an apriori map of the phenomenal world we need some kind of an experience as mathematics may be a symbolic outline of how the world works, yet nobody has innate knowledge of mathematics much to Plato's remonstrates.

 

[reason]

You're right about that so we should just say that we are going to work with whatever seems most likely to be true at the time, as we do not have the absolute figure to relate it to.

How about we hold preference for those positions which have most successfully withstood criticism? There is no pretense that such positions are more probable, likely, founded or supported, they have simply survived critical examination where alternatives have failed, survival of the fittest, so to speak.

I dont think that there is any apriori knowledge, I know that Schopenhauer didn't believe in him, doubt that Kant did as Schopenhauer implemented his methodology. Innate truths are left behind with Plato, transcendental idealism is widely misunderstood and this is one of those ways in which it is. It posits that the noumenal reality is entirely inacessibe and neither Kant nor Schopenhauer thought that they could have any knowledge of it and at best we can have the phenomenal. The phenomenal reality is subjectively conditioned, yet our knowledge of it can only be acquired through experiences. Even to chart an apriori map of the phenomenal world we need some kind of an experience as mathematics may be a symbolic outline of how the world works, yet nobody has innate knowledge of mathematics much to Plato's remonstrates.

As I understand it, the whole purpose of Kant's transcendental idealism was to show that we could have knowledge of the world. That is the whole upshot of Kant's Copurnican revolution, how we can relate and understand the external world because we were gifted with apriori knowledge of the external world, such as Euclidean geometry or the principle of causality. Kant's problems revolved around relating and unifying empiricism and Cartesian rationalism, he hardly answered half of Hume's sceptical arguments.

I think Kant would have been more successful had he lived in the time of Darwin, who identified how it was that we could have apriori synthetic knowledge. In fact, Darwin's answer can be interpreted as follows, the development of knowledge did not begin when you were born, but began billions of years ago when the very first ancestors of us all began to take shape.

 

[targobelle]

Optimist
Optimists are a dying breed in this day and age. To the optimists, the world is a positive place. Everything is inherently good, and all things will work out in the end. They believe violence will one day be replaced with logic and reason, and that all religions can coexisist peacefully. These are the people who always see the glass half full, and believe that we live in the best possible world.

Famous optimists include: Gottfried Leibniz, William Godwin.

The opposite of Optimism is Skepticism.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

Optimist
Optimists are a dying breed in this day and age. To the optimists, the world is a positive place. Everything is inherently good, and all things will work out in the end. They believe violence will one day be replaced with logic and reason, and that all religions can coexisist peacefully. These are the people who always see the glass half full, and believe that we live in the best possible world.

Famous optimists include: Gottfried Leibniz, William Godwin.

The opposite of Optimism is Skepticism.

Talk about Optimism..

'Now if we have so far convinced ourselves apriori by the most universal considerations, by investigation of the first, elementary features of human life, that such a life, by whole tendency and disposition, is not capable of any true bliss or happiness, but is essentially suffering in many forms and a tragic state in every way, we might now awaken in this conviction much more vividly within us, if, by proceeding more aposteriori, we turned to more definite instances, brought pictures to the imagination, and described by examples the unspeakable misery presented by experience and history, wherever we look, and whatever avenue we explore?But perhaps at the end of his life, no man, be he sincere and at the same time in possession of his faculties, will ever wish to go through it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete non-existenceThe essential purport of the world-famous Hamlet monologue is, in condensed form, that our state of existence is so wretched, that non-existence would decided be preferable to it.... If we were to conduct the most hardened and callous optimist through hospitals, infirmaries, operating theatres, through prisons, torture chambers, and slave-hovels, over battlefields and to places of execution; if we were to open him all the dark abodes of misery, where it shuns the gaze of cold curiosity, and finally were to allow him to glance into the dungeon of Ugolino where prisoners starved to death, he too would certainly see in the end what kind of a best of all possible worlds this is. For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it. On the other hand, when he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insuperable difficulty before him, just because our world affords absolutely no material for anything of the kind?. For the rest I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of mankind. And let no one imagine that the Christian teaching is favorable to optimism, because in the gospels, evil and this world are used almost as synonymous expressions.

No really... please tell me how you can honestly believe that the world is a positive place!?

 

[hereandnow]

Foundationalist

 

[targobelle]

Talk about Optimism..




No really... please tell me how you can honestly believe that the world is a positive place!?

seriously I have no idea how the 'quiz' came up with that response. I answered honestly and I tell you if my husband saw the results he would burst out laughing........

 

[SolitaryWalker]

seriously I have no idea how the 'quiz' came up with that response. I answered honestly and I tell you if my husband saw the results he would burst out laughing........

So what do you think of that Schopenhauer quote..? you're not much of an optimist after all are you..?

 

[niffer]

rationalist.

however, i think what nocturne wrote up applies to me more. things should be left open to debate. i mean, it was once a fact that the world was flat. you can debate about anything. people are imaginative; they'll just keep spitting out more scenarios and questions and counter-attacks. people will always be debating and debating for all eternity D:

if i wasn't forced to be a rationalist in order to logically exist in this world, then i would be an optimist. hmph.

 

[targobelle]

So what do you think of that Schopenhauer quote..? you're not much of an optimist after all are you..?

No I most certainly am not am optimist.....

The quote while harsher than I would be is to some degree accurate. I would never again go through the life that is behind me...... I believe in some case that the world we live on is indeed hell on earth.... Yet I have a glimse into what I believe heaven to be, and I believe that it does indeed exsist.

 

[wyrdsister]

Optimist
Optimists are a dying breed in this day and age. To the optimists, the world is a positive place. Everything is inherently good, and all things will work out in the end. They believe violence will one day be replaced with logic and reason, and that all religions can coexisist peacefully. These are the people who always see the glass half full, and believe that we live in the best possible world.

Famous optimists include: Gottfried Leibniz, William Godwin.

The opposite of Optimism is Skepticism.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

Optimist
Optimists are a dying breed in this day and age. To the optimists, the world is a positive place. Everything is inherently good, and all things will work out in the end. They believe violence will one day be replaced with logic and reason, and that all religions can coexisist peacefully. These are the people who always see the glass half full, and believe that we live in the best possible world.

Famous optimists include: Gottfried Leibniz, William Godwin.

The opposite of Optimism is Skepticism.

Kidding, right?

 

[wyrdsister]

Schopenhauer ah Schopenhauer! Eternal optimist and lover of all things female...