From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Mar 13 2003 - 15:14:30 GMT
Johnny:
> But if you agree you don't know everything, I think you have to accept the
> remote possibility that you are wrong about things. Doubt has entered the
> picture about virtually everything, except the few universal truths (I/we
> exist, and I/we don't know everything).
Maybe for you. But not for me. If I doubted virtually everything, I wouldn't
be able to tie my shoelaces.
> >How's that again? Do you doubt my assertion? [about the truth of statement
> > regarding 2nd paragraph]
>
> Well, yes. I'd have to go look it up in a book to be sure, and even then
> I'd only be trusting the book. Even if I saw it with my own eyes, I'd have
> to be trusting my eyes. So, I consult ten books, get 100 people to agree
> with me that their eyes see the same thing, and reduce the doubt down to
> feel confident that it is true - I now fully expect the 11th book and the
> 101st person to agree. I get to a point where I can treat the expectation
> like absolute truth and get on with living. But it never is, really, it's
> always just expectation. But you're right, if we get stuck wallowing in
> doubt, we can't live.
That's my point. The other stuff is pure fun and games.
> But is what you are asking - "Is there a true second paragraph, regardless
> of whether anyone can know it with certainty or not?" I'd say yes, by
> definition. I think doubt and expectation imply a corresponding real truth
> to expect or doubt, they'd be meaningless otherwise.
Right on.
> I think about Schroedinger's Cat [google it, it's quite interesting]. The
> radical point of that thought experiement was that the cat being alive or
> dead is not merely an unknown, but that it is (truly?) in a state of
> probability, ready to be either very much alive or stone cold dead the
> moment we open the box. It is a cloud of being both dead and alive, in
> proportional expectations. It is actually said to be in BOTH states until
> someone opens the box.
Fortunately in my day to day doings I don't have to be concerned with
Schrodinger's cat.
> ooh, this reminds me of an Ayn Rand quote I dug up:
>
> "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom:
> existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from
> these. To live, man must hold three things as the ruling values of his
> life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of
> knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must
> proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is
> competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means:
> worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's
> virtues"
> — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
>
> I think that realtes to what I am saying :) It is self-esteem that makes
> us trust our expectations and allows us to stay afloat in the sea of doubt
> rather than drown trying to climb out of it because we fear it.
Yes, that and wanting to live.
> > > I define morality as what people are expected to do.
I guess that means you don't believe Pirsig when he defines morality as
reality.
> >Nevermind what "people" expect or think. Do YOU believe slavery is
> >absolutely wrong?
>
> Sure. But I can't "nevermind" what people think. How does one do that?
Ignore them. Remember the story of the Brujo in Lila?
> There WAS slavery, and there would still be slavery, if morality hadn't
> changed (unless you ascribe the change to economic changes and
> industrialization). I don't think people were less moral back then, they
> just had different expectations. I don't think they accepted evil over
> good more than people today, they feared being wrong and bad as much as
> anyone ever does, probably, right? They were our grandparents, after all,
> how different could they have been?
My grandparents believed a lot of things I don't. Likewise, my
grandchildren will believe a lot of things I don't. "Many truths change,"
which is one truth like many that doesn't. :-) One change I'm hoping for
is a social morality based on reason like the intellectual morality that
science adheres to rather than the social morality we have today based
on collective ignorance like in the story of the "Emperor's New Clothes."
Platt
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