4 ms·

It’s not overrated if you want to know the universal truths of reality, which is what the person I replied to spoke of. The truth is fully reasonable

haswell 1y ago
> The truth is fully reasonable Doesn’t this effectively hand wave away the hard problem of consciousness? i.e. even a purely reason-based understanding of truth must acknowledge that the only thing we can be certain actually exists is the mind. With no true understanding of how the mind functions, and giant gaps in our understanding of existence, the idea that universal truth can even be comprehended — much less mapped wholly onto humans capacity for reason - is just a belief. An article of faith. It seems to me that a purely reason-based worldview must by definition acknowledge that a statement like “the truth is fully reasonable” is untenable at worst and at best just a prediction.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  We don’t need to understand how the mind works to derive the necessary metaphysical categories. That’s something Kant got wrong
  - haswell 1y ago
    I'm not sure upon what basis you think such a claim can be definitively made. Nor does declaring "Kant got this wrong" help the argument. For sake of argument, let's say the simulation hypothesis is true. Would you acknowledge that the implications of such a thing being true would have vastly different metaphysical properties than other hypotheses, e.g. "consciousness is a fundamental property of existence and all matter is conscious"? The mind is literally the only thing we can be certain exists. We've made so much progress scientifically mapping the territory available for us to explore, that I think many people have lost sight of the vastness of the gap between what we actually know and what we have yet to understand.
    - bowsamic 1y ago
      Forget about all that. Start with no presuppositions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Logic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Logic Then you’ll find out the truth
      - grep_name 1y ago
        This doesn't pass the smell test for me. It seems like you've taken a system of reasoning that was built through careful consideration (Kantianism), called the conclusions it meticulously built 'presuppositions' and hand-waved it without making substantive counterpoints. The problem then, of course, is that burning down previous philosophy and starting 'without presuppositions' will lead inevitably to conclusions again, which you can once again call presuppositions and hand-wave.
        bowsamic 1y ago
        If you have no external assumptions you can’t be wrong
        haswell 1y ago
        This statement is self-refuting in multiple ways. It is itself an assumption. It is assuming that it’s possible to have no external assumptions, that being wrong requires external assumptions, and that this principle is true. You’ve already violated your own standard. Even basic logical reasoning requires assumptions. Like the principle of non-contradiction, or that our cognitive faculties can distinguish between valid and invalid inferences. Hegel’s work doesn’t actually proceed without assumptions either; it starts with the concept of “being” and builds from there using logical principles. If you truly had no assumptions, you couldn’t even begin to reason or make any truth claims. You’d have no framework for distinguishing truth from falsehood, valid from invalid reasoning, or meaningful from meaningless statements. You might avoid being wrong about empirical facts, but you’d also avoid being right about anything. The real philosophical task isn’t to eliminate all assumptions (which is impossible), but to identify foundational commitments, examine them critically, and build carefully from the most defensible starting points we can find. But those starting points are still assumptions, and at least for the time being, there’s no reason to believe we’ve sufficiently closed the knowledge gaps necessary to operate on anything but a base set of assumptions.
- rxtexit 1y ago
  To me, it is just obviously wrong. Reality is not reasonable and it is actually unreasonable that we would even expect reality to be reasonable. Our reason is a highly flawed instrument that we have pushed far past what it was designed for. We have done an amazing job though as these social machines that live in various collective social delusions. Seeing these collective delusions and the unreasonableness of reality is exactly the point of taking psychedelics. Forget LSD, ask anyone who has taken salvia divinorum to describe how unreasonable reality can be lol.
  - bowsamic 1y ago
    How can you conclude that reality is not reasonable? That’s a straight up contradiction. If it were unreasonable you’d be unable to conclude that

haswell 1y ago

> The truth is fully reasonable Doesn’t this effectively hand wave away the hard problem of consciousness? i.e. even a purely reason-based understanding of truth must acknowledge that the only thing we can be certain actually exists is the mind. With no true understanding of how the mind functions, and giant gaps in our understanding of existence, the idea that universal truth can even be comprehended — much less mapped wholly onto humans capacity for reason - is just a belief. An article of faith. It seems to me that a purely reason-based worldview must by definition acknowledge that a statement like “the truth is fully reasonable” is untenable at worst and at best just a prediction.

bowsamic 1y ago
We don’t need to understand how the mind works to derive the necessary metaphysical categories. That’s something Kant got wrong
- haswell 1y ago
  I'm not sure upon what basis you think such a claim can be definitively made. Nor does declaring "Kant got this wrong" help the argument. For sake of argument, let's say the simulation hypothesis is true. Would you acknowledge that the implications of such a thing being true would have vastly different metaphysical properties than other hypotheses, e.g. "consciousness is a fundamental property of existence and all matter is conscious"? The mind is literally the only thing we can be certain exists. We've made so much progress scientifically mapping the territory available for us to explore, that I think many people have lost sight of the vastness of the gap between what we actually know and what we have yet to understand.
  - bowsamic 1y ago
    Forget about all that. Start with no presuppositions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Logic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Logic Then you’ll find out the truth
    - grep_name 1y ago
      This doesn't pass the smell test for me. It seems like you've taken a system of reasoning that was built through careful consideration (Kantianism), called the conclusions it meticulously built 'presuppositions' and hand-waved it without making substantive counterpoints. The problem then, of course, is that burning down previous philosophy and starting 'without presuppositions' will lead inevitably to conclusions again, which you can once again call presuppositions and hand-wave.
      - bowsamic 1y ago
        If you have no external assumptions you can’t be wrong
        haswell 1y ago
        This statement is self-refuting in multiple ways. It is itself an assumption. It is assuming that it’s possible to have no external assumptions, that being wrong requires external assumptions, and that this principle is true. You’ve already violated your own standard. Even basic logical reasoning requires assumptions. Like the principle of non-contradiction, or that our cognitive faculties can distinguish between valid and invalid inferences. Hegel’s work doesn’t actually proceed without assumptions either; it starts with the concept of “being” and builds from there using logical principles. If you truly had no assumptions, you couldn’t even begin to reason or make any truth claims. You’d have no framework for distinguishing truth from falsehood, valid from invalid reasoning, or meaningful from meaningless statements. You might avoid being wrong about empirical facts, but you’d also avoid being right about anything. The real philosophical task isn’t to eliminate all assumptions (which is impossible), but to identify foundational commitments, examine them critically, and build carefully from the most defensible starting points we can find. But those starting points are still assumptions, and at least for the time being, there’s no reason to believe we’ve sufficiently closed the knowledge gaps necessary to operate on anything but a base set of assumptions.
rxtexit 1y ago
To me, it is just obviously wrong. Reality is not reasonable and it is actually unreasonable that we would even expect reality to be reasonable. Our reason is a highly flawed instrument that we have pushed far past what it was designed for. We have done an amazing job though as these social machines that live in various collective social delusions. Seeing these collective delusions and the unreasonableness of reality is exactly the point of taking psychedelics. Forget LSD, ask anyone who has taken salvia divinorum to describe how unreasonable reality can be lol.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  How can you conclude that reality is not reasonable? That’s a straight up contradiction. If it were unreasonable you’d be unable to conclude that