Thanks for reading!
I've agreed with this, before, but always with hesitation, and I recently articulated why. Simply put, there are unexplainable things in the world which the belief in a higher power explains. We can only go back so far in our retracing of the big bang, we can't find that first cause. There are things which physics, especially on a quantum level, cannot explain with any degree of certainty. Giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping that science will one day answer those questions is tantamount to having faith in science: positing a belief in its future triumph.
There is a position which some take to the question which is similar - just ignoring it. Kind of like your mu-position (I like that term), people who are simply uninterested questions such as "What are we?", "Where do we come from?", "What does it mean to be a good person?". These questions take different forms depending on one's beliefs or lack thereof. As someone who has been poisoned with these questions, I'm unable to detach myself from asking them, so for me, the domain of the beyond has always had some interest, if only as a tool is repositioning my questions in order to play new games with them.
I don't know if those questions are worth asking - I'll take an agnostic stance there too - but I'm unable to convince myself that they're not (Maybe that's something I should think about doing next..) , and I think that's the case for most of the world.
As for the thing I wrote, what I especially like about it is flexibility - it can be adapted easily to different questions. Debates of scientific realism, antirealism and pragmatism find themselves in need of justifying their points of view as well, and where one accuses the other of having an unfounded faith in a certain scientific principle, the issue of belief comes up again. And here, the monkey-in-a-box reduction is even more difficult, as we rely on knowledge of certain imperceptible entities (such as electrons) to do many of the things we do in the modern world. The positioning is not easily avoidable (though some philosophers do avoid it, and justify their mu-position with only moderate success).
Girlfriend says it's dinner time - I'll check out your link later tonight
Quote from: Cramulus on February 15, 2012, 04:43:09 PM
The agnostic position is "Without opening the box, I can't judge whether or not there's a monkey in it." Gillette seems to insist that EVERYBODY either supports or denies the existence of that monkey. But seriously, if we want to be really scientific about it, I can't make a statement about the reality of that monkey without opening the box. So my "belief" is a Mu-position1, neither on nor off.
I've agreed with this, before, but always with hesitation, and I recently articulated why. Simply put, there are unexplainable things in the world which the belief in a higher power explains. We can only go back so far in our retracing of the big bang, we can't find that first cause. There are things which physics, especially on a quantum level, cannot explain with any degree of certainty. Giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping that science will one day answer those questions is tantamount to having faith in science: positing a belief in its future triumph.
There is a position which some take to the question which is similar - just ignoring it. Kind of like your mu-position (I like that term), people who are simply uninterested questions such as "What are we?", "Where do we come from?", "What does it mean to be a good person?". These questions take different forms depending on one's beliefs or lack thereof. As someone who has been poisoned with these questions, I'm unable to detach myself from asking them, so for me, the domain of the beyond has always had some interest, if only as a tool is repositioning my questions in order to play new games with them.
I don't know if those questions are worth asking - I'll take an agnostic stance there too - but I'm unable to convince myself that they're not (Maybe that's something I should think about doing next..) , and I think that's the case for most of the world.
As for the thing I wrote, what I especially like about it is flexibility - it can be adapted easily to different questions. Debates of scientific realism, antirealism and pragmatism find themselves in need of justifying their points of view as well, and where one accuses the other of having an unfounded faith in a certain scientific principle, the issue of belief comes up again. And here, the monkey-in-a-box reduction is even more difficult, as we rely on knowledge of certain imperceptible entities (such as electrons) to do many of the things we do in the modern world. The positioning is not easily avoidable (though some philosophers do avoid it, and justify their mu-position with only moderate success).
Girlfriend says it's dinner time - I'll check out your link later tonight