But Ive got a crap load of questions. Why am I here? What am I, truly? What is true reality? These questions cannot be answered by humans ever, or atleast it seems reasonable to believe this.
These questions are infinites. They are impractical to think about because well…we dont have the means to answer them.
Then should I just force myself to stop pondering these concepts? If I did then I would then contemplate more pratical things like Polotics, ethics etc. Things that are closer to the human capacity.
Is it better to leave those infinite questions for the more practical ones ?
Should I ignore the big picture in order to better understand what is more “At home” for me, a human?
I truly feel the universe is a great great truth. Humans are not the standard that all other exisiting things have trickled down from. That title belongs to the universe. Would I be cheating myself if I stopped thinking on those infinites?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Should I ponder questions that I or anyone else could never answer? Should I just stick to those questions that are more practical according my species?
Why does there have to be a “why” to your being here? Why are you not what biologists tell us you are? Why should reality be truer than you already think it is?
These are big questions if we think they are. I think that some questions are better than others.
“Why am I so stupid?” - that’s a toughy, but I don’t really have to ask at all, do I? There are any number of questions that don’t seem to have answers. This is not philosophy, though. Philosophy seeks to ask good questions, not to answer all of them.
My friend, I think your focus determines your reality. You are limited only by that which you limit yourself.
I do not think you should give up asking these tough questions. It is these questions that drive us to do more and become better individuals. You must give yourself meaning.
If Einstein had not asked impossible questions would he have ever come up with the theory of relativity? I think not. Focus on what interests you and let your mind take you where it will.
I’m wrestling with that myself right now. Here’s my feeling…
Philosophy should ask useful questions. But I think most of philosophy’s questions do fall into the futile category, for sure in the short run. Is that how you want to spend your time…like an ant sacrificing yourself so others can climb on your shoulders? And it’s unlikely your shoulders will even come into play, unless you’re a genius on the cutting edge of thought and big in the philosophical academic community. Brio or Gamer pondering the universe is probably not helping the future Einstein out there jump to the next level.
The vast majority of time what we think are questions are not really questions but language games and embedded fallacies and assumptions dressed up as questions. We mistake these “questions” for something coherent and we waste time thinking about them.
A question like “what am I?” assumes there even is an “I.” Even if you got me to accept your vision of the “I” you’d lose me when you expect me to assume that we can ascribe a “what” to something…a definition, in words, as if that’s really going to tell us the ultimate state of something. Sort of makes the “what” and “why” game a losing prospect…especially in matters that don’t involve the physical every day world.
I agree it doesn’t all begin and end with humans. But I’ve found that it can be beneficial to behave as if it does. Believing in causality, time, space, free will…also very beneficial to believe in, even if they’re suspect concepts. A god of some sort, too, is beneficial to believe in, although most ideas of God are simply too absurd to adopt – and secular humanism is a fine substitute.
I think philosophy is a game and games should be played like any games are played: with fun, sportsmanship and your personal best as your goal. If you come to the field with earnest intensity, you’ll do well and feel good. If you drag your ass, ignore the rules and refuse to be a team player, you’ll get hurt. (Believe me.) In the end we are all losers in the game…we all die. So it really is how you play the game that matters. If philosophy, with all its unanswerables, provides a grid on which you can exalt in and share your inborn propensity for reason and imagination, you may as well flex it and enjoy it. As I’ve said before, you can waste a lifetime exploring (Kant’s) blind alleys. But the word waste is relative here.
Finally, I’m one of the few here that believe philosophy, in a broad sense, can do a lot of good socially and in a humanitarian sense. not so much in ontology or metaphysics, but certainly in the application of reason to the way we live, and how we choose premises and lenses that frame our experiences. But I will say that if helping people is YOUR way of using your innate gifts and potentials, you should consider spending you life in a more direct way…paramedic, teacher, doctor, social worker, civic leader.
One of the few things I feel I’ve learned in this world:
Your philosophy and your way of life shouldn’t conflict. Don’t say that things are absurd and believe them anyway. If you’re going to do or think something, believe in its goodness or you’ll defeat yourself, amounting to nothing.
Secular humanism, far from being a fine substitute for anything, is impoverished and nihilistic. In secular humanism, we live, make up a meaning for life, then die. But after we’re dead, what’s so great about this meaning for life we made up? Nothing. It means nothing. It’s worthless. So why believe in it while you’re alive, if you’re just going to die and end up worthless anyway?
Secular humanism is nihilistic garbage that isn’t worthy of humanity.
aporia: Secular humanism, far from being a fine substitute for anything, is impoverished and nihilistic. In secular humanism, we live, make up a meaning for life, then die. But after we’re dead, what’s so great about this meaning for life we made up? Nothing. It means nothing. It’s worthless. So why believe in it while you’re alive, if you’re just going to die and end up worthless anyway?
You live, and do, to make the world a better place for young people to live in, that’s what. Even the most religious person on Earth is doing something like this anyway, as they will one day take the big dirt nap.
So, if a fireman dies while saving a little kid, then he has done nothing? Come on!
The definition of courage is when you do something that you are afraid to do. The ideas that you talk about are cowardly (although I’m not saying that you are) and display a retreat into fantasy as a way to deal with fear. You promote a delusional set of beliefs. Be brave.
I agree that people of religious and secular worldviews have similar worldly aims. Both aim to survive, help others, raise children, etc. It’s just that in a religious worldview these actions make sense as part of a bigger story. In a secular worldview, these aims are just a result of our slavery to the forces of nature. Personally I think people are creatures so amazing that it is unlikely that they are mere slaves to impersonal natural forces.
From a secular worldview, he has done nothing which matters in the great scheme of things. When humanity dies off (as naturalist cosmology suggests it will), it will not have mattered whether he saved the child or not.
From a religious worldview, however, the fireman’s final action can have deep significance as an act of loving obedience to God’s plan for the whole of creation.
I agree that promoting the beliefs I am promoting here would be cowardly if it were in fact delusional. The claim that religious beliefs are delusional, however, is not at all a settled debate (this forum’s echo-chamber affirmation of secularism notwithstanding). On the contrary, I argue that religious beliefs are better for human beings than purely naturalistic, secular beliefs. To do this, I claim the following:
Belief in a personal god is in no way repugnant to reason. Reason alone cannot decide conclusively between presence or absence of a personal god, and by itself leads to suspension of judgment on the matter.
When reason leads to suspension of judgment on a matter, and taking a position on the matter cannot bring harm, it is best to take a position on the matter which most satisfies one’s natural desires.
People naturally prefer a religious worldview to a secular worldview.
Together, these claims clearly would demonstrate that people should believe in at least a minimally religious worldview (a personal creator god, otherwise unknown) over a secular worldview.
Claim 1 is a negative claim, and I will successfully defend it against all attacks in subjects of psychology, sociology, biology, physics, etc. I’ve heard all the intellectual objections to god and they don’t stand up. A good book summarizing such objections and the responses is Peter Kreeft’s “Handbook of Christian Apologetics”.
Claim 2 is probably the subtlest to defend. In the past I’ve defended it as a pragmatic response to skepticism.
We can’t know whether or not we live in the matrix, but we do know that spending a lot of time looking for a way out of the matrix will probably lead to a wasted life in which we fail to satisfy our natural desires. On the other hand, we find that spending our times doing other things satisfies our natural desires. Our chance (roughly speaking) of living well is much better if we don’t live as though we were in a matrix, seeking to get out. Therefore we live as though we were not in a matrix.
Now when we act as though something were true, we are effectively judging it to be true provisionally. We are saying “until I get strong evidence to the contrary, I will believe that I am not in the matrix.”
To deal with the matrix problem in this way we need claim 2, so we effectively have to embrace it.
Claim 3 can be found to be true from self-examination. What do you prefer: a world in which humanity will ultimately make no difference in the great scheme of things, or a world in which humanity is part of something true, good, and beautiful that spans all of space and time? Forgetting organized religion and its claims for a moment, doesn’t that tug at your heartstrings? I think most people would say yes, even those who don’t believe.
Therefore some minimal religious beliefs are better for people than a purely secularist worldview.
Note that in the above I’m not talking about any specific religion. My claim is modest – I only want to say that it makes the most sense to believe in a personal creator god, not necessarily to say anything about that god.
Believing in a personal God is fine but totally unfounded. If people can restrain from speaking about that god then I’m okay with it. But it’s nothing but an indulgence and an opiate. Like all opiates, it’s not needed if you can become stronger and healthier. Sorry. You don’t have the authority to say if my life is intrinsically meaningless. My point was I have faith in unknowns such as causality and other basic tenants that help me thrive and survive. Behaving AS IF you believe in causality seems to have clear survival value. But faith in a personal god is a different issue. It’s just not necessary in the same way. I’m living proof. Also, please note my original post was attacking the main dogmatic religions only. Not the “it’s all gonna be okay” belief you’ve just trotted out as being beneficial and founded. That one’s fine. It hurts no one. But in my opinion it’s weak-ass bullshit and totally unnecessary to the truly living among us. My moral actions come from a Darwinian empathy-- a complex state of mind that yields a sense of meaning as well as a dose of survival value. Evolutionary morals does seem unromantic. But the idea of morals as an expression of obedience is equally unromantic by definition. And in my personal poetic analysis, it’s far more repugnant – certainly not the road to meaning.
I didn’t say that, and in fact I believe the opposite. But secular humanism does imply that your life has no significance in the great scheme of things. When we all die off, it will have made no difference if you had never been born. You have the “authority” to deny that in your own little world, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Well that’s great, and aligns nicely with my own pragmatism. But what’s the good of surviving? Why not just die? The reason you decide to go on surviving is because you want to. It fulfills a natural desire. By going on with life, you affirm the principle that one should believe those things which help us satisfy natural desires (and do not contradict reason or present significant risks if they are not true). This same principle leads to belief in a personal god as I have shown above.
What exactly is so great about this “truly living” that separates it from the “weak-ass bullshit”? Why not just die? And if you answer as I have above, why stop using the principle of natural desire at survival? That seems irrational to me…
I wouldn’t describe morals in this religious worldview as merely obedience. It’s more like cooperation with a great, beautiful divine plan, as an actor in an unfolding drama of the world. That’s a lot more romantic than the pointless love of survival and species-perpetuation. Maybe bacteria find that romantic, but humans should look for a little more.
There is an antfarm in some home somewhere on earth. The ants have been around for quite some time…something like 3 months they have existed (in their understanding).
In that time they have grown in numbers and work around the clock to keep their little society thriving. They have ranks, specialized workers and even a leader they call Queen Antmidala.
Sometimes an ant looks out into the sky (the glass casing) and stares at the blurry space. Sometimes they see gigantic masses floating around and interacting with other masses in their space.
“space” sure is interesting" the ant says but then goes back to work.
I think its fair to say that those ants will never understand that they are in some kids bedroom, in a house situated somewhere in kansas, on earth nestled snugly in the milky way, lost in a galaxy of stars.
Can that ant look out of his antfarm and ask “why”? Would he be wrong in asking?
Quote: "When people ask “why”, they are implicitly assuming there is a reason. “Why does the stone fall when I let it go on earth?” - because it just does.
Could that ant be satisfied by that “answer”? I mean, we know what the ant doesnt. We can rationalize what IS “real” for that ant. “becaus it just does” isnt sufficient because we know that ants space is actually a kids room. There is a rational answer. What makes humans so special that we think we are the highest form and therefore any concept above our capacity “just is”?
But again, is it worth the ants time to ponder these infinites? Hell, maybe everything “just is”. Do I “waste” my life looking for our “kid in the room”? or should i just concentrate on helping the antfarm thrive?
Brio, read? I don’t understand what you mean by that. If you mean to say that in reading some books Ill find the answers to my questions then yey, give me a list, But I doubt there are any books that can give me any answers; Only people passing their “objective” guesses to others. Or maybe you are trying to say that my thought is passe and its been asked millions of times? I doubt there are any original questions…maybe there are…Ill read your posts sometime. In any event, clarify that comment for me, thnx -BRIO
Every question assumes a range of answers. This is true not only for what we call philosophical questions, but for any (sensical) question. Every question contains assumptions, in other words. There is no point in asking a question that could produce ANY answer. Good philosophical questions are designed to expose these assumptions - to the asker (among others). When we diligently examine our questions, we may find that we are perfectly comfortable with these assumptions, or we may not. It is in this sense that “just asking the question” has a legitimate use for the philosopher. Not not just any question - but questions that expose the assumptions contained therein to a useful end - it’s all in the formulation. We get to decide what is useful, yes. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Philosophy is a human activity - no reason why it shouldn’t serve humans.
Philosophy doesn’t begin with the question (this mistake is displayed in this thread), because by the time we can ask these questions, we are already steeped in assumptions. We learn them, sometimes as children. Good philosophical questions are concerned with the assumptions, and only secondarily with the answers. We may find that the answers lie in science, or religion, or that we can google them up. Or that the questions are really about tautologies, and so we can learn the answers through logic alone. Logic is not so good at showing us that our beliefs are certainly true, but it is good at exposing what is certainly true about our beliefs.
Some posts here are treating philosophical questions as the alpha, and the answers as the omega, of the very meaning of life. Yikes! Upon such foundations as these are built ivory towers.
“Good philosophical questions are concerned with the assumptions, and only secondarily with the answers.â€
“Every question contains assumptions, in other words.â€
If even good philosophical question contain assumptions, in what way are they “Goodâ€. Even “Bad†philosophical questions are questioning assumptions, are they not?
“I hope that I have eliminated any assumptions that i had concerning the ability of a reader to comprehend my syntactical choices.”
Its not a question of syntax.
“Let me rephrase the first question. “Good philosophers are concerned with assumptions - they pay attention to assumptions.””
Since “good” philosophers also operate under assumptions, are they in any better position to question (or “pay attention to”) those same assumptions? All philosophers, good and bad operate via assumptions and “pay attention to” assumptions. I’m not sure what distinction you are making. (If you haven’t noticed, I am questioning your assumptions. )
I don’t know if I can make it any simpler. We may ask a question with the assumptions contained in the question in mind, or we may ask a question without examining the assumptions contained in the question. Philosophy is that first activity. The better we do it, the better philosophers we are. It is a definition - far bolder than a mere assumption. Religion, for instance, is not that activity - it does not examine its assumptions.
As to questioning my assumptions - you are not, or at least not very effectively. You are free to, of course. Everyone operates under assumptions - it was my very point.
Good philosophers are in the perfect position to examine assumptions BECAUSE (I don’t know how the italics button works) they have some. If they ain’t there, we can’t examinebthem. We are all in the same position - it’s what we do about it that determines how good a philosopher we are. It’s a definition of “good” (effective) philosophy. You are free to disagree.
We may ask a question with the assumptions contained in the question in mind, or we may ask a question without examining the assumptions contained in the question.
Please give an example of a question that examimes the assumptions contained in the question.
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