The Big T... And the Big F. As per "Blawgity 3."
Here is the link!
http://www.youtube.com/user/togas3117?feature=mhw5
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Unattainable Goal
Tony's post about the big Truth always being out of reach makes a lot of sense to me. I liken the big Truth to having an a final goal in life: even the most far-reaching goals I have for myself are far from being the final goal of my life. That is, once I reach them, I will only find more along the way and the cycle will continue. If one were to accomplish everything one could possibly set as a goal, what would be the point of living? Where would one's inspiration to live come from? If we were to discover the big Truth, would we not stop searching for truth altogether?
Furthermore, the smaller truths we find in life are like the goals we accomplish. For example, my goal on Sunday was to finally find the aerial tramway I'd heard about in the Magdalena mountains. For a few hours, the singular goal in my life was to hike out to the most likely location (turns out it does exist) and hike back. And once I had done so, I still had many other goals for myself. Similarly, when we find a small truth, there are still many more to be found.
Any thoughts on this analogy?
Furthermore, the smaller truths we find in life are like the goals we accomplish. For example, my goal on Sunday was to finally find the aerial tramway I'd heard about in the Magdalena mountains. For a few hours, the singular goal in my life was to hike out to the most likely location (turns out it does exist) and hike back. And once I had done so, I still had many other goals for myself. Similarly, when we find a small truth, there are still many more to be found.
Any thoughts on this analogy?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Common Sense
One of the philosophers in the book that I am finding myself a fan of is Geoge Moore. Mainly, I have to agree with his opinion that a lot of philosophers wind up denying things that "every sane human knew to be true." Like Zeno's paradox-of course I can make it to the door, so why debate this fact? Essentially, Moore came up with a list of "common sense" propositions that are certainly true. This list contains such mundane facts as "there exists at present a living human body, which is my body," which Moore used to illustrate that, at some point, some philosopher denied. He also chose the route of pointing out that statements made by previous philosophers are strange rather than untrue; that is, no obvious meaning can be associated with the statements. In Moore's view, not meaning exactly anything raised suspicion of meaning nothing.
Moore also disagreed with attempts to come up with new ways of communicating facts as he did not know exactly what was wrong with "ordinary language." Interestingly enough, he felt that the goal of philosophy is the clarification of meaning rather than arriving at the truth. It seems that Moore preferred to focus on using precise language so that exact meaning can be ascribed to statements and the many ambiguous statements made by previous philosophers can be avoided.
This is, to me, a refreshing and realistic approach to philosophy. Why make a statement if nobody can even determine exactly what is meant? Why deny something that can trivially be proven to be true? In fact, as an extreme example, the section on Descartes points out that "radical doubt, in telling us that we should never trust the senses, has suddenly become a form of insanity."
Moore also disagreed with attempts to come up with new ways of communicating facts as he did not know exactly what was wrong with "ordinary language." Interestingly enough, he felt that the goal of philosophy is the clarification of meaning rather than arriving at the truth. It seems that Moore preferred to focus on using precise language so that exact meaning can be ascribed to statements and the many ambiguous statements made by previous philosophers can be avoided.
This is, to me, a refreshing and realistic approach to philosophy. Why make a statement if nobody can even determine exactly what is meant? Why deny something that can trivially be proven to be true? In fact, as an extreme example, the section on Descartes points out that "radical doubt, in telling us that we should never trust the senses, has suddenly become a form of insanity."
Bigger Picture!!!
The bigger picture or the big 'T' seems to dominate our thoughts and perception of the world. What serves us the best, the greater purpose? It seems it doesn't matter what needs to be sacrificed; our morals, our humanity. Things need to be done so we can prosper, we can prevail. But how can our judgment can be trusted? Aren't we all the same kind, with same flaws?
Big T / little t & Sense Data
So it is Easter, a frakkin' lovely day out, and here I am stuck at work. You know what that means...
It's Philosophizin' Time! (Apologies to The Thing.)
Sense Data.
Here at work we use radio telescopes as a means of extending our senses to explore the universe. We see only a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus rely on instrumentation to "see" for us and translate what the instrumentation "sees" into data that makes sense to our senses. Now, according to many philosophers, we shouldn't trust our own senses--never mind sense data that is artificial in nature and collected from such devices as telescopes, microscopes, and remote sensing devices such as the electron microscope, MRI, PET, and CAT scans and the like.
Here's what I think. Every little "t" truth that we vex Nature to give us is but a small fractal facet of the big "T" truth. The more little "t"s we know and learn, the more we know and learn how much more that there is to know and learn (I just channeled Donald Rumsfeld). I don't think that we will ever know and learn the big "T" truth--big "T" truth is a moving target that will always just be out of our grasp. Try as we might, we will never fully know the "T" truth--just a collection of little "t" truths.
It's Philosophizin' Time! (Apologies to The Thing.)
Sense Data.
Here at work we use radio telescopes as a means of extending our senses to explore the universe. We see only a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus rely on instrumentation to "see" for us and translate what the instrumentation "sees" into data that makes sense to our senses. Now, according to many philosophers, we shouldn't trust our own senses--never mind sense data that is artificial in nature and collected from such devices as telescopes, microscopes, and remote sensing devices such as the electron microscope, MRI, PET, and CAT scans and the like.
Here's what I think. Every little "t" truth that we vex Nature to give us is but a small fractal facet of the big "T" truth. The more little "t"s we know and learn, the more we know and learn how much more that there is to know and learn (I just channeled Donald Rumsfeld). I don't think that we will ever know and learn the big "T" truth--big "T" truth is a moving target that will always just be out of our grasp. Try as we might, we will never fully know the "T" truth--just a collection of little "t" truths.
Do you think this video is right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryIYDBa_RdE&feature=related
In the video the man makes the point that americans dont want to think about there films.
Do you think this is right?
In the video the man makes the point that americans dont want to think about there films.
Do you think this is right?
Did a post get deleted somewhere? ... I could've sworn I saw a post about 'knowledge of the future eliminating free will' ... but I don't see it now ... Anyway here is my response:
The idea of Premonition destroying free will is some what confusing to me ... I mean, if you know the future, and I know the future, do we both necessarily know the same futures? Even with our different perspectives(height, color blindness, gender)? Who claims that the future is then preordained? ... Wouldn't you just become knowledgeable of the new future when the present changed? ... an immutable future seems to fly in the face of every law of science we know ... everything is subject to change ... it seems to me that it would much easier (and therefore likely [Occam's razor]) that the knowledge of events to come would just be updated every time a change was made in the present ...
The idea of Premonition destroying free will is some what confusing to me ... I mean, if you know the future, and I know the future, do we both necessarily know the same futures? Even with our different perspectives(height, color blindness, gender)? Who claims that the future is then preordained? ... Wouldn't you just become knowledgeable of the new future when the present changed? ... an immutable future seems to fly in the face of every law of science we know ... everything is subject to change ... it seems to me that it would much easier (and therefore likely [Occam's razor]) that the knowledge of events to come would just be updated every time a change was made in the present ...
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