This poster implies that anyone who claims to have stumbled upon any truths is to be avoided. But, if finding the truth is illegitimate, what is the point of seeking after it?!
They would counter (assuming some kind of nihilism), "because the truth can only be approximated."
Seraphim Rose's "Nihilism" has a rather interesting account of the general nihilist phenomena (of which this "secular humnanism" is a species) that you might like, Gene. I wonder if you've read it.
This statement should not be taken to its extreme since it (in my view) obviously is an oversimplification. Just like "Never say never". It carries the "truth" that in most cases you will be right in following its conclusion.
Though if you are strict you will notice that the statement cannot be used even on itself since it contradicts itself.
Like "Never say never" is a contradiction in terms, also the statement about denouncing people who proclaim to have found truth is just the same: A truth uttered by someone who himself thinks to have found truth. Therefore it should be ignored if you wanted to follow its conclusion...
Do you think that such statements are useless therefore? Or can they be understood just as some kind of rule of thumb, that when in doubt it is good to follow?
I think these statements should rather start with "Mostly". Yet I know that this would take out a lot of their ability to get attention through sounding absolute. So I think basically it is just a rhetorical trick to get people thinking...
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
They would counter (assuming some kind of nihilism), "because the truth can only be approximated."
ReplyDeleteSeraphim Rose's "Nihilism" has a rather interesting account of the general nihilist phenomena (of which this "secular humnanism" is a species) that you might like, Gene. I wonder if you've read it.
This statement should not be taken to its extreme since it (in my view) obviously is an oversimplification. Just like "Never say never". It carries the "truth" that in most cases you will be right in following its conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThough if you are strict you will notice that the statement cannot be used even on itself since it contradicts itself.
Like "Never say never" is a contradiction in terms, also the statement about denouncing people who proclaim to have found truth is just the same: A truth uttered by someone who himself thinks to have found truth. Therefore it should be ignored if you wanted to follow its conclusion...
Do you think that such statements are useless therefore? Or can they be understood just as some kind of rule of thumb, that when in doubt it is good to follow?
I think these statements should rather start with "Mostly". Yet I know that this would take out a lot of their ability to get attention through sounding absolute. So I think basically it is just a rhetorical trick to get people thinking...
Did my comment from yesterday not get through?
ReplyDelete