It gets rather difficult talking about human mental constructs, let’s begin by asking myself where would I find justice/mercy;
almost immediately (which means that I need to do some more thinking) I find that I think of human emotional constructs as a side effect of society and it’s group mindset,
You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.
Susan and Death, in Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
I would find that by grinding down the universe to it’s component molecules would completely fail to find any number of things that humanity finds important; Humanity for one, to me rationalism is, above all the study of the universe and what it contains. And yet when it comes to most psychological phenomenon the models start to break down, does this mean that a more refined model would be equally unable to describe the phenomenon, not necessarily. Because as rationalists one of our key teachings is that we can observe something by studying it’s causes and effects; justice and mercy exists insofar as we as humans can comprehend their nature. They exist because we can determine the differences between a universe where they exist and the ones where they don’t exist.
Right, response to the meditation:
It gets rather difficult talking about human mental constructs, let’s begin by asking myself where would I find justice/mercy; almost immediately (which means that I need to do some more thinking) I find that I think of human emotional constructs as a side effect of society and it’s group mindset,
I would find that by grinding down the universe to it’s component molecules would completely fail to find any number of things that humanity finds important; Humanity for one, to me rationalism is, above all the study of the universe and what it contains. And yet when it comes to most psychological phenomenon the models start to break down, does this mean that a more refined model would be equally unable to describe the phenomenon, not necessarily. Because as rationalists one of our key teachings is that we can observe something by studying it’s causes and effects; justice and mercy exists insofar as we as humans can comprehend their nature. They exist because we can determine the differences between a universe where they exist and the ones where they don’t exist.
-reposted in the right section