So, all of the above quotes appear to be obviously, trivially false. Is there some other interpretation, or are they mere deepities?
My point is that our naive use of our senses often deceive us. This is not meant as a line of evidence in support of my position, but an evocative experience you’ve probably had that is along the same lines as the thing I’m gesturing at. It is of course different in that we know those things are illusions because it turns out we have more information than we initially think we do, so I am more interested here in the experience of finding that you ask your senses for information about the world and get back what turns out to be misinformation so you have something concrete the grasp onto as a referent for the kind of thing I’m pointing at when I make the more general point about the problem of perception.
Thank you for correcting me on the blind spot thing.
I remain sceptical about this unquestionable core. The argument for its existence looks isomorphic to the proof of God as first cause, first knowledge, and first good. But I’ll leave that aside. What constitutes working with it?
It is related, but only because it’s the existence of the unexaminable core that creates the free variable that allows us to pick the leap of faith we want to take, be it to God or something else. In fact this is what I would accuse most rationalists of: taking a leap of faith to positivism (that we can establish the truth value of every assertion, or more properly because rationalists are also Bayesians the likelihood of the truth of every assertion), even if it’s done out of pragmatism. Working with the unexaminable means remaining deeply skeptical that we know anything or even can know anything and considering the possibility that we are deeply deluded. Most of the time this doubt ends up working out in favor of rationality, but sometimes it seems to not, or at least you’re less certain that it does. This invites us to reconsider our most fundamental assumptions about the world and how we know it and be less sure that things are as they seem.
My point is that our naive use of our senses often deceive us. This is not meant as a line of evidence in support of my position, but an evocative experience you’ve probably had that is along the same lines as the thing I’m gesturing at. It is of course different in that we know those things are illusions because it turns out we have more information than we initially think we do, so I am more interested here in the experience of finding that you ask your senses for information about the world and get back what turns out to be misinformation so you have something concrete the grasp onto as a referent for the kind of thing I’m pointing at when I make the more general point about the problem of perception.
Thank you for correcting me on the blind spot thing.
It is related, but only because it’s the existence of the unexaminable core that creates the free variable that allows us to pick the leap of faith we want to take, be it to God or something else. In fact this is what I would accuse most rationalists of: taking a leap of faith to positivism (that we can establish the truth value of every assertion, or more properly because rationalists are also Bayesians the likelihood of the truth of every assertion), even if it’s done out of pragmatism. Working with the unexaminable means remaining deeply skeptical that we know anything or even can know anything and considering the possibility that we are deeply deluded. Most of the time this doubt ends up working out in favor of rationality, but sometimes it seems to not, or at least you’re less certain that it does. This invites us to reconsider our most fundamental assumptions about the world and how we know it and be less sure that things are as they seem.