Its funny, I think this is probably always true as a guideline (that you should try and justify all your ideas) but might always break down in practice (all your ideas probably can’t ever be fully justified, because Agrippa’s trilemma—they’re either justified in terms of each other, or not justified, and if they are justified in terms of other ideas, they eventually either are eventually circularly justified, or continue on into infinite regress, or are justified by things that are unjustified). We might get some ground by separating out ideas from evidence, and say we accept as axiomatic anything that is evidenced by inference until we gain additional facts that lend context that resituates our model so that it can include previous observations… something like that. Or it might be we just have to grandfather in some rules to avoid that Godelian stuff. Thoughts?
Yes that is a very good point. My current view is that the reason for this is a confusion between seeing knowledge as based on rationality when it is in reality based on experience. Rationality is the manipulation of basic experiential building blocks and these ‘belief’ blocks might correspond to reality or not. With the scientific method this correspondence has been clarified to such an extend that it seems as knowledge is generated purely through rationality but that is because we don’t tend to follow our assumptions to the limits you are describing in your comment. If we check our assumptions and then our assumptions behind our assumptions etc. we will reach our fundamental presuppositions.
Yeah, that’s a good point; one some level, any purely logical system always has to start with certain axioms that you can’t prove within that system, and in the real world that’s probably even more true.
I guess, ideally, you would want to be able to at least identify which of your ideas are axioms, and keep an eye on them in some sense to make sure that at least they don’t end up conflicting with other axioms?
Its funny, I think this is probably always true as a guideline (that you should try and justify all your ideas) but might always break down in practice (all your ideas probably can’t ever be fully justified, because Agrippa’s trilemma—they’re either justified in terms of each other, or not justified, and if they are justified in terms of other ideas, they eventually either are eventually circularly justified, or continue on into infinite regress, or are justified by things that are unjustified). We might get some ground by separating out ideas from evidence, and say we accept as axiomatic anything that is evidenced by inference until we gain additional facts that lend context that resituates our model so that it can include previous observations… something like that. Or it might be we just have to grandfather in some rules to avoid that Godelian stuff. Thoughts?
Yes that is a very good point. My current view is that the reason for this is a confusion between seeing knowledge as based on rationality when it is in reality based on experience. Rationality is the manipulation of basic experiential building blocks and these ‘belief’ blocks might correspond to reality or not. With the scientific method this correspondence has been clarified to such an extend that it seems as knowledge is generated purely through rationality but that is because we don’t tend to follow our assumptions to the limits you are describing in your comment. If we check our assumptions and then our assumptions behind our assumptions etc. we will reach our fundamental presuppositions.
Yeah, that’s a good point; one some level, any purely logical system always has to start with certain axioms that you can’t prove within that system, and in the real world that’s probably even more true.
I guess, ideally, you would want to be able to at least identify which of your ideas are axioms, and keep an eye on them in some sense to make sure that at least they don’t end up conflicting with other axioms?