I’m persuaded of it, but is it really true? I approve of it, but is it really good?
Yes, that is precisely the relevant question—and my answer is that there’s no non-circular justification for a mind’s thoughts and preferences (moral or otherwise), and so for both practical and theoretical purposes we must operate on a sort of “faith” that there is some validity to at least some of our faculties, admitting that it is ultimately just simple faith that lies at the bottom of it all. (Not faith as in “believing without evidence”, but faith as in “there shall never be any further evidence or justification for this, yet I find that I am pursuaded of it / do believe it is really good.)
The simple version of internalising truth and goodness by rubber stamping prevailing attitudes is not satisfactory; the complex version......is complex.
It’s not really that bad or complex—all you have to believe in is the concept of justification and evidence itself. To attempt to go deeper is to ask justification for the concept of justification, and evidence for what is or is not evidence, and that’s nonsense.
Agreed, I don’t think the question is meaningless. I do, however, think that it’s “provably” unanswerable (assuming you provisionally accept all the premises that go into proving things)
But that isn’t the same thing at all. If you have a fiundationalistic epistemic structure resting on proveably unprovable foundations, you are in big trouble.
Yes, that is precisely the relevant question—and my answer is that there’s no non-circular justification for a mind’s thoughts and preferences (moral or otherwise), and so for both practical and theoretical purposes we must operate on a sort of “faith” that there is some validity to at least some of our faculties, admitting that it is ultimately just simple faith that lies at the bottom of it all. (Not faith as in “believing without evidence”, but faith as in “there shall never be any further evidence or justification for this, yet I find that I am pursuaded of it / do believe it is really good.)
It’s not really that bad or complex—all you have to believe in is the concept of justification and evidence itself. To attempt to go deeper is to ask justification for the concept of justification, and evidence for what is or is not evidence, and that’s nonsense.
Ostensibly, those are meaningful questions. It would be comvemeimt if any question you couldn’t answer was nonsense, but...
Agreed, I don’t think the question is meaningless. I do, however, think that it’s “provably” unanswerable (assuming you provisionally accept all the premises that go into proving things)
But that isn’t the same thing at all. If you have a fiundationalistic epistemic structure resting on proveably unprovable foundations, you are in big trouble.