And before you attempt to assert that fundamentally no truths are “knowable”, and that all we have are “beliefs of varying degrees of confidence”, let me just say that this, too, is a modal failure. But a subtle one: it is an assertion that because all we have is the map, there is no territory.
Is there anyone else here who would have predicted that I was about say anything remotely like this? Why on earth would I be about to do that? It doesn’t seem relevant to the topic at hand, necessary for appeals to experts to be a source of evidence or even particularly coherent as a philosophy.
I am only slightly more likely to have replied with that argument than a monkey would have been if it pressed random letters on a keyboard—and then primarily because it was if nothing else grammatically well formed.
The patient is very, very confused. I think that this post allows us to finally offer the diagnosis: he is qualitatively confused.
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The only error that’s occurring here is your continued belief that beliefs are relevant to this conversation. They simply aren’t. We’re not discussing “what should you believe”—we are discussing “what should you hold to be true.”
Attempts to surgically remove this malignant belief from the patient have commenced.
Is there anyone else here who would have predicted that I was about say anything remotely like this? Why on earth would I be about to do that? It doesn’t seem relevant to the topic at hand, necessary for appeals to experts to be a source of evidence or even particularly coherent as a philosophy.
I am only slightly more likely to have replied with that argument than a monkey would have been if it pressed random letters on a keyboard—and then primarily because it was if nothing else grammatically well formed.
The patient is very, very confused. I think that this post allows us to finally offer the diagnosis: he is qualitatively confused.
Quote:
Attempts to surgically remove this malignant belief from the patient have commenced.