Okay. So I read everything I had missed. Let's pump the brakes for a minute here. Blonde was right to point out Dent is mainly responding with single sentences (until his last post) and youtube videos that nobody wants to watch. But I want to take it a step further. Obviously there are a lot of very sophisticated ideas being tossed around right now, scientific and philosophical. But without clearly defined definitions it can get messy. We need to be disciplined if we're going to continue forward. Otherwise it's really just bullshitting.
I propose we start back at the beginning and move forward, slowly and deliberating, only once we've come to an agreement. Step by step. The reason is this: When someone throws out a proposition it is built up on so many conclusions and assumptions by that person that the other person who is intended to digest the idea has to do so blindly, basically. Only by starting at the beginning -- the very beginning -- can we mutually understand each other on a foundational level.
I apologize for not answering specific questions directed at me, or elaborating much further. But I feel overwhelmed and need to try and get this to a manageable place first. That said, I do have a few general comments.
I find myself oddly positioned somewhere between the two of you. I'm not comfortable with a purely empirical world view, nor am I comfortable or confident enough in any world view to fully embrace a specific view like Blonde seemingly has. Or, to quote Blonde quoting Hawthorne, "He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other." So on the one hand I relate to Dent feeling dissatisfied, and on the other I relate to Blonde's abstract Eastern philosophy; however, I suspect both positions might be on shakier ground than either of you realize, which is why I've suggested we start at the beginning. I'll begin.
Please do not jump ahead or get carried away with where you want to go. In order for this to work we have to be strict with ourselves.
We begin where we have to, with epistemology, the branch of philosophy dedicated to the scope and nature of knowledge itself. How do we know what's real and what's not? What is fact and what is truth? That is epistemology's concern. This is where we have to start.
Epistemology is broken into two main branches: Rationalism and Empiricism. In philosophy, empiricism is generally a theory of knowledge focusing on the role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the senses. Rationalism is the view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification". More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".
There is also Idealism and Constructivism, but I won't go into them right now. Let's focus on Rationalism and Empiricism before we move on.
For a long time I was a strict Empiricist, which led to my fervent Atheism. I believed the only truth we could have was testable and therefore falsifiable. I wasn't concerned with anything else. The problem I came to realize with this view was that it was extremely limited, because there are abstract ideas that can't be falsified the same way a scientific hypothesis can be. If that is the case, it would mean that truth can and only can be measured in a test tube. Anything that can't be cannot be true by definition. I no longer agree with this.
So let's start here. At the beginning. Now that I've defined the two main branches of epistemology where do you two stand? Is the only way we can truly know things through sense experience or can we rely on our intellect to come to non-observable truths?
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