Is there a path to wisdom?
Circumspection.
And having a good memory.
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Is there a path to wisdom?
Circumspection.
And having a good memory.
great point about memory, backline.
It is important to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is the ability to use information and/or materials to achieve an intended result. Wisdom is the ability to choose what to achieve well.
Science and technology can and do provide us with the former. We know how to beat swords into plowshares and recycle plowshares into swords. What science and technology can not do is choose what we should do.
Nope.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
One cannot have wisdom without knowledge. And it's a total exclusivity deal, wisdom is only* acquired through knowledge.
I really can't believe you'd try this street, because it's a dead end.
*Unless, of course, you want to claim an entity outside of the material universe which can grant wisdom.
Nice swerve.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
There are two parts to this:
1 - nothing can tell us what we "should" do. Again, except for that entity outside of the material universe.
2 - if anything might give us a clue into human behaviour, morality, and the really big question of life, the universe and everything, it will almost assuredly come from observation and study.
Quite often, that's called science.
Nothing can tell us what we should do except our logic and intuition. If we accept something which goes against that, some speaker or philosopher or something, then we are doing an injustice. Everything must be measured against our conscience.
Wisdom and knowledge are not unrelated to each other, but they are certainly not identical. The proof of this is that there are instances where one exists and the other does not. To take some simple examples, a child can be taught to service, maintain and use various forms of weaponry, but does not have the wisdom to understand that he is being manipulated by a warlord. A person may lack the knowledge of how an internal combustion engine works but the moral (as opposed to legal) inappropriateness of driving under the influence. One can multiply examples endlessly.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
To argue that wisdom and knowledge are not identical does not preclude the possibility of one requiring at least some element of the other. To say that wisdom requires knowledge is certainly not the equivalent of saying that wisdom and knowledge are interchangeable. To insist that the two must be the same since one has the other as a necessary condition is untenable logically.
A moral question, for the sake of the argument here, is one in which a principle rather than a condition of fact is involved. Thus, here, an example of a moral question is, "Is it wrong to kill an X?" An example of something that would not be a moral question is, "Does doing Y kill an X?" The second question does not involve a principle and is purely technical.
If we limit the idea of science for the sake of the argument here as the study of matter and its interactions then it will be clear that science can not provide answers to moral questions. The very power of science requires that it be unconcerned about a hypothetical world.
The commonsensical answer to the question, "Why is what I'm looking for always in the last place I look?" is quite simply that one stops looking.
In a similar vein, those who know what THE truth is stop looking. Whether one's flavor of Truth is that everything is material, or maya, or the workings of the mind of the Great Gildersleeve doesn't really make any difference. As has been seen often enough there are atheists every bit as dogmatic and doctrinaire as any religious fanatic. As soon as a person has decided "this is it, I have found it!" that person has barred him or herself from greater knowledge. It is the smugness of believing that one has the Truth that ultimately blinds.
The very title of one of the episodes of Bronowski's Ascent of Man series expresses this nicely, "Knowledge or Certainty."
Richard Feynmann once discussed what he felt was a basic division in humanity: those who are comfortable with ambiguity and those who require definite hard knowledge of the universe. He argued that the true scientist belonged to the first camp, since scientific knowledge is by its nature provisional. As we come to know more we revise and on occasion even discard what we previously "knew." This is not a weakness of science, but the source of its strength.
Since you have said this to me before, and since you are using the word maya which I used, and, since your last post was reasonably intelligent, I will go ahead and reply to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
First, what if the smugness you perceive is only what you perceive?
Second, simply to defend myself a little, I am not dogmatic, nor smug. Not in the least. I am not talking about any doctrine either. And what I said was this, that life is infinite. Life is infinite growth. Truth is infinite. Let me make clear that this is my stance. I do not know all of infinite truth. But I have become aware that there is an infinite truth. I am aware that I can only know as much as I am able to know. But do you say that my asserting that there is an infinite God, and that life is infinite growth - means that I am, by necessity, now close-minded and stopped seeking truth? Or you could do what Grotto does and basically call me a liar - say that I repeat what others have said, meaning that I am speaking of things which I have not felt, realized, or seen. Or you can simply call me mad. But neither of those indicates a great, um, sincerity on your part.
My position is that life is infinte growth; and that God is infinite peace, bliss, power, knowledge... God is the source and root of reality. To have a glimpse of the infinite bliss, peace, power, and knowledge of God puts the lie to the rest of this. That that infinite is waiting us shows that in relation, the temporary is false. You may disagree but simply repeating over and over that what I've said means I don't search for truth is just malarky. I am quite aware of the need for further growth. In fact it is my position that life is infinite growth.
So... what is your reason? What is your reason for saying that someone who speaks of revelation, of glimpsing truth, can therefore be only false? What is your reason for saying that someone who speaks of truth, peace, and bliss beyond words or any worded description, is therefore, by necessity, speaking falsehood?
I haven't seen anyone suggest they are, but it's good that you acknowledge the relationship now.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
And I repeat the question - what does answer moral questions?Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
You say that, which I think is clearly incorrect, but the next post:Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
You accede that science is both imaginative and hypothetical.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
You seem to now be having a dollar each way.
I agree that knowledge and wisdom are different things. And, although you didn't specifically suggest that they are separate things, I think the Atheist did sniff out that something was a little wrong in your distinction. I think that it is a little overly-expansive to say that wisdom is "to choose what to do well". I think wisdom is more simply "the ability to make the best choice." Now, what is 'best' is something that might ultimately be explainable by science, but I think that anyone who is certain that science will conclusively explain the source(s) of our aesthetic sense is open to charges of dogmatism. There's no proof that science will conclusively corral that one, and there won't be until it does.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
I'm sorry, but I thought it was just beautiful how "what it wants to see" seems to have been read as "what I can see". Of course it was late, and the posts here are of a pretty high-caliber and tend to lead the mind on digressions and fire the emotions a bit, and so on. It didn't really stray from the larger argument, and the positivist stance is duly-noted (and a tough nut for Hresko to crack, it seems!). Plus, too many agnostics spoil the stew. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
But, on the whole, I think the Feynman quote is pretty good. I think more theoretical scientists might have an instinct for open-mindedness, and an aversion to dogmatism.
Regarding wisdom and morality and all that, I don't think that anyone in science should be too sure that they've got that figured out yet, not even that they're on the correct path to figuring it out. Those new guys with their cognitive science analysis can propose an interesting new framework, one that materialists might be able to really sink their teeth into--but there's still "the body" and "the environment" and change through time, and all sorts of multiplying "relations" and "processes", the arbitrariness of which might never be determined to a properly sceptical science's own satisfaction, much less an objective viewpoint from which to decide what meanings reside where.
On the off chance that the Atheist and RichardHresko are basically talking past each other, and are, to some extent in agreement, I'm curious to ask:
RichardHresko, do you think that some things will forever be out of science's reach, and that it's the wrong approach (i.e. do you think 'beauty', good/evil, Why are we here?, etc. are out-of-reach?); or are you asserting that thinking outside of science's (current) confines is an important part of science, or something like that?
Whoa, the Atheist posted while I was typing mine up! Well, I hadn't realized that RichardHresko had already taken a firm stance against science's chances at morality. Hmm.
Well, I like everybody taking a dollar each way a bit, and being skeptical of the money they don't want. Great debate!
Is gravity material? Are subatomic particles material? How did scientists feel when they discovered that light had a wave/particle duality? Does the surprising importance of 'the observer' in quantum mechanics cause concern to strict-materialists? Does it bring science back into the ballgame for some who might have previously counted it out, regarding questions about "consciousness" and "spiritualism"?
Great analogy, and even Pascal gave it a crack with his well-know fallacy, sometimes called Pascal's Wager.Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
Above all, I'm a pragmatist, and when you have a two-horse race, as you do with materialism and non-materialism, if one of the nags has a picket-fence form line and has never been beaten in a 1000-year career and the other's never shown the ability to even gallop, it's not necessarily wise to have a dollar on the billion-to-one shot.
I wanted to be a bookie when I grew up.
:D
There are two good points to be addressed here. The first is on what wisdom provides that is not provided by science. The confusion, as far as I can tell, is some ambiguity over the ideas of "making the best choice" and "to choose what to do well". There are two germane meanings to these phrases:Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
1) To choose in such a way as to optimize an outcome. This is certainly within the purview of science and technology, since it deals with how to manipulate resources and can, at least in theory, be quantified and is subject to observation. This, as I pointed out in my previous post, does not involve the invocation of a moral principle. For the dark side of this look at the transcript of Eichmann's trial from Eichmann's point of view: he was a bureaucrat, he did his job efficiently, and that was the end of the matter. This is precisely why Arendt was struck by the "banality of evil." (The issue of Eichmann's evil, I think, is his very refusal to consider the moral as opposed to the purely technical dimensions of his actions. But that is a different discussion, and I will drop that tangent here.)
2) To choose in such a way as to work for a "good." This is a fundamentally different question than deciding the best way to do something. It involves the decision that a particular goal is worthy of pursuit. Before deciding how best to eliminate or at least minimize world hunger or animal suffering at the hands of humans one must first make a decision that it matters and is a good thing that people do not starve or that animals not be made to suffer needlessly. How easily one comes to a conclusion about these things, or how "obvious" the "correct" position is, is not the issue.
My position is simply that one can not come to a moral principle by means of observations alone. The mere observation that throwing hand grenades at children causes the children harm does not, in itself, lead us to a conclusion that we should not do this. It merely tells us what the result of the action will be.
The second point to address is the appropriate use of science. Anyone who has used tools understands that the task is what suggests the best tool to use in that circumstance. A hammer is not inferior to a screwdriver because it does a poorer job in inserting or removing a screw any more than a screwdriver is inferior to a hammer because it is not as effective in driving in nails. This is why one owns both, and perhaps a few other tools as well. Such a simple idea can be traced in the literature at least back to Aristotle, and some studies have suggested that some species on this planet besides ourselves have some notion of this as well.
That being said, one has to ask whether or not a discipline that is devoted to the puzzling out of how things work, and constructing models of why things occur the way they do is an appropriate tool for answering questions about what purposes a human being should devote his or her life to? Questions about the meaning or purpose of life within the context of science are as inappropriate for that discipline as asking what color the number "5" is.
As to the final question in the post I am responding to, my answer is that thinking outside of science's confines (current or otherwise) is an important part of being human.
It is a basic error to work from the assumption that a single system (be it radical materialism, religious code, or philosophical system) will be able to answer every possible question (this is actually a weaker version of Goedel's Theorem). The price one pays for the certainty is the surrendering of the possibility of learning more.
That should work out well once you define what is "good" and what is "bad".Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
Good luck with that!
And no logic, philosophy or anything else will tell you what that morality actually is. You're still telling us what can't authorise morality without giving an alternative as to what can assist working out whether moral questions are valid or answerable.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
That's a fallacy.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
Other species may use objects as tools, but no primate or otherwise uses tools in the sense of "I'll keep this sharp stick to use when I need it". Other animalian use of tools is entirely reactive and a different process from human usage.
Yet, if there is no "meaning of life", science won't have wasted hundreds of years worrying about it. When some sensible evidence exists that life does, or is meant to have a meaning, no doubt science will find a way to explore it.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
I think your sentence makes much better sense like this:
Questions about the meaning or purpose of life are as inappropriate for that discipline as asking what color the number "5" is.
What you seem to be doing is giving a free pass for disciplines to focus on answering the unanswerable.
I wonder whether you're just confusing what science is, because there are no areas outside of it. You could try the aesthetic route of art & music, but given that birds sing, I've never managed to see aesthetic appreciation as outside of materialist origin.Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
What do you consider "outside of science"?
Again, this is simply a category error - in fact two of them:Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardHresko
You may think it's wrong, but it definitely isn't a basic error. It's a perfectly valid stance to accept that all questions will ultimately be answered by scientific enquiry.
The other mistake is assuming that all questions are worth answering, even though you've highlighted one - what colour is five?
Asking what the meaning of life is is not like asking what colour is the number five. Absolutely, science can help find the meaning of life. Why could it not? Perhaps we don't have the tools as is to discover what it is, but then we are always advancing our tools. It requires intuition as well as logic to understand the meaning of life; but then most scientific discoveries are based in part on the imagination. Most leaps in science are based on intuition, though it comes after extensive methodical searching and learning. Perhaps the meaning of life can be understood through intuition to begin with, and can only be explained methodically after we have gotten some new tools.