I understand people not wanting to get bogged down in definitions of concepts but address what is actually happening, why & what we can do about it. I frequently get frustrated when philosophically minded people focus on definitions to the extent that no productive convo happens.
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However, I think our understanding of truth and knowledge has changed radically with postmodernism & post-truth and we cannot possibly hope to address current political and cultural problems without understanding how all parties are seeing truth & knowledge.
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Peterson has struck a nerve, and the question of what need he's meeting and how to meet it without cranking up the fog-maker is one that I intend to bravely wait for you to answer while ciriticizing every little misstep along the way. Good luck!
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Thanks.
I did address it a bit here but the problem of how to supply human needs for emotionally resonant metanarratives & something akin to spirituality without losing empirical truth & reason will probably always be with us. We are stupid apes.https://areomagazine.com/2017/12/08/the-problem-with-truth-and-reason-in-a-post-truth-society/ …1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
The other problem I have with the Dillahunty/Harris/etc argument is: how can one ever “prove”the supernatural if what constitutes proof (solely the empirical) would automatically move the phenomenon into the realm of the natural?
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I find this uninteresting. If something supernatural exists and cannot be known in the natural realm, its existence cannot be known by us and there seems little point in speculating about it. If people want to, they can, of course but no-one else has to take them seriously.
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Well, there are certainly phenomena that we cannot scientifically measure nor explain. I reckon it's unfair to be critical of those who strive their best to understand such things despite their knowledge that a scientific certainty of that they enquire about can never be achieved
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Well, I am, tho I defend their right to do it. It's the triad of postmodernism, theology and metaphysics that does this and they overlap a lot and call on the same elements of epistemology. It's fine when it remains speculative and for enjoyment or thought experiment.
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Replying to @HPluckrose @Soulstorm99 and
It only becomes a problem when people claim it to be knowledge and that it should influence public policy or academia. Theology has the longest history of this but feminist epistemology is the only thing I know to be getting away with it now in a way which affects wider society.
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Humility in the face of the non-empirical does seem to me a legitimate cornerstone of both public policy and academic study. The problem of course is when ppl make claims in one realm of truth where it belongs in the other.
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Sure but that doesn't take long. You can say 'We don't know everything and all knowledge is provisional' and then get back to focusing on what we can know and better and worse ways to do that. PoMos, theologians & metaphysicians tend to prefer to dwell in the fog of not-knowing
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