Sorry about the delay of my response but I guess my personal reality had dwindled to such a small subset of reality itself that I couldn't encompass the time to find the forum.
You know, those trivial things like grandchildren, dinner parties, entertainment, travel plans and, now that it's summer, lawn care on top of it all. What is left of “my personal reality” is almost chock full to the hilt. I have no idea how I managed prior to retirement.
But, no problem; I managed to get this into my “dwindled schedule”.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
... the option to 'suspend all my beliefs' enters in here? I don't have a problem with that. It scares me sometimes that I think I can do that quite easily.
|
If you can then I think we could have a rational discussion. All I ask is that you make no assertions unless you can prove they are valid. I will try to do the same. You need to understand that such a standard is extremely hard to maintain and I fully expect mistakes on both our parts; however, I will treat each of your complaints on my logic as issues to be defended in detail and am prepared to do just that. Secondly, I hope you do not become upset when I suggest that something you have said doesn't hold water.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve
A mathematical formula is an explanation and so is a sentence.
What makes it rational?
|
Well, I made my contribution: I said (
see post #188) that the adjective “rational” means that whatever it is that is being modified by that adjective (its object) “does not generate emotional doubts as to its validity”. So the issue as to the rationality of a given statement is made by the listener (no trustworthy contributor ever puts forward an idea he himself holds to be irrational). It follows that a discussion is “rational” if the proffered statements do not raise emotional doubts as to their validity in the mind of any member of the discussion.
This is quite a bit looser than requiring a discussion to be factual but is still a rather extreme constraint. The reason for loosing the constraint is that the “factual” constraint is rather worthless from a philosophical perspective. The reason for requiring the constraint is that, without such a constraint, any discussion quite rapidly degenerates into what Kant referred to as “mock battles”: i.e., participants arguing about issues which cannot be settled. No squirrel decision can ever be raised to the status of valid; the best possible status any such decision can ever acquire is “rational”.
It follows that the real issue here is, can we have a philosophical discussion which is rational? That is to say, is there enough left, after we strip out anything which “generates emotional doubts” in the participants, to yield a worth while discussion. My point, with this thread, was merely an attempt to get people to see the difference between “justified beliefs” and “reasonable beliefs”. Let us be “reasonable”! I find very few of the threads on this (or any other forum) to be very “reasonable”.
Have fun -- Dick
