Certainty = insanity, as far as I can tell.

[hierachy]

agree/disagree

[danlo]

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is just too dam boring, and doesn't being certain imply an absolute? An absolute closes the door on any critical thinking in any given area right? Nothing good can come from a closed mind... Absolute/ same? OK ponder a rock for the rest of your life...everyone needs a hobby, I guess...

[hierachy]

Seems to me there's experience and then there's the story we make up about it, which becomes part of the experience and can very easily become conflated with the experience in the mind. But it's not what it appears to be; it's just a story.

[danlo]

I would quote the quote in your sig, but I'm not certain I can right now...it almost seems to answer your question...

[sgt.null]

i am not certain,

as to the other...

[Avatar]

I dunno about insanity, but I do think that certainty closes you off to the possibility that you may be wrong. There's even a quote in the Chrons by Bannor (IIRC) about the dangers of certainty.

As for Hier's comment about the "story," it's not that the memory of the experience can become confused with the actual experience, it does become the experience.

But it doesn't really matter...what you experienced is what you remember experiencing. Once it's happened, there is no meaningful difference...the memory becomes the reality.

--A

[SerScot]

Holarchy,

agree/disagree

disagree. I'm certain I'm sitting in my living room typing on my wife's laptop before I get dressed for work. If I'm uncertain about that I have bigger issues.

This is the fundamental debate between Einstein and Bohrs about the nature of the Universe. Einstein said observation does not create reality. Bohrs said observation did create reality. They debated this point from 1927 until they both died. Bohrs was working on one of Einstein's proposed though experiments when he passed away.

[hierachy]

I dunno about insanity, but I do think that certainty closes you off to the possibility that you may be wrong. There's even a quote in the Chrons by Bannor (IIRC) about the dangers of certainty.

As for Hier's comment about the "story," it's not that the memory of the experience can become confused with the actual experience, it does become the experience.

But it doesn't really matter...what you experienced is what you remember experiencing. Once it's happened, there is no meaningful difference...the memory becomes the reality.

--A

Okay, I take your point there. To rephrase my problem in this light: the interpretation of our past experiences (or experience of the past, given what you just said), is invoked to channel our interpretation of present experience into boxes that 1. may not be the only way of looking at things and 2. may detract from the richness of our experience.

If absolute reality as separate from self is unknowable or nonexistent, and yet we choose to (or are conditioned to) conflate experience with conceptual explanations thereof (as a continual process), then that seems somewhat delusional, and yet, unavoidable if we want to live any kind of ordinary life. Given this view, absolute certainty would be the unqualified acceptance of delusion.

If that makes any kind of sense to you at all, lol

[hierachy]

Holarchy,

agree/disagree

disagree. I'm certain I'm sitting in my living room typing on my wife's laptop before I get dressed for work. If I'm uncertain about that I have bigger issues.

Would you call that absolute certainty or practical certainty? Or perhaps you would consider the distinction pointless?

[danlo]

absolute certainty would be the unqualified acceptance of delusion.

That's what I was trying to tell you!

[SerScot]

Holarchy,

Would you call that absolute certainty or practical certainty? Or perhaps you would consider the distinction pointless?

This. I'm still reading Quantum a book about the Einstein/Bohrs debate about the nature of the universe.

Absolute certianty is so difficult to obtain that I don't think the distiction is worth discussing.

[Avatar]

Okay, I take your point there. To rephrase my problem in this light: the interpretation of our past experiences (or experience of the past, given what you just said), is invoked to channel our interpretation of present experience into boxes that 1. may not be the only way of looking at things and 2. may detract from the richness of our experience.

Uh...people's perception is coloured by their experience of the past? Sure. This can result in missing either the subtleties or the point of their experience of the present? Possibly.

Given this view, absolute certainty would be the unqualified acceptance of delusion.

The thing is, it's only "delusion" in the sense that your experience of reality differs from theirs. From their point of view, your experience is the delusional one. And who is to say it's not?

Everything is true as long as anybody believes it.

--A

[hierachy]

Oh, I am delusional... I don't think there is anyone who isn't.

[Avatar]

Hahaha. Pretty much agree. Everybody thinks that everybody else is at least a little crazy. But that they are perfectly normal. (Except for the people who think that they're the "abnormal" ones. But that's just a different type of delusion. )

--A

[rusmeister]

What modern people want to be made to understand is simply that all argument begins with an assumption; that is, with something that you do not doubt. You can, of course, if you like, doubt the assumption at the beginning of your argument, but in that case you are beginning a different argument with another assumption at the beginning of it. Every argument begins with an infallible dogma, and that infallible dogma can only be disputed by falling back on some other infallible dogma; you can never prove your first statement or it would not be your first. All this is the alphabet of thinking. And it has this special and positive point about it, that it can be taught in a school, like the other alphabet. Not to start an argument without stating your postulates could be taught in philosophy as it is taught in Euclid, in a common schoolroom with a blackboard. And I think it might be taught in some simple and rational degree even to the young, before they go out into the streets and are delivered over entirely to the logic and philosophy of the Daily Mail.

Much of our chaos about religion and doubt arises from this--that our modern sceptics always begin by telling us what they do not believe. But even in a sceptic we want to know first what he does believe. Before arguing, we want to know what we need not argue about. And this confusion is infinitely increased by the fact that all the sceptics of our time are sceptics at different degrees of the dissolution of scepticism.

Now you and I have, I hope, this advantage over all those clever new philosophers, that we happen not to be mad. All of us believe in St. Paul's Cathedral; most of us believe in St. Paul. But let us clearly realize this fact, that we do believe in a number of things which are part of our existence, but which cannot be demonstrated. Leave religion for the moment wholly out of the question. All sane men, I say, believe firmly and unalterably in a certain number of things which are unproved and unprovable. Let us state them roughly.

1. Every sane man believes that the world around him and the people in it are real, and not his own delusion or dream. No man starts burning London in the belief that his servant will soon wake him for breakfast. But that I, at any given moment, am not in a dream, is unproved and unprovable. That anything exists except myself is unproved and unprovable.
2. All sane men believe that this world not only exists, but matters. Every man believes there is a sort of obligation on us to interest ourselves in this vision or panorama of life. He would think a man wrong who said, "I did not ask for this farce and it bores me. I am aware that an old lady is being murdered down-stairs, but I am going to sleep." That there is any such duty to improve the things we did not make is a thing unproved and unprovable.
3. All sane men believe that there is such a thing as a self, or ego, which is continuous. There is no inch of my brain matter the same as it was ten years ago. But if I have saved a man in battle ten years ago, I am proud; if I have run away, I am ashamed. That there is such a paramount "I" is unproved and unprovable. But it is more than unproved and unprovable; it is definitely disputed by many metaphysicians.
4. Lastly, most sane men believe, and all sane men in practice assume, that they have a power of choice and responsibility for action.

Surely it might be possible to establish some plain, dull statement such as the above, to make people see where they stand. And if the youth of the future must not (at present) be taught any religion, it might at least be taught, clearly and firmly, the three or four sanities and certainties of human free thought.

[I'm Murrin]

Ignore certainty. Look for high degree of verifiability.

[Fist and Faith]

Chesterton's right about there being original assumptions. But, of course, he's wrong about what they are, and what defines "sane." All metaphysicians who dispute that there is such a paramount "I" are, according to him, not sane.

[rusmeister]

DP - ihugny server problem

[rusmeister]

Chesterton's right about there being original assumptions. But, of course, he's wrong about what they are, and what defines "sane." All metaphysicians who dispute that there is such a paramount "I" are, according to him, not sane.

A person can be mentally broken down. They may really believe that we have no power of action or responsibility. It may be that they ought to be placed in Hanwell or Arkham. But "sane" here means something broader than that.

If a person, in theory, accepts postulates that they do not in fact accept in practice, they may actually not be insane. But they've put their wheels on rails that will take them there, if they ever follow their own theories to their logical conclusions and stick with them (as opposed to abandoning the theories and returning to sanity). So if they DO say, "there is no "I", these are all muddled perceptions that I-know-not-what is perceiving, and there is no reality, responsibility, or will, and really act on that theory and treat it in practice as true, then they are insane.

There IS such a thing as insanity, as mental unhealth, and a person need not be drooling and wearing a straight-jacket to be so. But the key thing is that those that are not have not, in practice, accepted what they may avow in theory.

[Fist and Faith]

But you accept reason and logic as postulates, even claiming your faith is reasonable and logical, yet you abandon those postulates at every turn. So are you insane?

See, the thing is, your and Chesterton's understanding of "there is no 'I'" are no more the only understanding of those things than my understandings of your postulates regarding logic and reason are the only understandings. You think they accept those postulates, then ignore them in practice. I think you accept those other postulates, then ignore them in practice. But they are accepting those postulates in practice - just not by your understanding of those postulates. And I am forced to assume that you are practicing logic and reason, even if it is as far removed from any I can recognize.