Skepticism, Pudding Utility, and Baffling Symposia
Thought For the Day: Cherish your loved ones, and though it’s a difficult endeavor, make an effort never to take them for granted.
It has been the usual case of The Mondays here in Andrewville. That line came out much cheesier than it sounded in my head. Alas. I will extend my apologies to whatever scant few readers I have on Facebook. I have written many entries between now and the last posted entry, however, due to their somewhat revealing/incriminating nature I have given them the “Friends Only” distinction in my other journals, so they don’t show up on Facebook. If anyone out there really cares, let me know, and I will link you to one of the other sites where you can see any entry I am adventurous enough to post. With that out of the way, let’s get right to it.
Dreams and Skepticism
I have been having a dream nearly every night as of late, and yet I cannot for the life of me remember even the faintest details about most of them. Makes me wonder what I’m missing. All I can tell you about the dream I had last night is that it was rather crazy, but I cannot tell you how or to what extent it was crazy, so I guess you and me both will have to take my word for it.
In Belief Truth and Knowledge we talked about Cohen’s second argument against Dogmatism. He makes a pretty convincing point. We discussed how since Cohen seems to reasonably dismiss using perceptual experience as a justification for knowledge about the external world, we’re left with one of three options. The first is to accept the skeptic’s contention and concede that we can have no knowledge about the external world. The second is to demonstrate on some a priori basis that we are not being deceived about our experience or about the external world. Finally, and perhaps most strange, is the argument that Cohen himself seems to conjecture - that he has no argument for the existence of the external world, but that we have some sort of knowledge or justification about it “by default.” Yuval explained that this third position is quite the can of worms, and hopefully we would explore it further in depth later in the course. Right now it seems like a very untenable position, but I can see how it has certain intuitive leanings that might support it.
Right now, I am back to leaning towards accepting the skeptic’s conclusion that we can have no knowledge or justification for the external world, or at least knowledge. I think there’s something to be said for the idea of indispensability - that is, we have to do something, to live our lives, which then requires us to regard the world we experience in a certain way. Perhaps we do not have any knowledge about how the world “really” is, but we still have to function in the world we experience, whether it’s an objectively real world or not, and that fact, if for no other reason, seems to give me justification for acting as though, even if not believing, that when it comes to the external world, what you see is what you get.
At first I thought some hope lay in the thought of “inference to the best explanation” as some manner of a priori reasoning that would allow us to have justification for believing the world is the way we experience it, if not knowledge. However, the more I think about it, the more it seems like a single planet, let alone a universe full of conscious functioning organisms, is much more complicated than one mind being deceived by a powerful being or one man in The Matrix, or whatever deceiver scenario you’d like to employ. Furthermore, the concept of “best” seems kind of vague, even if we further define it as simplest, and that position has problems in and of itself. However, I cannot shake what I would deem to be some sort of innate sense that the world we see is what’s really there, which as I think has been fairly clearly demonstrated, I have no rational reason to hold. How does one account for this? Is it really innate, is it learned, taught, or does it have something to do with the indispensability I discussed earlier? So many questions, so little time, and so few answers.
”Well Anyone Can Fake It If They Got The Chords”
I had my recitation for History of Modern, it was what it was. I came back for a little lunch and relaxation, nothing particularly exciting. In American Constitution we went over the quiz we took last time. I managed to pull an A- which I was happy with because I was a bit taken aback by the difficulty of the quiz. The questions challenged me more than I had expected or prepared for, so I feel I managed to come out relatively unscathed. Even though we spent the entire class time going over the questions, we only managed to make it about halfway through. We ended up spending a large amount of time in class talking about objectivity and truth conditions from the perspective of constitutional laws. Granted it was a bit of a tangent, but I thought it was a worthwhile discussion to have. Trisha had to go to Third North after class, so we walked together most of the way back to Palladium. She explained to me how people who walk back to the area by walking down Broadway are “Chumps.” Hah, I got a kick out of that.
I had a really frustrating thing happen at the gym. I’ve been trying to work myself back into a schedule, now that my class schedule finally seems set. Well, I have just about enough time to squeeze in a workout between class and my IRHC meeting on Mondays. Well, I rushed upstairs, changed, and zoomed down to the cardio room. Well, there was a line of four people for the bikes, and given that there are only six bikes, that did not bode well. By the time I was the first person in line, I would have had maybe twenty minutes to ride. Not only was it not worth it for me to do that negligible amount of exercise, but I wasted half an hour waiting for an open bike. Kicking my own ass in order to get myself to the gym is difficult enough without having to do it all for naught. Not that big of a deal, I know, but nevertheless demoralizing.
The e-board meeting was business as usual. I took a to-go meal into the meeting, and Amanda asked if I had a spoon. Well I explained that the dining hall people didn’t trust us enough to give us spoons and she asked me if I would spare my knife, to which I agreed. However, the funny part is that she explained, “I have pudding you see.” I laughed and told her that her choice in grammatical structure is usually reserved for characters in plays explaining their motivations. I.E. “I’ll take care of your fever; I’m a doctor you see.” Amanda said that it only happens in bad plays. We had a laugh and connected it to the last Futurama episode where the Robot Devil chastises that, “Your opera lacks subtlety. You can’t just have characters announce how they’re feeling. That makes me angry!” I got a kick out of it. Afterwards, I chatted on the phone with Dad and Brat; Mom was asleep. Everything seems to be chugging along at home.
General Thoughts: An Amish Symposium on Electricity
This will not be a very long section, but I feel the need to vent. All around The Silver Center, they have flyers posted for a symposium or a dialogue or an event of some type entitled “Israeli Apartheid” sponsored by a group called, “Students for Justice in Palestine.” I found it extremely frustrating not only that such a group exists on campus, but that they would have the audacity to put on such an event. It has as much legitimacy as a discussion of Civil Rights sponsored by Students of the Ku Klux Klan. We have the Lebanese breaking peace agreements in the North. After the Palestinians have managed to tear each other apart for a few weeks, they form a “unity government” and demand that they be given aid that they somehow have a “right” to, despite the fact that the unity government met none of the requirements the quarter set out for resumption of aid. They still refuse to renounce violence, because hey, even when terrorist groups are the elected representatives of their people, they can’t forget their roots right? They refuse to honor past agreements, because why should you be bound by fifty years of long negotiated agreements designed to make coexistence easier for everyone. They refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, continuing to refer to it as “The Zionist Enemy’ and generally doing everything they can to further destabilize the region. These are the people who deserve our pity and our aid? They have militants running their government who refuse to acknowledge the existence of a sovereign nation and furthermore sponsor terrorism targeted against that nation, yet when Israel doesn’t want engage with such a hostile authority, it’s some sort of apartheid? That’s like chastising a child for not playing with the kid at school who throws rocks at him. How some people can be so blind to such facts truly mystifies me.
And that’s pretty much what I got. From what I understand, my usual barber will be back in the shop tomorrow, so hopefully I can get my long overdue haircut. I might go try to see either The Queen or Notes on a Scandal tomorrow. If anyone’s interested, let me know. Otherwise, have a good night everyone.
It has been the usual case of The Mondays here in Andrewville. That line came out much cheesier than it sounded in my head. Alas. I will extend my apologies to whatever scant few readers I have on Facebook. I have written many entries between now and the last posted entry, however, due to their somewhat revealing/incriminating nature I have given them the “Friends Only” distinction in my other journals, so they don’t show up on Facebook. If anyone out there really cares, let me know, and I will link you to one of the other sites where you can see any entry I am adventurous enough to post. With that out of the way, let’s get right to it.
Dreams and Skepticism
I have been having a dream nearly every night as of late, and yet I cannot for the life of me remember even the faintest details about most of them. Makes me wonder what I’m missing. All I can tell you about the dream I had last night is that it was rather crazy, but I cannot tell you how or to what extent it was crazy, so I guess you and me both will have to take my word for it.
In Belief Truth and Knowledge we talked about Cohen’s second argument against Dogmatism. He makes a pretty convincing point. We discussed how since Cohen seems to reasonably dismiss using perceptual experience as a justification for knowledge about the external world, we’re left with one of three options. The first is to accept the skeptic’s contention and concede that we can have no knowledge about the external world. The second is to demonstrate on some a priori basis that we are not being deceived about our experience or about the external world. Finally, and perhaps most strange, is the argument that Cohen himself seems to conjecture - that he has no argument for the existence of the external world, but that we have some sort of knowledge or justification about it “by default.” Yuval explained that this third position is quite the can of worms, and hopefully we would explore it further in depth later in the course. Right now it seems like a very untenable position, but I can see how it has certain intuitive leanings that might support it.
Right now, I am back to leaning towards accepting the skeptic’s conclusion that we can have no knowledge or justification for the external world, or at least knowledge. I think there’s something to be said for the idea of indispensability - that is, we have to do something, to live our lives, which then requires us to regard the world we experience in a certain way. Perhaps we do not have any knowledge about how the world “really” is, but we still have to function in the world we experience, whether it’s an objectively real world or not, and that fact, if for no other reason, seems to give me justification for acting as though, even if not believing, that when it comes to the external world, what you see is what you get.
At first I thought some hope lay in the thought of “inference to the best explanation” as some manner of a priori reasoning that would allow us to have justification for believing the world is the way we experience it, if not knowledge. However, the more I think about it, the more it seems like a single planet, let alone a universe full of conscious functioning organisms, is much more complicated than one mind being deceived by a powerful being or one man in The Matrix, or whatever deceiver scenario you’d like to employ. Furthermore, the concept of “best” seems kind of vague, even if we further define it as simplest, and that position has problems in and of itself. However, I cannot shake what I would deem to be some sort of innate sense that the world we see is what’s really there, which as I think has been fairly clearly demonstrated, I have no rational reason to hold. How does one account for this? Is it really innate, is it learned, taught, or does it have something to do with the indispensability I discussed earlier? So many questions, so little time, and so few answers.
”Well Anyone Can Fake It If They Got The Chords”
I had my recitation for History of Modern, it was what it was. I came back for a little lunch and relaxation, nothing particularly exciting. In American Constitution we went over the quiz we took last time. I managed to pull an A- which I was happy with because I was a bit taken aback by the difficulty of the quiz. The questions challenged me more than I had expected or prepared for, so I feel I managed to come out relatively unscathed. Even though we spent the entire class time going over the questions, we only managed to make it about halfway through. We ended up spending a large amount of time in class talking about objectivity and truth conditions from the perspective of constitutional laws. Granted it was a bit of a tangent, but I thought it was a worthwhile discussion to have. Trisha had to go to Third North after class, so we walked together most of the way back to Palladium. She explained to me how people who walk back to the area by walking down Broadway are “Chumps.” Hah, I got a kick out of that.
I had a really frustrating thing happen at the gym. I’ve been trying to work myself back into a schedule, now that my class schedule finally seems set. Well, I have just about enough time to squeeze in a workout between class and my IRHC meeting on Mondays. Well, I rushed upstairs, changed, and zoomed down to the cardio room. Well, there was a line of four people for the bikes, and given that there are only six bikes, that did not bode well. By the time I was the first person in line, I would have had maybe twenty minutes to ride. Not only was it not worth it for me to do that negligible amount of exercise, but I wasted half an hour waiting for an open bike. Kicking my own ass in order to get myself to the gym is difficult enough without having to do it all for naught. Not that big of a deal, I know, but nevertheless demoralizing.
The e-board meeting was business as usual. I took a to-go meal into the meeting, and Amanda asked if I had a spoon. Well I explained that the dining hall people didn’t trust us enough to give us spoons and she asked me if I would spare my knife, to which I agreed. However, the funny part is that she explained, “I have pudding you see.” I laughed and told her that her choice in grammatical structure is usually reserved for characters in plays explaining their motivations. I.E. “I’ll take care of your fever; I’m a doctor you see.” Amanda said that it only happens in bad plays. We had a laugh and connected it to the last Futurama episode where the Robot Devil chastises that, “Your opera lacks subtlety. You can’t just have characters announce how they’re feeling. That makes me angry!” I got a kick out of it. Afterwards, I chatted on the phone with Dad and Brat; Mom was asleep. Everything seems to be chugging along at home.
General Thoughts: An Amish Symposium on Electricity
This will not be a very long section, but I feel the need to vent. All around The Silver Center, they have flyers posted for a symposium or a dialogue or an event of some type entitled “Israeli Apartheid” sponsored by a group called, “Students for Justice in Palestine.” I found it extremely frustrating not only that such a group exists on campus, but that they would have the audacity to put on such an event. It has as much legitimacy as a discussion of Civil Rights sponsored by Students of the Ku Klux Klan. We have the Lebanese breaking peace agreements in the North. After the Palestinians have managed to tear each other apart for a few weeks, they form a “unity government” and demand that they be given aid that they somehow have a “right” to, despite the fact that the unity government met none of the requirements the quarter set out for resumption of aid. They still refuse to renounce violence, because hey, even when terrorist groups are the elected representatives of their people, they can’t forget their roots right? They refuse to honor past agreements, because why should you be bound by fifty years of long negotiated agreements designed to make coexistence easier for everyone. They refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist, continuing to refer to it as “The Zionist Enemy’ and generally doing everything they can to further destabilize the region. These are the people who deserve our pity and our aid? They have militants running their government who refuse to acknowledge the existence of a sovereign nation and furthermore sponsor terrorism targeted against that nation, yet when Israel doesn’t want engage with such a hostile authority, it’s some sort of apartheid? That’s like chastising a child for not playing with the kid at school who throws rocks at him. How some people can be so blind to such facts truly mystifies me.
And that’s pretty much what I got. From what I understand, my usual barber will be back in the shop tomorrow, so hopefully I can get my long overdue haircut. I might go try to see either The Queen or Notes on a Scandal tomorrow. If anyone’s interested, let me know. Otherwise, have a good night everyone.