[Platt] In this case, "nitpick" is the appropriate description, along with "stretching it a bit much." It reminds me of the Idealist's assertion that "We can't show the world exists apart from humans."
[Arlo] I'm not sure how you got that from what I said, as its something I wouldn't say. [Platt] I simply conclude that when it comes to ascertaining facts, "as good as it gets" is good enough for me. [Arlo] My point was that its good enough for us all. It _has_ to be. I wanted to clarify, however, that since the dialogue seemed to lean back towards accepting the authority of others for "fact" we must always leave the door even a teensy bit ajar for healthy skepticism. For all pragmatic purposes, of course, we can say "we know" and "we are sure", but that should not be confused for absolute, total acceptance. Consider it this way, if someone was holding a gun to your spouse's head and said, you have to tell me if Anna Nicole is dead or not, and if you are wrong I will shoot your spouse, but you can, if you wish, spend time to gather more information before giving your answer, if it was THAT critical, chances are you'd take the time to call the coroner, maybe even fly out and interview medics and relatives, possibly even entertain the idea of exhuming the body and hiring your own forensic analyst to run DNA testing. The point is that the more and more our beliefs are important to us, the more and more we move that line from accepting "authority" to personal experience (not that we can ever practically abandon it outright). If that plumber told you your problem was a rusty washer and it'd cost you ten cents to fix, you'd likely accept his "authority" on the spot, but if that same plumber, with the same "authority" told you you needed to tear out all your plumbing and replace everything, with an estimated cost of eighteen thousand dollars, I bet you'd get a bunch more opinions, maybe even spend some time learning about plumbing yourself. [Platt] Let us not overlook, however, the inherent self-contradiction in the notion that we can never know for sure about anything, including, one presumes, that notion. [Arlo] Why would you want to overlook it? Incompleteness is an aspect of any symbolic system. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
