Ernie : Makes sense to me , too. At something like the 90 % level. But let's say you were trying to guess who would win a chess game. Wouldn't you want to be as accurate as possible in your estimates of who would move what pieces where ? Wouldn't what you be doing, be reasoning ? Similarly for a chemist working on a new drug, an engineer who is responsible for rocket performance, a computer programmer tying to debug a system, and on and on. The philosophy classes I once took impressed on me about a sort of contest among actual philosophers ( vs teachers of the subject, or book publishers , etc). The objective is to discover new truth, usually new implications of logic unseen previously. The contest is almost like that among medical researchers or anyone else with similar purposes. Exactly what is true in this case ? Find it out and win a trophy --adulation among other super brains and intellectual immortality. I mean, every would-be philosopher on Earth would like to gain the reputation of an Aristotle or Plato. But maybe you could say something similar in the case of sleuths, either detectives, intelligence analysts, investigative journalists, or still others. So, what is the New TRUTH ? Once you think you have it right, sure, argumentation takes over. But I think that Hume and Kant especially, maybe Des Cartes and Spinoza, can be added to this short list, thinkers who really sought objective truth and only argued later. What about people like them ? This has always been my objective even when, uhhh, yeah, there has also been a lot of stuff that has been ( blush ) polemic. May never get there but this has been an important goal all along. My belief is that there actually are a decent number of people with similar purpose in life, at least 0.00000001 % of the population. Doesn't this multitude count ? Hegel ------------------------------------------------------------ 1/6/2012 2:57:53 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
Makes sense. Much like the liberal arts with their emphasis on rhetoric and grammar were essential for Roman families to defend their (fake) pedigrees... Sent from my iPhone On Jan 6, 2012, at 10:01, [email protected] wrote: > Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments > intended to persuade. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
