(March 9, 2011 at 9:36 am)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote: Agreed, however: it weighs upon what an individual thinks is true.
Agreed again, however again: emotions weigh heavily upon what an individual thinks is true.
They are all biases, like I said, the point in discussing this is to find and remove biases.
Quote:My suggestion that it might not be possible to have a belief uninfluenced by emotion or pragmatism isn't based in what is true, but in the person themself.
It's entirely possible, there is logic that when sound and valid is neither contingent upon emotion or usefulness.
Quote: Forming an understanding of 'the truth' that is devoid of emotion, and which stops short of considering the usefulness/value of the thing: seems either far-fetched or very difficult to achieve. I am not disagreeing that truth sees no relevance in the value of this data or its impact upon one... i am skeptical that we can view 'truth' without attaching value to it or applying our emotional biases into it.
Because it's difficult to achieve is no reason not to try, an epistemology is essential if you want to be as consistent as possible in what propositions you do believe and what ones you don't and if you want to be setting standards for your beliefs that tend towards the truth - The best way to find this out is to find an epistemology that fits what we believe and then examine it to determine whether or not it's self-cconsistent, immune from parallel argument and passes epistemic defeaters.
We will all have biases and flaws somewhere along the way, the whole point of discussing epistemology is to find these biases and overcome them.
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