What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

@Belacqua

I wonder if you could at least answer poly's question regarding how a Five Ways type God, if it were true, would be any less a brute fact requiring no further explanation than that which it attempts to explain... ie why it's not just 'kicking the can' further back so to speak. As, though most of what he says is clearly way above my pay grade, that particular issue is one of my biggest issues with the five ways. Ie I understand that it has more explanatory power for people like you and Neo, who want/need that, in explaining the little bubble of reality we all find ourselves in... and in that sense you may (or may not) indeed see it as kicking the can, but to a more comfortable place... but it still doesn't appear to even address the question 'why/how something rather than nothing?'... because it still asks us to believe that a complex and infinitely powerful being has always existed, just because, with no further explanation required, inside or outside our universe (however you want to define it).

And in addition to this at this point it almost feels like the can gets kicked in the opposite direction, by basically appealing to the necessity of things in the future (ie the the Five Ways considered a necessary explanation for the universe as we know it... and I might add, a very human-centric view of that universe, which not everyone agrees with), to explain the presence of things in the past. Though granted I may have misunderstood you there (and/or elsewhere) so I'm very curious how you would answer these questions and how you would relate the (granted, disputed) necessity of the Five Ways to this bigger question of why/how God came to be/always existed, if you indeed do.

The 5W are, in the tradition of all classical philosophy, mostly about identifying and describing the most fundamental priniples of the world. Some here think physics is most fundamental and mathematics contingent on that. (Yes, I used the word contingent dispite some otherwise intelligent people finding themselves perplexed by ordinary everyday concepts.) The 5W demonstrate that the sensible world is not fundamental. There is a layer below that is known by the intellect.

I don't think math is contingent on the physical other than the obvious fact that it is a process in the brains of humans. Logically, it is a separate area of study that is based on formal systems and what can be said in such. But, because it is about formal systems, it alone has limited applicability to the real world. Instead, for anything about the real world, we can make mathematical *models* and then test them to see to what extent they work.

Yes, I consider the word 'contingent' to be rather vague and thereby prone to misuse. There seems to be a confusion about whether it applies to logical deductions, whether it is an aspect of causality, or whether it is based on some sort of explanatory system. Each of those are quite distinct from the others and yet they are lumped together into one word.

Even the term 'logic' in metaphysics is widely misused. Logic alone can say very little (even less than math). Until assumptions are made about things like 'substance' and 'properties' and 'necessity', logic can say almost nothing. And, of course, those assumptions need to be tested and verified. Otherwise, the whole edifice is built on quicksand (which is actually the case for most medieval philosophy).

I think that physics is the process of finding and understanding the 'most fundamental aspects of our world". It has the supreme advantage over metaphysics in that it requires its concepts to be testable. THAT is what makes it able to inspire confidence.

Metaphysics, on the other hand, tends to say things *must* be classified into certain categories with certain assumed properties. Most of the concepts are intolerably vague (like contingency above) and thereby promote sloppy thinking.