What makes people irrational thinkers?

[LadyForCamus]

Epistemic hubris?

I created an entire thread for the purpose of giving you guys the opportunity to make a case for your epistemology and demonstrate its efficacy. Seems like people abandoned ship the second there was even the slightest challenge or request for clarification of some of those epistemic principles used to get to god.

Are you referring to the Tooth Fairy thread? 


It's pretty optimistic to think that we're going to settle the Nominalism vs. Idealism debate on a thread, since it's one of the longest-running debates in the history of philosophy. 

I guess I don't feel an obligation to stand and fight when I know it's not going to finish. The Stanford page I linked to outlines the whole problem better than any one of us can do. It would be rude of me to say "go read this and come back when you understand it," since I only understand a little bit of it myself. But it shows how big the issue is and how unsuited it is, finally, to an informal setting like this one. 

On one hand, I think it's important for each of us to work through the issues ourselves, since we can't get the full grasp of the issues just by reading -- we have to engage personally. At the same time, every one of us here (myself very much included) is an amateur who's just above beginner's level, at best. At some point we realize that we have to go away and read a bunch of books if we want to do a good job. 

Polymath is passionate about his view of things, and he does a very good job of explaining his position. Maybe he doesn't do a splendid job of understanding differing viewpoints. At some point those of us who aren't as sure of his position as he is have to decide if we want to spend a large part of our day explaining why he may not be as justified as he supposes. 

I appreciate this venue as a place to work through the issues, but I hope you'll understand that nobody, given real life, is going to be able to give these enormous philosophical issues the full time attention required to make any progress. Chipping away over years and years has helped me understand some things.

I understand that. What I took issue with was the accusation of “epistemic hubris,” when myself and Poly (don’t take that to mean I think we’re on the same level intellectually, ha!), have been open to hearing arguments for a sound epistemological framework that gets us to a god. Asking for clarification regarding the definitions used in such arguments isn’t pulling semantics or being contrarian for the sake of it; it’s a justified pursuit toward accuracy so that the most reasonable conclusions can be reached. Are you insinuating that only the highly philosophically educated, intellectually superior, and vastly-read of society can reason their way to god? What about average-intelligence, time-constrained shmucks like me who might never make it through the Stanford.edu entry on Plato and physicalist? We just have to take it on faith?