(June 25, 2015 at 12:02 pm)robvalue Wrote: For me, pragmatic scepticism at a personal level should be graded not just on the unlikelihood of the claim but also the importance. So even if blue whales don't exist, it doesn't make much difference to me. If atoms don't exist, my understanding of things would be a bit shaken up, but still it wouldn't affect me. So I'm happy to rely on a robust but not highly critical level of inspection and "trust".
However, if you're planning to devote your life to something, donate money, preach to others about it, life your life by its values and so on... I'd say it's pretty fucking important to be very sure that it actually exists!
So inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally), those pesky religionuts have conjured up a question format which points to ultimate importance. We could always just remove the object (God) from the bible or any other holy book and insert blue whales, thus making the blue whales of infinite importance. This is why I'm a bit stuck on this question, because that's actually the case. I've previously thought that we could do that with an infinite number of concepts represented by letters or numbers or images etc. and then insert the heaven/hell dichotomy. Ultimately being left at an impasse. There's really no way out of the argument that I can see.
I mean this is why I ask. I feel like I've dedicated a lot of time (possibly unnecessarily [as a lot of people here have probably done as well]) to this question.
Which is why (unfortunately) Old Berty has got me stuck.
Any suggestions on a way out?
Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture room with the words,
"Behold Plato's man!"
