What if we approached physics that way? And decided that we shouldn't bother trying to explain gravity because many people in college pondered the question in circles and couldn't answer it?
Hard questions may just be... hard. And maybe this is far harder than physics.
Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason has those 4 quadrants of "knowing". A priori vs posteriori. Synthetic vs analytic. Its literally a CRITIQUE of how far pure reason can take us. In the area much of philosophy dances in, pure reason simple cant take us very far!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_dis...
Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to live. Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right?
I like this quote attributed to Kant: "Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for".
Those questions seem like they can be summarized as "What is going on, what should I do, and why?"
> Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to live. Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right?
This framing seems strange to me.
When you make this statement you already make a claim: that the reason to live is to seek happiness.
For instance, saying things like "Meaningness is neither subjective nor objective" sets off alarms in my mind - that's quite the claim! If you're making that claim, you better be well prepared to provide a rigorous explanation of what you mean or be laughed out of the room by people who understand what those words mean. The author chooses to just throw a couple of pseudo-intellectual sentences together and then say "it's obvious!" and move on.
Another example of this is when people say that determinism and free will are consistent with one another - it's a big claim and it takes some work to explain. A few people actually do this well, but it's because they resort to really really rigorous explanations and models of how "will" works in people - taken in part from everyday experience. Those who provide shoddy accounts of this or just say "yeah whatever let's move on" are no more metaphysicians than is the person who says "what if electrons are the particles that cause love, man??"
The difference is that something like "meaning of existence" can never be defined or even predicted since it depends on the individual, since it's only relevant within the fictitious ramblings of a single mind. An insane persons meaning could never match a rule since it would be capable of defining its own fictitious rules, which would be equally relevant.
Physics doesn't depend on a mind or understanding. It will "be" regardless.
Or at least that's how I see it.
I've been reading a lot about physics lately, and many things are quite... out there... and I felt like I had to go back and sort of rewire my brain a few times.
Some physics questions are simple enough: "What happens if we do this?" But some seem less tractable, such as what does it mean for something to be the last level of "matter", what does "one dimensional string" really mean, why is the speed of light the maximum, etc., and a lot of theories come from what seems to be philosophical intuition more than number crunching.
I'd be very curious to see a strict definition of "questions physics scientists are allowed to ask".
> The difference is that something like "meaning of existence" can never be defined or even predicted since it depends on the individual, since it's only relevant within the fictitious ramblings of a single mind.
Funny, I can't agree with that. That to me sounds like you're just pushing your own opinion. I fully believe that there is such a thing as meaning of existence, but I may be using a very mundane definition of "meaning". Perhaps such questions seem undefinable because someone forgot to define the word "meaning" again.
I believe it's all physics in the end, one is just a lot better understood than the other, so the other looks like you can't nail it down and therefore isn't "real". But just like with physics, it leads somewhere, and predictions can be made...
I think that's a strange and, honestly, naive way if looking at the whole thing. As far as I see it nearly every philosophical position basically makes a sense. They're all valid, and as far as their soundness goes, often the subject matter doesn't allow us to have any good strong opinions. It's interesting the variety of thinking there is and the arguments to be made for one position or another.
If you're caught looking for the one right answer then yeah, I agree that's a virus, but it is independent of philosophy.
It's highly likely I'm being too harsh on him. I probably have baggage from having read a lot of this kind of stuff and having it leave me less than satisfied. My apologies.
Perhaps what bothers me is that he spends a lot of time tearing down and differentiating from others, and less time telling us what he actually does believes in.
I.e If someone does something that makes you unhappy, on some level you have agreed to allow that to make you unhappy. You can also decide to not be affected by that input.
Not saying it's easy, just saying that that it's possible to have some control of response to input.
The word gymnastics used on that site to disqualify "everybody else's muddled middle" except for his own personal version of a "muddled middle" seems hypocritical. He talks in enough circles, and we are supposed to forget that his muddled middle is pretty much all the other muddled middles he says can't work.
I wasted so much time reading philosophy stuff in college. Its like a virus that infects the mind, "there must be a RIGHT answer!" and the infected mind goes in circles arguing with itself. Its an infinite recursive loop without a base case.
The base case is this: "would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?" its not meant to mean that we should all get on "brave new world" soma. what it does though, is get your mind out of that infinite loop of "i must know the RIGHT answer with certainty!". These sorts of topics have no certainty. They are topics worth considering, but trying to find "correct" is just missing the forest from the trees.