To suspend judgment about science and religion.

[mikkel_the_dane]

So now I have to define "suspend judgment". I won't, I will describe how it works.

Here is an example from philosophy from Kant:
Imagine a friend comes home to you and tells you, she suspects, someone is trying to kill her. You listen and ask questions. Suddenly the front door bell rings and you go to answer. A stranger is there and asks, if you know, where your friend is? Now Kant then said, you could either lie or tell the truth. Now think outside the framing and ask if there is a third option? There is, you could chose not to answer at all.

That is it in short. Not to take the framing for granted.
So here is a formal setup. Someone asks if you know whether A is B or A is non-B as something else, C.
But what if what is asked about in general is unknown? So before you answer a question of knowledge, you have to ask, how do I know that? Or what is knowledge?

And now we are in the la-la land of weird, because as a general strong skeptic I would answer: I don't have knowledge, but I can tell you, how my beliefs work for me.
So here is how it works for knowledge in general.
Take at least some of the general categories, where some people claim knowledge about one of them.

• Not just religion.
• Include metaphysics/ontology in general.
• How logic and thinking works and what rational is and how it works?
• What knowledge is and what the correct methodology is?
• What politics is and what rights and duties are; what political system is the correct one?
• What good and useful is? How to decide what is relevant in deciding that? To use the group or the individual as the base for good or useful?
• There are probably more.

Now go wide and include all of humanity for all time and use the standard non-believer version for gods. All the different versions as above can't be correct, because they amount to contradictions, so only one is not false.

And now change the frame! Don't look for the correct one answer to all these different questions. Explain how we have all these false beliefs and there are still humans. How can so many humans have false beliefs, yet we haven't die out. A lot of these humans grew up, got children, let lives and if lucky died of old age.

If you can do that, you can suspend judgment.
Now back to the point of the skeptic's way to look at knowledge. What if there is no one single, universally methodology for correct answers or no universal set of methodologies for correct answer and some questions have no answer at all, because it is unknown.

So if you are looking for the correct positive answer, you can do that and if that works for you, then good for you. But as a skeptic, I look for what doesn't work, is incorrect, meaningless and so on and ask, how does that work?
So how does it work that all these humans had false beliefs?
Well, you can't answer that unless you accept the following as making sense.

• All versions of correct, truth, proof, evidence and so on are local in time and for certain limited circumstances.
• And there are no positive answer to what reality really is as independent of the mind.

And in general we all use some combination of science, philosophy and morality/religion.
Now if you ask me as a religious person, which God I believe in, then here is my answer: The Wrong One.
I am a skeptic after all.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[Nakosis]

So now I have to define "suspend judgment". I won't, I will describe how it works.

Here is an example from philosophy from Kant:
Imagine a friend comes home to you and tells you, she suspects, someone is trying to kill her. You listen and ask questions. Suddenly the front door bell rings and you go to answer. A stranger is there and asks, if you know, where your friend is? Now Kant then said, you could either lie or tell the truth. Now think outside the framing and ask if there is a third option? There is, you could chose not to answer at all.

That is it in short. Not to take the framing for granted.
So here is a formal setup. Someone asks if you know whether A is B or A is non-B as something else, C.
But what if what is asked about in general is unknown? So before you answer a question of knowledge, you have to ask, how do I know that? Or what is knowledge?

And now we are in the la-la land of weird, because as a general strong skeptic I would answer: I don't have knowledge, but I can tell you, how my beliefs work for me.
So here is how it works for knowledge in general.
Take at least some of the general categories, where some people claim knowledge about one of them.

• Not just religion.
• Include metaphysics/ontology in general.
• How logic and thinking works and what rational is and how it works?
• What knowledge is and what the correct methodology is?
• What politics is and what rights and duties are; what political system is the correct one?
• What good and useful is? How to decide what is relevant in deciding that? To use the group or the individual as the base for good or useful?
• There are probably more.

Now go wide and include all of humanity for all time and use the standard non-believer version for gods. All the different versions as above can't be correct, because they amount to contradictions, so only one is not false.

And now change the frame! Don't look for the correct one answer to all these different questions. Explain how we have all these false beliefs and there are still humans. How can so many humans have false beliefs, yet we haven't die out. A lot of these humans grew up, got children, let lives and if lucky died of old age.

If you can do that, you can suspend judgment.
Now back to the point of the skeptic's way to look at knowledge. What if there is no one single, universally methodology for correct answers or no universal set of methodologies for correct answer and some questions have no answer at all, because it is unknown.

So if you are looking for the correct positive answer, you can do that and if that works for you, then good for you. But as a skeptic, I look for what doesn't work, is incorrect, meaningless and so on and ask, how does that work?
So how does it work that all these humans had false beliefs?
Well, you can't answer that unless you accept the following as making sense.

• All versions of correct, truth, proof, evidence and so on are local in time and for certain limited circumstances.
• And there are no positive answer to what reality really is as independent of the mind.

And in general we all use some combination of science, philosophy and morality/religion.
Now if you ask me as a religious person, which God I believe in, then here is my answer: The Wrong One.
I am a skeptic after all.

Regards
Mikkel

Your answers don't have to be correct, they just have to not get you killed. Sometimes the wrong answer keeps you alive.

So in your scenario above with the friend, the wrong answer may keep them both alive.

So I suppose another way to look at it, if the wrong answer doesn't kill you, then it's not a problem.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Your answers don't have to be correct, they just have to not get you killed. Sometimes the wrong answer keeps you alive.

So in your scenario above with the friend, the wrong answer may keep them both alive.

So I suppose another way to look at it, if the wrong answer doesn't kill you, then it's not a problem.

Or for a pacifist like me, then answer can be: Kill me or not, that is your choice. The answers differs depending on the frame you use to answer.

 

[Heyo]

So now I have to define "suspend judgment". I won't, I will describe how it works.

Here is an example from philosophy from Kant:
Imagine a friend comes home to you and tells you, she suspects, someone is trying to kill her. You listen and ask questions. Suddenly the front door bell rings and you go to answer. A stranger is there and asks, if you know, where your friend is? Now Kant then said, you could either lie or tell the truth. Now think outside the framing and ask if there is a third option? There is, you could chose not to answer at all.

That is it in short. Not to take the framing for granted.
So here is a formal setup. Someone asks if you know whether A is B or A is non-B as something else, C.
But what if what is asked about in general is unknown? So before you answer a question of knowledge, you have to ask, how do I know that? Or what is knowledge?

And now we are in the la-la land of weird, because as a general strong skeptic I would answer: I don't have knowledge, but I can tell you, how my beliefs work for me.
So here is how it works for knowledge in general.
Take at least some of the general categories, where some people claim knowledge about one of them.

• Not just religion.
• Include metaphysics/ontology in general.
• How logic and thinking works and what rational is and how it works?
• What knowledge is and what the correct methodology is?
• What politics is and what rights and duties are; what political system is the correct one?
• What good and useful is? How to decide what is relevant in deciding that? To use the group or the individual as the base for good or useful?
• There are probably more.

Now go wide and include all of humanity for all time and use the standard non-believer version for gods. All the different versions as above can't be correct, because they amount to contradictions, so only one is not false.

And now change the frame! Don't look for the correct one answer to all these different questions. Explain how we have all these false beliefs and there are still humans. How can so many humans have false beliefs, yet we haven't die out. A lot of these humans grew up, got children, let lives and if lucky died of old age.

If you can do that, you can suspend judgment.
Now back to the point of the skeptic's way to look at knowledge. What if there is no one single, universally methodology for correct answers or no universal set of methodologies for correct answer and some questions have no answer at all, because it is unknown.

So if you are looking for the correct positive answer, you can do that and if that works for you, then good for you. But as a skeptic, I look for what doesn't work, is incorrect, meaningless and so on and ask, how does that work?
So how does it work that all these humans had false beliefs?
Well, you can't answer that unless you accept the following as making sense.

• All versions of correct, truth, proof, evidence and so on are local in time and for certain limited circumstances.
• And there are no positive answer to what reality really is as independent of the mind.

And in general we all use some combination of science, philosophy and morality/religion.
Now if you ask me as a religious person, which God I believe in, then here is my answer: The Wrong One.
I am a skeptic after all.

Regards
Mikkel

Sounds like solipsism to me. As an Agnostic I know a thing or two about not knowing and being skeptic about presumed knowledge is a good thing but we do know some things and we can have high confidence in other things. The important thing is to suspend judgement until we have confidence - not to make it a principle.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Sounds like solipsism to me. As an Agnostic I know a thing or two about not knowing and being skeptic about presumed knowledge is a good thing but we do know some things and we can have high confidence in other things. The important thing is to suspend judgement until we have confidence - not to make it a principle.

Well, yes and no. I am not an ontological solipsist, I am an epistemological solipsist. I do believe in objective reality, I just don't know anything about it other than it is objective reality. And I don't do ontology as positive, so I think, therefore I am, doesn't work for me. Rather to me, it is something is thinking, therefore something is happening; but what that is as existence I can't answer. I can explain, how an "I" works, but what it is, I don't know.
So I always in the end do, what the world is as a relation between me and the rest of the world. Not what the world really is, but how it works for me; i.e. my beliefs.
And yes, you are there as different than me.

As for confidence. That is psychology, a state of mind and not about the objective reality.

 

[cladking]

And there are no positive answer to what reality really is as independent of the mind.

But there is a reality independent of mind and consciousness. It is the job of each of us to seek it.

 

[Thief]

So now I have to define "suspend judgment". I won't, I will describe how it works.

Here is an example from philosophy from Kant:
Imagine a friend comes home to you and tells you, she suspects, someone is trying to kill her. You listen and ask questions. Suddenly the front door bell rings and you go to answer. A stranger is there and asks, if you know, where your friend is? Now Kant then said, you could either lie or tell the truth. Now think outside the framing and ask if there is a third option? There is, you could chose not to answer at all.

That is it in short. Not to take the framing for granted.
So here is a formal setup. Someone asks if you know whether A is B or A is non-B as something else, C.
But what if what is asked about in general is unknown? So before you answer a question of knowledge, you have to ask, how do I know that? Or what is knowledge?

And now we are in the la-la land of weird, because as a general strong skeptic I would answer: I don't have knowledge, but I can tell you, how my beliefs work for me.
So here is how it works for knowledge in general.
Take at least some of the general categories, where some people claim knowledge about one of them.

• Not just religion.
• Include metaphysics/ontology in general.
• How logic and thinking works and what rational is and how it works?
• What knowledge is and what the correct methodology is?
• What politics is and what rights and duties are; what political system is the correct one?
• What good and useful is? How to decide what is relevant in deciding that? To use the group or the individual as the base for good or useful?
• There are probably more.

Now go wide and include all of humanity for all time and use the standard non-believer version for gods. All the different versions as above can't be correct, because they amount to contradictions, so only one is not false.

And now change the frame! Don't look for the correct one answer to all these different questions. Explain how we have all these false beliefs and there are still humans. How can so many humans have false beliefs, yet we haven't die out. A lot of these humans grew up, got children, let lives and if lucky died of old age.

If you can do that, you can suspend judgment.
Now back to the point of the skeptic's way to look at knowledge. What if there is no one single, universally methodology for correct answers or no universal set of methodologies for correct answer and some questions have no answer at all, because it is unknown.

So if you are looking for the correct positive answer, you can do that and if that works for you, then good for you. But as a skeptic, I look for what doesn't work, is incorrect, meaningless and so on and ask, how does that work?
So how does it work that all these humans had false beliefs?
Well, you can't answer that unless you accept the following as making sense.

• All versions of correct, truth, proof, evidence and so on are local in time and for certain limited circumstances.
• And there are no positive answer to what reality really is as independent of the mind.

And in general we all use some combination of science, philosophy and morality/religion.
Now if you ask me as a religious person, which God I believe in, then here is my answer: The Wrong One.
I am a skeptic after all.

Regards
Mikkel

you will be assimilated
resistance is futile