Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 4:30 pm
Well again, the easiest person to fool is yourself.
Fundamentally, this is (say) the human problem that is most interesting (to me). I think it is starkly evident in our own BigMike who employs mathematical language propositions, set up in such a way that his conclusions are made to appear adamantine and irrefutable, to establish as valid the social and educational policies that (if I understand correctly) flow out of his stance as an atheist. If “confirmation bias” is then noted as an engine, a driver of the structure if his argument, then I think it possible to examine his conclusions as potential self-deception (self-fooling).
Here on this forum, and it is certainly a strong trend in the West, a strong bias exists which undermines the religious / faith position which, for millions and indeed billions (over long historical periods), has informed their “psychic relationship” with a guiding force. And this is largely what is undermined by a new perspective that emerged in the 17th century and (in my view) is rehearsed here in these threads.
It is curious in my view to juxtapose the stated position of Chomsky (an interview where he is asked if he “believes in” free will and conscious choice and to propose (experimentally) and to note that his argument is one constructed to counter those who “fool themselves” with amazing sophistries (he implies this but does not use the word sophistry) that we lack choice and agency.
It seems to me —
[and here note what we
all clearly see: that
“the truth-geared words of Jacobi are like unto apples of gold in a gleaming silver basket…”]
— that, at some really really fundamental that something of quite profound importance is actually at the real core of this issue of a tendency to
self-deception.
For this reason, and though I note BigMike’s declarations — established through linguistic arrangements presented like mathematical proofs — I am not personally moved. Not because I do not appreciate the elegance of a Euclidian proof but because ipso facto BigMike must necessarily deny and reinterpret (what I refer to as “vast”) areas of human experience.
While I cannot imagine that Chomsky is a “religious man” (he describes himself as “a child of the Enlightenment”), what at the very core is he defending? What logical error is he committing when he notes that his argument is grounded in “common sense” in addition to more formal argumentation?
What is at stake if, say, we all “fool ourselves” about fundamental truths that define what “human” means?
Is the issue that once one has denied the existence or the possibility of supernatural realness, that one’s argumentation and the core prepositions one must necessarily hold to, lead directly to the perceptual stance, with
all the implications alluded to by BigMike — indeed more or less directly stated in his argument?
I am led to wonder, again, about Richard Weaver’s assertion of (what he views as) wrong turns taken at a deeper point in European history which (again in his view) lead to or result in an essentially distorted existential and perceptual stance:
Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.
He goes further (and make of it what you will):
Surely we are justified in saying of our time: If you seek the monument to our folly, look about you. In our own day we have seen cities obliterated and ancient faiths stricken. We may well ask, in the words of Matthew, whether we are not faced with ‘great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world.” We have for many years moved with a brash confidence that man had achieved a position of independence which rendered the ancient restraints needless. Now, in the first half of the twentieth century, at the height of modern progress, we behold unprecedented outbreaks of hatred and violence; we have seen whole nations desolated by war and turned into penal camps by their conquerors; we find half of mankind looking upon the other half as criminal. Everywhere occur symptoms of mass psychosis. Most portentous of all, there appear diverging bases of value, so that our single planetary globe is mocked by worlds of different understanding. These signs of disintegration arouse fear, and fear leads to desperate unilateral efforts toward survival, which only forward the process.
And:
For this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s conception of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real,, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.
I myself find that I am not moved, or am moved only limitedly, by the thrust of BgMike’s argument structure. I appreciate him tremendously however, but not because he reveals what is true, but because (in my opinion) he demonstrates how what is made to appear true and as such absolute, is actually
vastly deceptive.
How
odd this all seems to me.
. 
Well, well...if I were, I'd agree with you, is that it? Lovely.