Philosophy Now Forum

How can anyone truly learn if they are not agnostic at first? And what is unknowable will remain unknowable and what is knowable can be learned.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 6:48 pm How can anyone truly learn if they are not agnostic at first? And what is unknowable will remain unknowable and what is knowable can be learned.

A very reasonable and logical way of looking at things, though not necessarily the only (or best) one.

For example, for the majority of people, they're told that gods exist from people they inherently trust (their parents) and they believe it (since they're children and not critical thinkers). So the majority of people jump directly to being theists.

LuckyR wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 11:03 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 6:48 pm How can anyone truly learn if they are not agnostic at first? And what is unknowable will remain unknowable and what is knowable can be learned.

A very reasonable and logical way of looking at things, though not necessarily the only (or best) one.

For example, for the majority of people, they're tolf that gods exist from people they inherently trust (their parents) and they believe it (since they're children and not critical thinkers). So the majority of people jump directly to being theists.

When I went to school, I took analytical philosophy courses and I took "continental philosophy" courses. I couldn't figure out what "continental philosophy" (often linked to "postmodernism" and such) was about but the professors who taught it were fairly flamboyant and charismatic.

My favorite professor in the analytic side of the George Mason Philosophy Department was Emmit Holman. He was much more low-key and just an all-around good guy who mostly taught us to laboriously think and scrutinize EVERYTHING from EVERY possible angle we could think of. He also taught a philosophy of religion class where Walter Stace's book Mysticism and Philosophy was among the materials featured. I liked Stace's book. Unlike C.S. Lewis (a fellow Englishman), Stace took a more analytical philosophy based look at the claims of mystics across a bit of the religious spectrum and ultimately came to the conclusion that I agree with. There's something going on with mystics that is not present with "ordinary" observers but he didn't know what it was and more or less left things with a question mark (as I remember readin).

I took a number of the "Continental" courses thinking there must be something extraordinary about them because analytical philosophy was straightforward and understandable to me and the professors in the "Continental" tradition side of the department seemed to be talking about something urgent or whatever, but I have come to the conclusion that the classes (which mostly focused on Heidegger) weren't really what I am looking for. I won't say the classes were a waste, they at least exposed me to "postmodernism" and what was going on with it so that I am now able to at least look at much of it from a relatively informed positioin.