Is knowing/understanding generally important?

[jack]

If you ask me about unproven assumptions I hold to, analagous to having faith in a god, I would normally claim something like "occam's razor" or "the scientific method". I can't show OR is correct without being able to extrapolate from past observations, but if I assume it, I can speculate confidently about the nature of the world.

There are also moral assumptions, which I've tried to articulate before. Eg. am I a utilitarian?

There are also much higher level assumptions, eg. about which political systems are generally beneficial. In theory you can measure that, but it's too complex to generalise about, so people tend to generalise from their own experience.

Most people I know wouldn't abandon deducing what the world is like with observation, science and logic, but progress isn't necessarily made by contradicting the previous position, but by saying it's fine as far as it goes, but it's only a small part of a larger system. I have other hidden assumptions, eg:

Learning, knowing, understanding more is both asthetically pleasing and beneficial

Ah, already I'm hedging. If I have two justifications I obviously don't believe in either very much. But it's a good description of what I feel. My first reaction to anything is always to learn about it.

I implicitely assume understanding something is good in the long term. And I happen to prefer it. So when someone tells me about God, my first reaction is "Is it true?" I'm sure that believing in a false religion is bad in the long term.

But that might be hokum. We've almost always believed in some supernatural beings. Maybe it does perpetuate the species better? Maybe it does make life better for people? Maybe there are things more *important* than truth.

I can't abandon my commitment to truth. But maybe I can accept *some* things as more important. What about the assumption:

We can make poverty[1] history

It's *possible*. Is it *plausible*? I don't know. It's a statement of fact, more relevent than the corresponding statement of morality ("we should..."). But in this case I can see believing it will be a good thing, and that's more important than truth, so I'd be willing to adopt this assumption anyway.

(This is inspired by a conversation with Angel, but I've no idea how related to what she meant it is.)

Comments

[simont]

Eg. am I a utilitarian?

I often think about moral questions in a utilitarian way, but a few years ago I discovered that I wasn't a pure utilitarian by means of the following thought experiment. (I don't know whether it'll work for you too.)

Consider the old-chestnut scenario in which you see a railway track in front of you; there are two people tied to the tracks, and an approaching train is already visible in the distance. You have time to untie and save one of the two people before the train gets there, but not both.

Scenario (a): suppose one of the victims is a complete stranger to me, and the other is my (hypothetical) wife. Suppose I choose to save my wife, because I love her.

Scenario (b): suppose one of the victims is a complete stranger to me, and the other is somebody who cheated me at cards last week. Suppose I choose to save the stranger, because he's neutral to me but I know I dislike the other guy.

It seems clear to me that in scenario (a) nobody could reasonably blame me for the choice I made. But in scenario (b), I think I would feel decidedly iffy about making a life-and-death decision based on spite. Therefore, the reasons behind the decision are important to me as well as the outcome (in particular, if I saved the stranger because he was closer, that would be completely different), and so I think I can't explain in utilitarian terms the distinction my moral intuition draws between cases (a) and (b). Thus, I don't believe I'm a pure utilitarian.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

The relationship with the disliked person in scenario B seems to have some close variants:

If you dislike the person, and they suffer through no cause of your own. There's a possibility of irrational guilt.

If they suffer through your own inaction.

If they suffer through your positive action directed elsewhere. (The scenario above)

If they suffer through your own action, directed at them.

It's given me something interesting to sift through.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, now I can't find my posts on the subject. In essence, I went a step further and asserted that any simple moral system can be contradicted with a brief thought experiment.

My interpretation was that what you instinctively feel is right is a balance of lots of different factors[1], and the aim of moral systems is to duplicate that sense in a defined way. But edge cases are really closely balanced between two factors, so any system will feel wrong about half the time.

But it doesn't really matter, because you so rarely find runaway mine carts. Saving either person is good enough. If your life is a constant dilemma (eg. fighting for insufficient food) then maybe our morals just can't apply.

[1] Eg. happiness for you, happiness for someone else, where someone else are more important if they're family, liked, a child, in the same country as you, etc. Active actions are more important than passive permitting. Etc.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

This post reminds me of this post I made a while back; I don't think I've thought much about it since.

(You don't appear to have a [1], BTW)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes. Again, I can be exposed to an idea many times, but only get it when I work it out myself.

[1] I had enough to say about the definition of poverty to make another post, but unfortunately didn't finish it before I had to work, so left it dangling. It will follow at some point.

[mair_in_grenderich]

[1] Maybe when you leave a dangling footnote it should be the obligation of your commenters (uh, is that English? It is now.) to un-dangle it for you...

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Having studied utilitarian thought, I came to the conclusion that it needs a corollary of some sort, because pure utilitarianism can lead to genocide in times of famine, for example.

It's also open to manipulation - to my mind it's a method (and one I use) rather than a thing to have faith in. Christianity is to my mind a way of thinking/being primarily, not dissimilar to Buddhism at its most basic, but with the added benefits of incarnation.

Occam's razor is a good corollary to Utilitarian thought, but perhaps is better used for something like Kantian ethics.

For me, faith is held in tension - I believe in the spark of God in all living things, but I believe also that that spark can be used for evil, and we should not underestimate our capacity for evil.

So I believe forgiveness is about seeing people as they are, with my emotions stripped away, and seeing people as God sees them. e.g. Someone steals my handbag. They have stolen, and thus need to earn my trust again, and they also need to face certain consequences. God sees that in them they have potential to be good people, and I should create a way for them to earn back that trust.

To have a single belief is dangerous, and dulling.

[douglas-reay.livejournal.com]

But when choosing between a stranger and the known card cheat your motives do affect the outcome (it affects how you feel about yourself) and so therefore can be taken into account by Utilitarianism.

There's an ongoing discussion of this at:
http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?Utilitarianism

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. OK, I may make a post responding at length.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I think this is the big philosophical problem I always feel I'm facing wrt anything - I believe X and Y and Z, or most of the time I think I do, but when I examine my reasons for believing them they're not based on what you might call a scientific method. Well, I suppose there *are* scientific methods that rest on assumptions. E.g. how do we know the universe is expanding without travelling to the outer limits and monitoring it? E.g.2 how can you prove that evolution happens? Etc..

Anyway, it seems to me that there are so many things that you think you know but are acually matters of belief that you might as well go on with the believing, because how cynical would you ahve to become to question absolutely everything?

Also, there's a difference between different assumptions, isn't there? Believing that something can or will happen is something that you can help to happen or at least potentially see fulfilled. Believing in e.g. a god, or goodness, or reason, or whatever.

Um, yes, anyway, I *was* thinking about the Aeneid until I read this post ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Exactly. So much of what I seem to believe is in the grey area between proved and guessed. For instance: things my parents told me when I was young enough to just accept; subconscious generalisations from my experience; what everyone else says.

Day-to-day pretty much everything I do is based on what I think, not what I've examined scientifically, and there's no time to examine it all.

Um, yes, anyway, I *was* thinking about the Aeneid until I read this post ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Working? I mean, you, you might just be reading it :)

Re: Um, yes, anyway, I *was* thinking about the Aeneid until I read this post ;)

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Answering Atreic's post actually. But I was thinking about teaching it, so that's worky. That said, the Aeneid is never anything other than a pleasure ;)