Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Position
Pyrrhonism is the name of an ancient skeptical school of thought that denied that we know anything. Here is the IEP on it or ask if you have a more specific question.
Thanks for responding. I know it's not your responsibility to satisfy my curiosity, but the deafening silence was a bit hurtful. (<-- tongue-in-cheek. But also: srsly.)
I did read up a bit after the previous comment, but wasn't interested in historical background so much as I was hoping for a concise and easy-to-swallow explanation as to this specific idea of why we can't know anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Original Position
Zen Buddhism is a version of Japanese Buddhism that teaches that our attempt to understand the nature through reason and logic is inevitably flawed because the process of reasoning itself acts as way of separating our mind from what we are reasoning about and so disguises the fundamental connectedness of all things. It instead argues that various forms of meditation causes us to gain actual understanding of the universe.
Bolded is more of what I was looking for but it's still not as clear as I'd hoped. Especially given that I'm not convinced of qualifying italics. And also the fact that it seems difficult to use logic and reason to explain why reason and logic are flawed. People like to talk about self-defeating arguments, but to my ear it seems like the only thing to say is that "if logic and reason are flawed, then [this is all gibberish, and what the hell are we even talking about anyway!?!?]" i.e.: nothing is refuted, but neither is anything accepted. Although I think given that we do appear to be communicating, and that our experience of the Newtonian mechanical world seems to more or less match our reasonable expectations, then we can perhaps accept some usefulness of logic and reason on a provisional basis, even if we don't extend that to absolute epistemological truth.
Was just wondering how this is approached in more formal philosophical views. Skepticism at first glance sounds like it could be up my alley, but then I read about it and at some point they seem overly concerned with what is "good", and what certain actions do to your "soul", and stuff like that. Does not compute. Your link is different though than the one I stumbled on myself the other day, so I'll give it a read when I have a moment. I ctrl-f'd out of curiosity and they don't mention the soul once, so that's a good start.
EDIT: Oops, forgot all quotes are italics. By "qualifying italics" I just meant the part where we assume some meaningful connectedness between all things and also that mediation necessarily provides more meaningful answers.
Last edited by SageLee; 09-19-2019 at 02:31 PM.