+1

JB, I am certainly not suggesting that you should change this habit. When it comes to living life, doing so with a feeling of certainly and definiteness can be a wonderful thing. Its often much better to just do something with certainty and confidence (even if that thing is sub-optimal, poorly thought out, badly planned, etc) than to sit around over-thinking the issue, or waiting until until all questions are answered.

Within the context of having a relaxed, speculative conversation on certain topics with 'scientifically minded people' without having them feel compelled to argue against your suggestions on a scientific basis - well yes I could see an advantage for you (and for most of us!) to adjust habits like this, make the 'speculative' nature of our thinking clear from our word choice.


but I find that there are so many 'unsure' people in the world who lack any confidence in what they do and believe that sometimes it is nice to express confidence in your convictions even if they might be wrong, and it is nice to be around someone who seems confident and positive about things and situations.

This reminds me of something, which may be unrelated. When it comes to taking action, I can be (not 'am', but 'can be') very confident a self assured and definitive in my actions. At the same time, the most relevant, short, honest answer to many direct and immediate questions from another party is "I don't know". I consider a tendency to say "I don't know" as a starting point (not an ending point) in a conversation or a thought process to be a sympton of both wisdom and intelligence.

But there are great many people out there that associate this with ignorance. There have been many people who just barely knew me, who would ask me a question in passing; due to the lack of depth of their thinking, they thought the question was a simple one, and expected a simple, immediate, short answer. The best simple/short and honest answer I could give was "I don't know" - which immediately caused these people to lower their estimation of my intelligence.

These same people would have been impressed by an false answer, given with self assuredness. I think this is a sad commentary on our cultural.





I would just like to say that wanting someone to believe something, and wanting someone to consider something are two very different things. The first is presumptive, and possibly very contrary to truth.

If you simply want someone to consider something, I don't think that overstating the case is helpful - I think it will alienate the more discriminating listeners. And amongst the more naive listeners... well, in my value system I'd be more interested in teaching those people to think, than to convince them to share my particular beliefs.




Are we talking about investigating and pursuing truth, or coaching people to have confidence in what they are doing?

You touch on another thing I've observed in life: sometimes people of low intelligence, who also fully commit themselves to certain dogmatic systems, can benefit in some way from the absolutism of their conviction - I'm thinking of people who were committed to doing physical exercises or eating certain diets which can be challenging to follow through on.





It doesn't sound to me like the person saying "we are all going to die" aspires to objectivity or depth, either!



Very true, and in my mind this is related to my above comment people being committed to something.



Or we can encourage people to have both confidence and an intelligent approach to the question of truth. We don't need to prop up and feed people false beliefs to give them confidence.





If a persons confidence is tied to their certainty of a particular belief system... is that true confidence?




In general, people who are courting other people are often not as honest as they could be on many levels, and I think its sad. Why do you focus on 'all their doubts and fears'? This is a false dichotomy. A person can choose objectivity, and neither the dishonesty of false confidence, nor the dishonesty of dwelling on fears.





Like a salesman. I don't like it.



It depends on the person, doesn't it? And the values of the people involved? When I consider the woman who pursues a man and is so thoroughly honest as to say something like that; well, when she has something positive to say, her words will have even more force and power, because its known that she values truth first, and positivity second.

________________ ___________________

As the remedy against your blues, I suggest you look at my last post in the INTUITION -- it is definitely UP YOUR ALLEY!!!

massagetrade,

Thank you for your input. It is refreshing to read and consider your words and ideas.

I believe I am approaching a point in my life where I feel confident enough to begin saying "I don't know" about a lot of things. Because I don't know anything really. Most of what I think I know is just my opinion. Some of what I state that I believe are not beliefs that I am committed to or set in stone. They are simply temporary considerations. Not even real conclusions.

My favorite answer is this one that I will give you now.

"I will consider it for eternity."

I love those guys!

I knew one woman who was a self-professed scientist. She had a masters in inorganic chemistry and ran a computer software firm. I could not convince her that math is not absolutely necessary to explain the world, math is only a crutch man uses in his inadequate attempts to make a mental model of the world he lives in. She was insistent that numbers exist in nature.

Her boyfriend was a genius, and he was more philosophically inclined. I did not know him as well as I did the woman, but what I knew, he was a natural philosopher -- he revelled in researching the newest explanations to our physcial universe. He was the only one in my circles who could certifiably imagine six-dimensional curved space.

We would not dabble in psychology or ethics or morals, but what do I know, he must have been no doubt a very complex person, so I won't deny his insights into other areas of philosophy. I just have not witnessed their existence, either.

I read the best description of epistemology in a book called "Murphy's Law".

1. Facts are solidified opinions.
2. Facts weaken under extreme heat and pressure.
3. Truth is elastic.

This set me on a better spiritually wise approach to learning about the universe than anything else. Especially since in grade three my teacher asked the class, "kids what do you think a fact is?" and even at her old age she could not give me a satisfactory definition, even at my tender age.

But I believed her, I believed that facts indeed do exist, and I believed that they are part of some mystical knowledge that is in the realm of everyone else's knowledge but mine. This was one of the few building blocks that culminated in a huge feeling of inferiority in the first half of my life.

Then I read the above quote, and everything fell into place. Yes, I said, this is how I had imagined it but had always been afraid to admit to myself that I had been right.

Science is great to offer support to an idea or theory. With it we have learned so much about the natural world and the universe, but it has limitations. It cannot be used on anything that you cannot test (i.e. God). Philosophy on the other hand can be applied to all, but philosophy is quite annoying, often pointless, and self-serving. A philosopher will not even attempt to come to a resolution on a matter. They will kick up dust with their arguments and complain because now they cannot see clearly.

Two Skytalkers are talkin'. Luke Skywalker is one, Stu Thighstaker is the other.



Torque's got your tongue, Luke?

Shut up or I put you in the stew, Stu.

Where's your touque, Luke?

You're astute, Stu. And cute.

You're absolutely right, Roma, philosophy is a futile endeavour.

It sometimes serves a purpose of practical value, though. For instance, it changed the sex life of the entire Western world when Luther philosophised against the asceticistic teachings of the Holy Roman Empire. Or another example: Logic was developed by philosophers for their own use and for little use by anyone else, yet this device proved to be paramountly essential in the design of computer hardware architecture and computer programming.

Philosophy has given many a political and economic system that moral acceptability without which man is incapable to act. For instance, philosophy appeased the conscience of slave-keeping lords, philosophy helped the monarchs establish absolute power not just with physical or military force, but by proving that their power is necessary to accept and their decrees too. Adam Smith wrote the book on capitalism. Marx, on socialism and communism.

In fact, all these systems could have been established and sustained without philosophy, but only if run and manned by robots, not by men and women. Men and women need a purpose and a justification to act, and philosophy took over this role at times when religion was unable to fulfill it.

Intersting opinion, but a bit self-serving in itself - in my opinion.

Or was that simply an example to illustrate the point?

Where subjective speculation is concerned, I see nothing wrong with being "self-serving."

Self serving in I feel many philosophers get a mental hard-on when they make a good argument and are very pleased with themselves not so much what they have accomplished in regards to the objective of the argument.

Very interesting. I happen to agree that math and nature share a common factor, they both share some equivalencies. Numbers are just a representation of relationship. Nature has many relationships, math does a wonderful job describing nature. The better we engineer our math the closer we get to describing nature.

What is the objective of an argument? Any argument?

That could very well be. But not everyone has the same objectives. So it is true that they may not have accomplished what the other person wants in regards to the objective of the argument, but they could be accomplishing what they want in regards to the objective of the argument.

Just sayin.

objective: being the purpose of an argument. To come to some sort of conclusion on a matter.

(Does god exist? Yes, No, or both yes and no)
(Are mashed potatoes better than french fries? Yes or No)

Not quit sure how to answer this question since the word philosophy which literally translates to "love of wisdom". lol...