If someone has difficulty living, say, with the fact that they can never know the content of other minds, no matter how many conversations they have with other people or how much they study others' faces and behaviors, this does nothing to disprove or alter any genuine truth about how one cannot know other minds outside of actual telepathy or omniscience. Certainly, for a specific kind of person, knowing that they do not know if other minds exist or what their contents are--and cannot no matter how much they try--would drive them to despair as they lament this metaphysical and epistemological wedge between them and actually knowing their loved ones. They can believe, which in this case always amounts to assuming, but they cannot know.
This in no way changes anything about the nature of reality, including the reality that one cannot know other minds, or makes this philosophical truths "unlivable." Really, any truth, even the truth that a truth about a particular subject (if applicable) is unknowable, can be a source of terror or discomfort or sadness. Never does this change any fact about metaphysics or epistemology. A truth being personally inconvenient or even pragmatically difficult (for instance, if murder is immoral, killing someone illicitly is evil no matter what benefit it would situationally bring) does not make it unlivable.
One cannot genuinely, consistently live out a philosophy that contradicts the intrinsic truth of logical axioms and that which follows from them by necessity, because logical truths cannot be false, since reason being false would require that it be true--for just one example, if nothing was true, that fact would still be true, so truth exists no matter what. You can passively, obliviously ignore or directly reject logical axioms, but they are true in themselves. It is impossible to live as an anti-realist (having the stance that nothing exists or is true, including the laws of logic or one's own consciousness) or a metaphysical relativist (having the stance that truth is subjective/relative to perception or culture) because to believe or do anything is to believe or act that something is true, and that truth is objective.
This does not lift us out of the genuine epistemological uncertainty we cannot escape regarding other matters, such as whether an object perceived to exist in the external world is actually physically present outside of one's mind or is just a mental perception with no material substance [1]. However, it does exemplify the type of philosophy that truly is unlivable. Moral nihilism, which is logically possible albeit unprovable and even very unlikely, being unfulfilling is not the same as it being unlivable, as some moral realists might pretend. Objective unlivability is rooted strictly in contradictory ideas; subjective dislike or despair is a personal reaction to ideas that might be entirely philosophically coherent via consistency with the necessary truths of reason.
A worldview that is highly abstract, like rationalism, is not in any way unlivable because it initially takes potentially enormous effort to not make assumptions and to recognize what precise things follow by sheer inherent necessity from others. Now, rationalism is true and this could not have been any other way, so anyone who dislikes it has all reality against them; reason cannot be anything but true in itself, and it governs all other matters, which depend on logical necessity for their truth and very possibility (or for their falsity if they contradict necessary truths). Any deviating worldview can only be lived out in error, to the adherent's own stupidity or harm.
Living as a rationalist can ironically be so much easier than living as a non-rationalist in some ways: the psychological security of absolute certainty grounded in what cannot be false, the objective greatness and subjective empowerment of alignment with supreme reality, and so on are quite potent. Alternatively, social isolation from the masses of inane non-rationalists and frustration with them could be very disheartening. Other people might ineptly regard rationalism as unlivable or personally undesirable (as if this changes anything about reality beyond their preferences and intellectual incompetence), though, because it is so foreign to their assumption-driven beliefs and contradictory worldviews and because it by nature pertains to highly abstract, maximally foundational facts of necessity and possibility that are grasped by the intellect and yet have no physical tangibility.
That rationalism is by nature about abstract necessary truths, which do not depend on a being's recognition of them or on contingent/unverifiable truths, does not make it unlivable; in fact, non-rationalists are only living while depending on reason metaphysically and epistemologically and yet retaining unawareness of this. Oh, rationalism does have its objective psychological benefits that can increase subjective joy, excitement, and life contentment. None of the positive or negative consequences, however, which will be felt more by some people than others, is what makes rationalistic philosophy true. It is true because the only alternative, reason being false, still requires that it is true!
No comments:
Post a Comment