Erin4287 t1_irylvta wrote on October 12, 2022 at 12:24 AM

Reply to comment by TMax01 in Quantum philosophy: 4 ways physics will challenge your reality by ADefiniteDescription

I don’t feel the need to have an “argument” because I don’t at this point care about this issue. Whether numbers are “real” or not, whatever that means, they’re very useful and fundamental in helping us understand the world and make decisions. You deny the possibility of a simple answer being a valid response at least in part because the discussion is supposedly so complex, a premise I reject, and in fact you deny that it’s even possible for me to have thoughts of value on the issue, so there’s no point in my enabling your fervor and apparent anger at me.

What I was hoping is to understand why you believe this to be the most intriguing question there is. Many questions don’t have answers or ”easy” explanations! so this doesn’t explain to me why you assert that this is objectively the most intriguing question. You may find “exploration of epistemic and metaphysical certainty and uncertainty“ to be fascinating, but I don’t find those topics particularly interesting or relevant. Rather than this being objectively one of the most interesting questions possible, I feel like this is a matter of personal preference. I believe you totally when you say that the discussion is very complex and explores these subjects in amazing depth, but like many other scientists, I don’t find those particular subjects particularly stimulating, and in fact they feel sort of irrelevant to me, especially when the focus is on questions which apparently can’t ever be answered with empirical data or logical proof.

I’m glad that exploration of this question has enriched your life, just as questions like “why do we experience having a sense of self”, a question which is primary in Cognitive Science and appears simple on the surface, have captured the minds of people involved in neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and other fields. Of course that question may have a simple answer, in part because it’s actually solvable, and finding this answer may help us understand numerous things about ourselves and other life. Different people find different questions interesting, including academics and free thinkers in all fields.

TMax01 t1_is0sr5s wrote on October 12, 2022 at 2:00 PM

>You deny the possibility of a simple answer being a valid response at least in part because the discussion is supposedly so complex, a premise I reject,

That's your argument, and you're going to stick to it no matter what. 🤣

>in fact you deny that it’s even possible for me to have thoughts of value on the issue,

I only deny that you do, and you have ratified my perspective with your arguments. I'm quite certain it is possible, that you could learn enough about the issue to have thoughts which have value to people who already understand the issue more thoroughly, in theory. Whether you will is a different question, and seems a dubious possibility. Now, what makes all this intriguing (to those of us who are actually interested in philosophy, including but not limited to the question of whether numbers are real, for whatever definition of "real" you'd care to settle on long enough to have a philosophically valid opinion of the issue) is that it is ultimately impossible to identify whether you aren't learning that much because you will not, or because you can not, and whether there is any meaningful difference between those two propositions. The reason I use the term "intriguing" in this regard is because there is a lot of affinity, if not an identity, between that question and the other one, of whether numbers are real.

Most people have no interest in or patience for plumbing the depths of epistemic and metaphysical uncertainty. It seems a human characteristic to prefer certainty as much as possible, but it is also a human characteristic to be curious.

>I’m glad that exploration of this question has enriched your life,

I'm sorry that consideration of this question has failed to enrich yours. The endemic existential angst underlying our society, accounting (in my view, quite directly) for so much anxiety, depressions, contentiousness and even violence we suffer from, is not as far removed from this philosophical issue as you may believe.

>Of course that question may have a simple answer,

It does not. The matter of the hard problem of consciousness is not simply a 'difficult scientific challenge', it is an unresolvable metaphysical issue which is coincident with consciousness itself. Accepting the reality of that is the only way to "understand numerous things about ourselves", for those specific things which are the purpose and context of philosophy. This being a subreddit dedicated to philosophy, I find it interesting, but not really unusual, that you are here while also denying you are interested in such matters.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.