Evidence depends on theory, theory depends on assumptions.
So; he who controls our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality - controls everything that ultimately matters.
(Just a reformulation of an old thought.)
We live in a world of public discourse that pretends to be determined by evidence; but evidence is not determinative - and cannot be.
Because what counts as evidence, and what an item of evidence means, is dependent on theory.
And all theories depend on assumptions concerning the nature of reality.
So that our assumptions concerning the nature of reality - i.e. metaphysics - determine all knowledge.
And this is why totalitarian, materialist, atheism rules the world of public discourse, why all "evidence" seems to support it, and why there seems to be no evidence to support the spirit and the divine.
It is why all "serious" theories acknowledged in public discourse lead in circles back to themselves; why "there is no alternative" and "resistance is futile".
It is why all discussion of purpose, meaning and personal significance seem arbitrary and feeble - and why hedonism, nihilism and despair are the pervasive moods of modernity...
Purpose, meaning, and the significance of the individual person are all excluded from the accepted and propagated picture of the nature of reality in this life and universe.
For us; the ultimate assumptions of real-reality are of abstract impersonal particles, forces, processes, fields, energies, randomness... operating unknown and mechanically, algorithmically, in a world without consciousness, or life.
These assumptions are built-into our public life, our pubic institutions; and from such ultimate metaphysical assumptions, any purpose, meaning, personal significance is arbitrary.
Even for the self-identified religious; the purposeless, meaningless universe - indifferent to life and Men; is the real picture - much realer than that of God.
Indeed God is regarded as having primarily created such a dead and futile world, without values: only later inserting some living beings, and finally humans.
So, according to the mainstream and institutional reality; the purposeless, meaningless, impersonal world came first, and existed without our consciousness; by this we know which is most fundamental, which is most important - and is is not us.
Thus the assumptions of our underlying metaphysical picture combine to rule-out the primacy and seriousness of purpose, meaning, personal significance, and values in the universe and in our societies and individual lives.
These are not regarded as fundamental, but merely "optional extras" - even for the religious.
Public debate and discussions about evidence or theories relating to God, creation, good and evil etc. are all rendered necessarily trivial.
Our motivations are poisoned at source.
Those who controls our fundamental assumptions - control everything that ultimately matters.
This is one reason why the "alternative" internet makes no substantive difference; why those political animals who regard themselves as opposed to mainstream leftism make no difference; why even the most serious types of institutional religion make no difference.
Dig down; and they share the same deep assumptions as the globalist totalitarians - such that dissent is merely superficial, and ultimately irrelevant.
4 comments:
This strikes me as very true. But having been born into the materialist, atheist, totalitarian world, indoctrinated by its educational system, immersed in its culture, I honestly cannot help but find its underlying metaphysical assumptions to feel more self-evidently true than, for instance, a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, a proposition that feels inherently implausible to me. I truly don't WANT this to be the case - the nihilism and despair you mention are all too familiar to me; and why would anyone freely choose to believe that the universe is bleak and meaningless? But I can't pretend to believe in something that, deep down, if you'll excuse the phrase, I just don't grok. I see no way out of this trap.
@f - You can make whatever assumptions you regard as true.
Of course, you won't be able to persuade others. And you will still be stuck with habits - at least in the medium term.
But there is no reason why you should not make whatever primary assumptions that you regard to be intuitively a correct description of reality.
Indeed, if you are to take responsibility for your existence, your life; I would say that there is an obligation to make the assumptions that you judge to describe reality.
A couple of observations:
1) Your starting point seems to me essentially Cartesian. That is, you begin with a substantial, formulated, defined self or selves that must then decide about what is outside. This is a very different starting point from classical philosophers like Plato and mediaeval philosophers, but was also rejected by Kant and a horde of modern philosophers following the Kantian line, including Heidegger and Wittgenstein (at least in “Philosophical Investigations”, not so consistently in “On Certainty”). They held that the self is only formulated and defined, only comes into focus, together with external reality, so the fundamental human existence is being-in-the-world. We do not need to “assume” the world, because it is always already there when we are.
2) You seem to believe that our fundamental assumptions about reality—or, putting it a realist way, our frameworks of reality—are grand abstract statements. But it is not obvious why this need be so or that it is so. (Wittgenstein explores this in “On Certainty”.) I may recognize that this particular action is good or evil, that this particular face is beautiful, without having any general theory of good or beauty. Indeed, I may judge the adequacy of any theories on how they accomodate the particular realities. This also demonstrates how our many different assumptions or purported realities may come into conflict, and how we can be forced to alter or abandon assumptions in order to have a coherent world picture. A classic example is that while modern science presupposes determinism, modern people continue to morally praise and blame, which presupposes free will. Here it can be seen that the scientific world view is less all dominating than you think—in their everyday lives people continue to act on its contrary.
(P.S. How can anyone make assumptions which describe reality when, by your argument, our assumptions determine what is real for us?)
@AL - I'm afraid you about as wrong as you could be about my own starting assumptions! But to set you onto the right lines is too big a topic for comments. If you genuinely want to know about my metaphysics, then maybe you could use the word search facility on the blog and poke around.
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