So if you don’t completely trust your senses, then you, in the end, agree with Mickey. Donald is freaking out because his viewpoint is that of total materialism and that everything has no value.
Mickey points out that you cannot completely trust your senses and the information we get from those senses, so being upset over an intrinsically worthless universe is basing everything on that fallacy.
You’ve been implying, and thus pretty easy to assume, that this implies the spiritual, what with starting this off saying that Occam’s razor beats Plato’s cave, but the allegory of the cave isn’t saying gods or spirits are making your perceived reality. It’s just saying the thing you already agree with, that you can’t completely trust your senses.
So if you don’t completely trust your senses, and you understand that your perception of reality is based on those senses, you should now understand what the allegory of the cave is about.
I don’t agree with the conclusion that Mickey makes. Yes, our senses can’t be fully trusted, but they are the only way we will ever get any empirical information. Arguing against a materialist worldview by noting that our senses can’t fully be trusted implies that the materialist worldview is flawed. My issue here is that any alternative has even more dubious foundations. (this is why I raised Occam’s razor in my original comment). Would any inherent cosmic meaning even be relevant if we can’t ever know about it? I doubt that Donald here would be reassured about the theoretical possibility of meaning existing somewhere beyond our senses. I am not.
The allegory of the cave, as I’m sure you know, came about in the context of Platonic idealism. That’s how I’ve been talking about here as well. The allegory becomes moot if the objects casting the shadows and the shadows themselves are essentially the same thing. You need a dichotomy between two completely different things for it to be relevant. If it’s matter casting metaphysical shadows which we perceve as matter, then Mickey has no argument and it’s just accurate observations with extra steps.
You can’t be empirical if the data is suspect, and all data is suspect. So you put your faith in your senses. It’s not like you have much other choice, since that’s all you’ve got, but putting your blind faith in it is still taking that leap of faith, even if it’s a more sensible one than believing it’s demons or whatever.
So if you don’t completely trust your senses, then you, in the end, agree with Mickey. Donald is freaking out because his viewpoint is that of total materialism and that everything has no value.
Mickey points out that you cannot completely trust your senses and the information we get from those senses, so being upset over an intrinsically worthless universe is basing everything on that fallacy.
You’ve been implying, and thus pretty easy to assume, that this implies the spiritual, what with starting this off saying that Occam’s razor beats Plato’s cave, but the allegory of the cave isn’t saying gods or spirits are making your perceived reality. It’s just saying the thing you already agree with, that you can’t completely trust your senses.
So if you don’t completely trust your senses, and you understand that your perception of reality is based on those senses, you should now understand what the allegory of the cave is about.
QED
I don’t agree with the conclusion that Mickey makes. Yes, our senses can’t be fully trusted, but they are the only way we will ever get any empirical information. Arguing against a materialist worldview by noting that our senses can’t fully be trusted implies that the materialist worldview is flawed. My issue here is that any alternative has even more dubious foundations. (this is why I raised Occam’s razor in my original comment). Would any inherent cosmic meaning even be relevant if we can’t ever know about it? I doubt that Donald here would be reassured about the theoretical possibility of meaning existing somewhere beyond our senses. I am not.
The allegory of the cave, as I’m sure you know, came about in the context of Platonic idealism. That’s how I’ve been talking about here as well. The allegory becomes moot if the objects casting the shadows and the shadows themselves are essentially the same thing. You need a dichotomy between two completely different things for it to be relevant. If it’s matter casting metaphysical shadows which we perceve as matter, then Mickey has no argument and it’s just accurate observations with extra steps.
You can’t be empirical if the data is suspect, and all data is suspect. So you put your faith in your senses. It’s not like you have much other choice, since that’s all you’ve got, but putting your blind faith in it is still taking that leap of faith, even if it’s a more sensible one than believing it’s demons or whatever.