"5. "all of these are not primaries, ie, they depend on the prior formation of many other concepts". If you cannot handle the meaning of a simple word like "average", and have to shove God out of this world to get anywhere, what hope is there for your "foundations of knowledge" to help address anything? Had you been able to make progress with that, we could have addressed randomness and God."
this is the type of discussion that occurs in most college classrooms where philosophy is 'taught'...an 18 year old student is left to the devices of those who are not seeking knowledge, but seeking to preserve their concept of God..
probably many of these students shrug their shoulders, go off to the economics dept, and pursue a career in finance, and are not troubled by the use of fiat money, derivatives, and re-hypothecation, after all, we really cant know anything and even the words we use are some kind of vague convention which might shift meaning with time, culture, gender or age...
A is A, a thing is itself, one of the self-evident, undeniable foundations of knowledge...even the words in each statement rely on the principle of identity to convey any meaning, and any attempt to deny identity is self-contradictory, as the identity of the words is used to deny the foundation upon which they rest.
rp |
