TED Community » Zacharia Wilson

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I'm passionate about

Reading, writing, philosophy, learning, the arts, guitar, and religion

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All ideas are worth spreading, the key is in finding a passionate audience.

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  A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 16 2012: Fair enough, I guess until you've experienced insanity it's hard to doubt what we view as reality, thus I shall too leave this happily at an impasse. (By the way Gaithersburg is a lovely town, and it's convenient that you can just hop the red line all the way into DC isn't it?)

• A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 15 2012: Doubt only arises because our knowledge is incomplete, though. It does not necessarily come with knowledge, but arises when we lack it. If mental constructs have excluded data, then the construct is faulty and therefore isn't knowledge, but theory.

• A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 15 2012: Seth,
  If the surest and firmest fact of the world is that it's wrong, and that statement is a part of this world, then does that not fall into the paradox that this statement is also likely to be wrong by your own view of the world? And there are plenty of cases of paranoid delusions; paranoia of being incorrect does not ensure correctness. And though it may further push us in our path towards knowledge, it also hinders our mental capacity to accept the truth should we come across it. So if we want to achieve knowledge I would say that we do necessarily have to overcome these deceptions as well as our fear of being deceived, it's merely a matter of figuring out how.

• A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 15 2012: I disagree that you need doubt to believe in the knowledge of existence, as I would define doubt as fear of uncertainty; as a lack of confirmed knowledge. At most I would say that doubt is merely a step we overcome on our way to knowledge, if indeed we are capable of achieving such a thing, not a shadow cast as a result of knowledge gained.

• A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 15 2012: Please then call me Zach.
  So would you define understanding as the journey to truth; that journey being made up of a set of preferences derived from sensory interaction with the world around us (i.e. going to said museum of natural history)? If so I would probably be inclined to agree with you, but then how do we overcome the deceptions to our senses such as mental illness and illusion?

• A comment on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 15 2012: I can agree with that Mr. Beaver, but how is it that we come by understanding without knowing the truth of something? Would that not then be conjecture rather than understanding?

• A reply on Conversation: Inspiration is found in a change of perception.

  Jan 15 2012: It makes use of the senses, but the inspiration comes from an introspective knowledge of what you think is beautiful, and it's your mental perception of what your senses show you, not the physical entity, that creates the art. However I can't really think of a way of creating art without the senses as I consider art to be an imitation of life, and if you can't experience life, then I'd imagine that it would be rather difficult to produce art. Pretty much the only inspiration you could draw from without your senses would be your own mental dialogue, but as I've never experienced that sensation I could not say for sure that it would inspire art. Not to mention that if you didn't have use of your senses you would have to rely on the possibility of you reaching a state of mental maturity necessary to create art without any guidance or influences. All in all I won't say that it would be impossible outright, but at best it would be immensely difficult and may not reach social standards of art even upon its creation.

• A reply on Conversation: Individually possessing the truth seems unworthy: understanding seems a nobler personal objective.

  Jan 14 2012: We can't know that for sure, though. There are thousands of cases of people that our societies put in mental hospitals because they believe that this is some alternate reality, but what if they are right? And even if you don't believe they are, you can't deny that the human brain is more than capable of warping whatever reality is. You and I think that I actually said that, but what if we're sitting next to each other in some padded room in straight jackets mumbling about philosophy? Our minds have shown to be able to do exactly that.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Does free will exist or is reality dictated by determinism

  Jan 14 2012: No. Determinism is the idea that we are all meant to do the things we do, be that by some higher power's dictation or destiny. It's not even that we can't control our actions, rather it is just that the way the world works pushes us down a single path we were meant to travel.

• A reply on Conversation: Does free will exist or is reality dictated by determinism

  Jan 14 2012: God, the universe, destiny. There are a plethora of choices. But then of course you'll just counter this by pointing out that there isn't any proof for any of them, and then I would counter that with one of the myriad counters people have come up for that. For example the intelligent design theory which essentially, and this is summarized, that the world is this complex construction, and when we come across complex constructions in the world around us, say a house, we don't tend to believe that the house just popped out from the ground on it's own, or even that it evolved that way. So why do we assume that this universe, the sum of this incredibly complex and interactive world we live in, rose up on it's own, or evolved on it's own. Of course you could just say that science leads us to believe, etc etc, which brings me back to my original point; no one wins in these debates. There's always a point and counter point and this have been shown by thousands of the smartest philosophers in history bantering back and forth for thousands of years.