Pretzle Logic; or, Why We Use a Circle to Express the Term "Zero."

Note: Please read my previous post about Deprivation Theory and Knowledge, before reading this. It'll explain the title.

I was presented recently, with an argument that Rational thought was limited to our current context, or our perception of life and existence. I.e. We strive to make everything rational because we can only conceive of this existence.

The concept is classic Kant. We live in a phenomenal world and rationality may apply only to the world in which we perceive. The "real" or Noumenal world may have a completely different set of rules and rationality may not even function there.

I'm trying to respond to this argument as carefully as possible, to convey the proper point but...

We could all live in a yellow submarine, too. Point is, ANYTHING COULD be, beyond the context and perception of our existence. The question is whether or not we live according to the context we KNOW and the world we are in, or do we subvert all that for the sake of living according to fundamental premises that we just HOPE are correct?

Basically, zooming out too far from existence almost entirely usurps epistemology. If we're to live according to principles based on a world we can neither perceive or know, then Ethics and Morality are played deuces wild. What's to say that sacrificing human beings isn't what we're supposed to do according to this greater existence that we can't even know exists? What's to say that genocide, slavery and any number of other abhorrent atrocities aren't actually good things, according to this estranged world that we suppose MIGHT exist?

Simply put, yes, "What if this world isn't real, and rationality is bunk?" is entirely valid. But, like so many Sophist questions, it will ALWAYS be asked, and NEVER be answered... unless we can figure something through science which is... rational. By operating on premises which can neither be proven true nor false, we directly state that it is perfectly acceptable to be, not only irrational, but unethical and immoral... because our notion of morality (which is based in epistemology) could be bullshit.


Easy Version: Zooming out too far on existence to suppose that the reality we perceive may well be false is valid question to ask, but it ultimately it destroys the very essence of knowledge and morality. It means that there is no right and wrong, there is no good or bad, there is no correct or incorrect, everything is fiction. There is no knowledge, there is no definition, there is no order... all is chaos. In all that, what I'm saying is that means there is no way that we even perceive our existence, that our knowledge is all false, and there is NOTHING that is keeping this world bound together... when there actually is.

Read: EFF U GRAVITY. I'M NOT OBEYIN' UR LAWZ.

Stewie Griffi, stoned in a pot shop in Amsterdam - "I think, the only reason we die, is because we accept it as an inevitability."