That is true that it is one of the foundations for my worldview, but... Well, is there somewhere online I can read the meditations, or would I need to try to find a hardcopy somewhere? Because I will freely admit I don't really understand what you've been saying.
http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/mede.html
Not exactly the world's best translation, but it will do. Relevant stuff starts in Book III, although you'll need to read the rest to understand what's going on.
Ah, so you're asking me to make a grand sweeping statement that covers the entirety of reality. I can't do that however. I can only describe base reality relative to subjective reality.
No? I'm asking you to describe base reality, i.e. the metaphysics you're basing your entire worldview on. Can it not be clarified except indirectly?
Alright then. If my assumptions hold, then the universe is ordered.
Which they don't in my eyes. So that should be priority one in this discussion.
The last one is just as empirical as any other.
Touka can verify, but isn't "time" (in the scientific sense) now tied in with space?
I'm not implying science is the only method towards truth, merely that it is very good at discovering empirical truth.
Naturally. I have no objections to this beyond the possible claim that empirical truth is the only "relevant" truth.
I was just stating my worldview! And besides, just because I'm not interested in studying the culinary arts doesn't mean I can't cook and discuss the merits of various cooked things.
I'd say that if you cook on any serious level, you care about the culinary arts. At the bare minimum, you're participating in it. And any inquiry into truth, epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory means opening up some philosophy.
But anyways, it doesn't necessarily correspond to the way the world actually is, but it raises the probability that it does which makes it a better method.
This is only true assuming that "base reality" is somehow intelligible. You've assumed that it is, but you haven't justified this belief. See the discussion on your four principles below.
How?
Because it's arbitrarily assumed, not rationally grounded?
Also, the fact that we cannot know something doesn't mean that we should just give up on it.
No, but it suggests that we should rationally verify it rather than making blunt assertions.
Of the paths I can take to try to attain truth, only making those assumptions leads me anywhere.
Why? Why can't other perspectives offer up alternatives? If the answer is because they're not useful/empirical/quantitative/probabilistic, then you're simply making a circular appeal to the scientific epistemology.
And I cannot give you any account of why it is true, hence why it's an assumption in the first place. Assumptions by definition are not something we can demonstrate, otherwise they wouldn't be assumptions in the first place.
That's not how assumptions work in philosophy. When dealing with truth claims, which are fundamental, you can no longer assume things in the way that you're doing. An assumption is conducive to some means-end relationship; when the end itself is truth, however, assuming some truth claim does not act as justification for that particular claim.
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Kobe XX
http://tinyurl.com/7n46st9