My World View: Preamble
My approach to all propositions.
My views on everything can be treated as of two kinds, as follows:
- Views — opinions — that are my value judgements,
express as confidently as anybody can ever do about their own opinions.
Everybody should sometimes ask themselves:
can I be sure that this or that is really my considered opinion
on this or that question?
It may well be I will change my view on this or that at some point in the future but, unless I was dreaming when I decided what my opinion is, I reckon I can be fairly confident that what I have said is my opinion today.
Nevertheless, every opinion that I hold remains somewhat tentative, precisely because it is subject to future change. That is, on my proposition evaluation scale, I allow the rating even of statements of my own opinion no higher than, say, 0.99, and I leave the margin between that and 1.00 as a reminder to everybody that my view on anything is never absolute and could change at any time, if new relevant and reliable information becomes available. - Views — conclusions — that are
my conclusions as to what is the case on any factual point
(about the world, the universe, reality, or even
the world of ideas) are all subject to evaluation in terms of
my confidence rating system.
In particular, any statements about the world of ideas — much of which we can consider part of history and biography, in that the ideas of other people as written up in books and discussed and studied by academics and their students (especially anything in the realm of philosophy) — are merely reported “facts” about statements that particular notable individuals of the past made (or are reported by others to have made). Those are, essentially, merely statements about the supposed thoughts, observations and opinions of those people, and are subject to the same limitations of confidence as any reported or alleged historical “fact”. That is to say, we have to deal with considerations of accuracy of memory and reporting, provenance of texts, construal and interpretation of those texts, and considerations regarding any translation from foreign languages that may have occurred to reach the texts under consideration, and so on.
Actually an unfortunately high proportion of the argumentation that goes on about the ideas of notable thinkers of the past are related to the difficulties of identifying those ideas and construing what was said or written about them.
Separately from all those considerations, I take the view that, however eminent a person was who held particular views, those views are to be evaluated on their merits and not on the basis of the eminence or reputation of whoever held or expressed them.
Just as with my own value judgements, my views on any factual question are always subject to change at any time if new evidence arises.
This is the crucial difference between the scientific approach and the religious approach: the true scientist does what I do, whereas the religionist screams “blasphemy!” when any cherished tenet is threatened.