Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Vicious Circle

Inner peace is the suicide of philosophical thought.

Well how do ya like that? It turns out I would rather have the questions than the answers.

Fuck.


I hope you guys are happy.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you want the questions with the answers?

Kevin said...

The point is that if you already have your answer, then you will stop asking questions.

So I reject inner peace (the answer) in favor of philosophy (the questions)

Anonymous said...

I can't wrap my mind around this. How can you have answers without questions?

Kevin said...

Intuition, revelation, meditative insight, epiphany.

But most of all, faith.

Anonymous said...

??????

4 is the answer.

To what??? Should I have faith that the question was 2+2?

Perhaps I like the questions as well...

Kevin said...

I know this is just going to be even more confusing, but I'm going to try to go with the math analogy. (que: scary music)

In one sense, if you think of any random number, like 4, there are an infinite number of questions that could have 4 as the answer. 2+2, 3+1, etc. But how do we know that the answer to 2+2=4?

The faith part is not in any individual numbers, but in the mathematical system as a whole.

Could it ever be possible that 2+2 does not equal 4? Could it ever be possible that 2 does not equal itself?

If perfect logic (the inner peace of any mathematician) is questioned, all hell breaks loose. 2+2 = a ham sandwich.

Kevin said...

But in another sense, if you already have the answer, it makes no sense to ask the question.

4 is the answer. Ok, great! Who cares what the question was? It is irrelevent.

Suppose a terrorist had a gun to your head, and asked you a math question that you couldn't hear or didn't understand. The terrorist refuses to repeat the question and demands an immediate answer or he will shoot you. If you are already given that the answer is 4, you are not going to keep trying to find the question, you are going to say "4."

Kevin said...

Ok, let's see if I can get back out of the analogy.

If 4 represents inner peace, then philosophical thought represents the rejection of the reflexive property that 4=4.

Or perhaps rejection is the wrong word. Philosophical thought admits the possibility that 4 can not equal 4.

Anonymous said...

So knowing answers is to basically accept without question. Part of me feels this is an attitude of indeference rather than "knowing" (like the question doesn't matter), but I think I understand what you're saying.

At least it makes more sense now than originally, haha =).

Kevin said...

Haha, a math analogy worked? First time for everything....


When you know something, it's not so much that you are indifferent to the truth, it's that you believe that you already know the truth. Like you aren't going to eat when you're full, you aren't going to search for the truth when you already have it. (or believe that you do)