To develop our own worldview, we need to have our own opinions about certain presuppositional issues like truth, reason, freedom, morality, human rights, modernity – a short list gets long rather quickly, but these are the issues we’ll be emphasizing in coming weeks.
We often use videos produced by others to make interesting points; this is one of the wonderful beauties of the world of the 21st century in “modern” America – there’s so much terrific content out there that’s readily available to help us vastly increase our knowledge and learn to think.
We do not endorse the opinions of our Contributors or the opinions of those that we happen to feature in a post (we’ll keep repeating this over and over). If speakers express an opinion, it’s their opinion – and if they believe it to be true, then you can only be sure that he or she believes it to be true.
Sometimes, when we feature the videos like the two here, we’re trying to make points about presuppositions, and we view such videos to be good starting points for a basis of discussion. We believe we understand the complexity of these complicated issues, and, in every case so far, we believe we understand many, if not most, of the counter-arguments.
(Of course, praxis is an ongoing process that never ends for human beings and all sentient beings – as far as we can tell. And we’re all in this worldview thing called life together – whether we like it or not, and we do! – and we look forward to learning from you.)
Good conversation is usually impossible unless two or more people can establish a common ground about the “senses and references” they utilize – or, to use a more generally-accepted, common-sensical expression – about the “definitions” they utilize.
That’s why we’ll be spending so much time on being specific about definitions.
So, after watching the video presented above, what do you think about truth? Is there such a thing? How would you define it (to even establish that it doesn’t exist)? What are the arguments? What are the counter-arguments? How new is this issue? How vital is it to our worldview and our world today? Why does the debate matter?
If you want more . . . how true is this second video presented below? What are the counterarguments?
There are many: Where are the weaknesses?
Beyond that, was there an actual person who lived and expressed opinions that have been recorded accurately that we can know today? Are they “true”? How can we be sure one way or the other? Does it matter? Why?
After we announce our new Contributors for 2019 (to be actually presented this fall), you’ll see that we have several who have much to say about all of these questions, and we think some of their answers might surprise you.
In any case, it will be fun!
