I didn't withdraw the nihilist tag, but I wouldn't expect you, the supposedly humble and open minded skeptic, to understand nuance. Your ironic call for a purge of anybody who doesn't share your epistemological worldview from academia is duly noted. Your complete immunity from cognitive dissonance is truly breathtaking.

I also note that Fulham is the same person who summarily dismisses any scientific discipline that doesn't fit his very narrow notion of what science is. Truly he is an example for us all.

"Meanwhile real suffering continues unabated while they contemplate the impossibilities of true intersubjective understanding."

Oh get over yourself Putin. You know this just isn't true. Just because I don't back down in the context of this conversation from maintaining that skeptical beliefs make you humbler doesn't mean that's the whole point of me being a skeptic, for goodness' sake.

My whole self-assigned life's purpose is to help people and to use the immense privilege I've been lucky enough to experience for good in my life. Just because I haven't brought it up here and have only mentioned philosophical things doesn't mean I spend all day in an ivory tower snickering about all the dogmatists and their self-delusion.

Indeed, a skeptic outlook is also useful because it tends to sort "resolve" a lot of the questions that keep a great many otherwise intellectually capable people holed up in ivory towers contemplating unknowable bullshit like the existence of God.

I have found that since my adopting of skepticism I'm far less interested in wasting energy on God-existence debates - this is a direct result of being a skeptic.

I can see how you would think skepticism is self absorbed, but I think this is only true of people who claim their only certainty as "I exist." This is surely self-absorbed because everything comes to be viewed through this lens - the one "knowable"
thing is in fact you. But if you reject even that as I do, then a word like self-absorbed loses meaning.

What fulhamish is trying to say about science I think is paradigm shifting. If there were no dogmatists in science, there would be no lag time between evidence of the new paradigm and its adoption, as there is today because of people clinging to old viewpoints.

Fulhamish may or may not be a nice guy... I don't know him. Honestly that really has nothing to do with skepticism. So let's not turn this into some kind of... you know... internet debate. We were doing well for a few pages there guys.

"The danger with what I might describe as your ''incremental approach'' is that it is potentially stiffling of quantum ( a good word in this context?) leaps in understanding. The history of science is littered with examples of these leaps and it might perhaps be considered a trifle arrogant of us to assume that this process has now come to an end. Therefore I am aftraid that I must disagree with you and state that, in my view, skeptism and doubt are an intrinsic and vital part of the scientific method. "

on one level i agree, there will be more revolutions in our science, but they will not overturn current understandings, just as we understand that newtonian physics is merely a low energy/speed aproximation, and the special realtivity is just a 'special' case (Einstien knew that when he wrote it) these cases will still be meaningful...

what has changed is our limited ideas about things like 'absolute space' and while i don't think we have a meaningful philosophical understanding of quantum mechanics - and i don't htink this is about to change - the next revolution will kept intact our failure to comprehend on any intuative level what the Universe 'really' is.

The meaning we ascribe it will continue to be how we use it in day-to-day life, and this will not be affected by our next 'revolution'

So yes, there is more to come, even with the higgs boson we're no closer to a grand unified theory (just having one particle physics model to prefer for the moment) ... ok now i've forgotten what we disagree on. suffice it to say. Science will continue to hold intact and teach our current understanding along with any new deeper levels we find.

@ Orathiac. I am afraid that I must still disagree with you and cite that conversation between the tutor (von Jolly) and student (Planck) to support my view. Maybe, we should now agree to differ on this issue?

cite all you like, you may also quote, cause i've no idea what you're talking about...

however i think i forgot what we are argueing about, can you explain my position (or what you think it is) so i can have a leg to stand on?

so what was this thread originally about before the skepticism got the better of us all?

Reincarnation

so that's like a thread coming back from the dead in another thread... hmm.

i unilaterally declare victory

Isn't reincarnation supposed to get us closer to godliness and once we achieve enlightenment rebirth and redeath is supposed to end? So in essence isn't rebirth punishment for our 'desires'?

I don't get Tolstoy's version of it.

Victory thucy? I wouldn't be so certain about that if were you :-P

"Isn't reincarnation supposed to get us closer to godliness and once we achieve enlightenment rebirth and redeath is supposed to end? So in essence isn't rebirth punishment for our 'desires'?"

Supposed to be.. According to some schools of thought, but this doesn't preclude other interprations.

in Hindu religious beliefs, yes, i belief reincarnation is supposed to be about getting another chance to perfect oneself. Meanwhile Catholics believe that you are purified (or purged of sin) in purgatory after death...

that would be the equivalent of earth being considered a purgatory, with reincarnation bringing is into this 'to be purged' state and also allows for the idea that pain/suffering in this world are a form of purifier to help our souls become 'better' on some arbitrary scale of which we're not aware.

Eschatology, immortality, Etc., et cetera ...
Whereof you cannot speak, thereof be silent.
But Wittgenstein went on from there

Dante-esque vision of "purgatory" as against Hindu notion of reincarnation:
How do those two ideas, and their attendant offshoots, excuse unethical or immoral acts?
Can they - Purgatory, and Reincarnation, be reconciled? Which happens first, the purging or the re-living?
Is it just to say of an chartered private accountant from Luton, you'll "return" and come back the same as you were?
.