I mentioned in my initial post that all beliefs do not need to be subjected to intense reasoned analysis. This is for several reasons. First, to do so would be tedious and not particularily worthwhile. Bertrand Russell’s famous attempt to prove everything resulted in some 300-odd pages – and he only got as far as 1+1=2. 1+1=2 is a perfect example of something I consider self-evident. It’s clean, obvious and prompts no debate or skepticism. Others include, “the sky is blue,” “I am human,” “I exist,” etc. The most severe skeptics will question even these. Perhaps I don’t exist, but rather, my existence is merely an illusion or dream if you like fed to my brain by a machine. In this scenario, I am not actually typing this sentence, I am merely a brain floating in a tank. While this thinking produces many other fascinating philisophical exercises/movie plots, it limits the extent to which we can examine more “real-world” issues. If every debate over the gas tax holiday must be preceded by debates over whether gasoline as a substance exists at all, not a lot of progress will be made. So, for my purposes, anything that is so obviously self-evident that debating it would be tedious will be assumed to be true.
Though these initial posts may seem dry, I will eventually move to more interesting topics. Trust me.
Thanks for reading.
