Kant thought it was an out and out "scandal" that so much has to be left to Faith, and if anything the potential scope of cosmological unknown unknowns within has increased substantially since his times (with much of this looking like unknowable unknowns).
Anyone of philosophical bent can today enjoy the irony that radical scepticism offers our best hope of a rational form of consolation. If you doubt the fundamental origins of our knowledge about the world, if like Nick Bostrom, you think it possible that we are living within a fiendishly complex ancestor simulation, then some sort of survival of consciousness beyond 'material' death becomes a serious topic of reasoned debate. (As long as you keep it within the realms of hyothesis, nobody is going to accuse you of starting your own sect!)
The issue I have with Bostrom's thesis however is this: why would vastly clever, technologically-empowered civilisations care to simulate a universe as apparently meaningless as this one?
1 comment:
because it's fun, as are the moments of bliss within the simulation
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