ADDENDUM

I forgot to mention why that friend of a friend of mine thought that ethics was pointless and lame. While working on her BS in both astronomy and physics at a certain U.C., she became enamoured with a prof. who was a reject from the 1940's-1960's scientism. She thought that all that ever mattered at all was science, and that science would eventually show us that ethics is nothing more than certain brain states (which at present remains a philosophical thesis called a number of things, such as The Mind/Brain Identity Thesis). But morever, she thought that if you couldn't empirically observe something, then it pretty much was not worthy of any attention. Those were her reasons. Yes, they are pretty bad and not very well thought out.

She and my buddy would go round and round about the nature of science and ontology in general. She would come home and be talking about all these entities that the physicists had discovered such that their new theory is a discovery of some new law in the universe. She was so excited to study various objects in the universe, like those that are at the quantum level. She was a full on metaphysical realist. My buddy, however, had been way into Quine and Bas van Fraassen and would say to her: "First, I could care less about the so-called objects you think exist, because they remian unobservables in your theory, and for that reason, the phenomena you claim to be discovering are merely explanatory entities whose purpose is to make your hypotheses plausible enough to support your theory. I want to know why you even think what your're discovering are laws in the first place, when all the entities posited to explain that law are not even observable? We once thought we discovered all sorts of shit with phlogiston theory. And guess what? All the "entities" that existed to explain the phenomena didn't exist." He's a full on anti-realist. It was good stuff those two arguing about science. I would chime in occasionally, trying to act as a mediator, but I occasionally could not handle her poor aerguments, so I would dismantle them alongside my buddy; but I also had trouble with the anti-realists claims, since I was certainly sympathetic to the realist view. But more than frequently I would try to defend the realist view from the constructive empiricism my buddy promoted.

Either way, it's just safe to not be so bold as to stand up in a room of philosophy students and start making grand claims about what exists and how we know. It's just not something you do unless you really have your shit together and your're ready for a long night's debate. She never quite figured out that we--the philosophy students that were always hanging out at their house--thought that ideas were more important to us than people. As a result, she found herself constantly ill-equipped to deal with the objections we had to her veiws.

Hey, like I said, don't be making bold claims unless you can back that stuff up; otherwise, you're just kidding yourslef about what you think you know, and you're being intellectually lazy (just as this blog is). Beliefs are a big deal, but I'm so amazed at how lightly people take their importance to be in their everyday lives. People will feel great and convinced by some belief they have and, yet, have very poor justification for their belief. (Of course, they think they are fully justified, but that's because they have no idea how to think about notions like evidence, truth, warrant, and so on.) But, as with most things: Evidence, Truth, and Justification, are not items in an all you can eat conceptual salad bar. You don't get to put them on your plate as you like it. That's not the way it works. And if you do think that's the way it works, then let's hear your argument.

In the meantime, I'll just keep writing stuff that IS NOT my final paper for my philosophy of language class.