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Comment by fitzwatermellow | Hacker News Reader

Irked by author's facile dismissal of Descartes.

Admit I'm biased against Hume. Something about his Hard Scot style that left me as clammy as his pronouncement that "man was no more significant to the universe than an oyster."

For me, it remains Descartes Ontological Argument that provided the philosophical lantern in our collective cave of existential darkness. And I still see echoes of its pure logic and simplicity reverberating into the present. In Boltzmann Brains. In the intersections of quantum information theory and thermodynamics. Yes, even in the realms of design thinking, creativity and startup engineering...

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I, too, felt the dismisal and the return to mere experience was superficial. Experience would not be possible without an ontological grounding. Just because you ignore it, does not make anything better. You feel better about yourself? Cool, but don't pretend metaphysics is useless. On the real side of things, the dismissal of metaphysics, especially in relation to ethics, has lead to moral relativism and nihilism.

I don't think people get better or feel good because they found an idea in a book. Humans love humans. Humans help humans be happy. She found happiness in another person, not in Hume. This, I think, it's just a post-rationalisation. Sounds cool, but it's not what really happens. In general. Cool ideas create an excitement that lasts only so long.

I think you're reading it slightly the wrong way. She wasn't necessarily saying the ideas helped her get through her mid-life crisis. It was getting interested in the link between Hume and buddhism that gave her a new purpose, and ultimately allowed her to meet her husband. So it is in that sense that Hume helped get her out of her mid-life crisis.

Interesting, I didn't see that. I'll read again. But if you're right, then it is not that interesting. :) Anyways, I think that the real good in her life was finding someone to love.

Wait... Are you saying that you find Descartes' Ontological Argument persuasive?

As definitive "proof" of God's existence? No..

But a natural consequence of thinking about concepts such as entropy and chaos is the emergence of the idea of perfection. A single-atomic layer, defect free crystal of graphene for example. And the fact that we can conceive of and perhaps even strive toward perfection has always seemed "suggestive" to me.

You appear to be restating Descartes' ontological argument in slightly different words, yet while also professing you don't believe it is proof.

If you are persuaded by it, it's perfectly fine to say that you are.

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