I spent a good deal of time in philosophical and religious searching. The thing I settled on as representing the most accurate picture of reality is the Kant school . That is in terms of question like "How do we know things?" and in terms of questions on meaning and in terms of the ultimate nature of things. Mainly this was process of excluding nonviable options. That is going through a lot of different thinkers and trying to evaluate if what they said made sense to me.
So I do not take a religious fanatic approach to Torah. Hard to explain what that means. Mainly that only sanctioned religious leaders have the truth. That seemed to me to be utterly false. But on the other hand I felt there is a deep truth in the Law of Moses and in the Oral Law. So I needed some way of making sense of things.
I could go through the whole list of philosophers and thinkers that I went through but their names would not mean much. [Some more thoroughly than others.]
A lot of philosophers hit on some deep aspect of truth. But in many of their systems I found flaws. So that is my basic approach in terms of the question of meaning.
How did I go about this? Here are some of the factors I used: Observation of people, assuming there is some connection between what people do and their world view. Internal observation. Common sense. A good deal of learning in depth so as not to dismiss off hand anything just because at first it seems problematic. A good deal of Physics and Math and Torah.
Appendix: I like the critics of Kant very much because of the light they shed on Kant.
The intuitionists, Prichard, Michael Huemer, G.E Moore have some great ideas but in the long run I think they did not try hard enough to understand Kant. I have a great deal of respect for John Locke and the empiricists and the rationalists, but in each there are serious flaws. Both in each individual school of thought and also as general approaches. Of course Plato and Aristotle are great but still I had to find some approach that made sense to me. I was not able to just depend on ancient thinkers that were dealing with different issues.
Some critiques on Kant simply miss the point and do not understand the issues between the rationalists and the empiricists which lead him to his conclusions. A lot of modern philosophers are simply innocent when it comes to Physics, so what they say in that area and conclusions they draw by what they think they know are usually "off." Some have been overly awed by science. Some have "Physics envy." I do not want to go into it all right now. My point is my approach comes mainly came from eliminating other possibilities
So I do not take a religious fanatic approach to Torah. Hard to explain what that means. Mainly that only sanctioned religious leaders have the truth. That seemed to me to be utterly false. But on the other hand I felt there is a deep truth in the Law of Moses and in the Oral Law. So I needed some way of making sense of things.
I could go through the whole list of philosophers and thinkers that I went through but their names would not mean much. [Some more thoroughly than others.]
A lot of philosophers hit on some deep aspect of truth. But in many of their systems I found flaws. So that is my basic approach in terms of the question of meaning.
How did I go about this? Here are some of the factors I used: Observation of people, assuming there is some connection between what people do and their world view. Internal observation. Common sense. A good deal of learning in depth so as not to dismiss off hand anything just because at first it seems problematic. A good deal of Physics and Math and Torah.
Appendix: I like the critics of Kant very much because of the light they shed on Kant.
The intuitionists, Prichard, Michael Huemer, G.E Moore have some great ideas but in the long run I think they did not try hard enough to understand Kant. I have a great deal of respect for John Locke and the empiricists and the rationalists, but in each there are serious flaws. Both in each individual school of thought and also as general approaches. Of course Plato and Aristotle are great but still I had to find some approach that made sense to me. I was not able to just depend on ancient thinkers that were dealing with different issues.
Some critiques on Kant simply miss the point and do not understand the issues between the rationalists and the empiricists which lead him to his conclusions. A lot of modern philosophers are simply innocent when it comes to Physics, so what they say in that area and conclusions they draw by what they think they know are usually "off." Some have been overly awed by science. Some have "Physics envy." I do not want to go into it all right now. My point is my approach comes mainly came from eliminating other possibilities
