Its not hard to comprehend: absolute knowledge of the ends that individuals strive after is denied to the third party observor. What we have, at best, is an approximation.
Depends on the situation, and the individual involved.
You utterly, utterly misses the point.
That has been my argument all along. No one has absolute knowledge of everything at everytime so why expect it? Even though we don’t have absolute knowledge we can deduce what is more likely to happen.
Its obviously life or death.
No it doesn’t. If an individual was alive to see a life or death moment then they obviously value life or else they would of killed themselves.
Then explain it to me because you keep repeating I don’t have absolute knowledge and that I miss the point etc etc.
You cannot deduce what will happen with any epistemological certainty, one is left gropping in the dark for motivations.
No, the situation will influence how bright the future will look, and whether death is preferable with respect to the future following the situation.
They are not simply choosing between life, and death; rather they are choosing between dying, or begging for their lives, knowing that they will have to live following this incident.
With respect to what I was responding to specifically, all that I was saying was that action often fails, and that man’s action does not always bring about a more preferable state of affairs.
Right, reason and logic is just a useless trial and error…honestly…
I don’t believe that when face with your death, the first thought you will have is…‘I wonder if I am going to win the lotto?’
What do you affirm every day through your existence? That you value life.
Strange, you deduce you cannot know how action will turn out and yet here you say action often fails and that it will not produce a preferable state.
Are you also assuming the individual also only has an approximation of his own goals?
Absolutely not, absolute knowledge is denied to the third party observor.
In the case of a mere observer I agree. In the case of a collaborator I believe a person can truthfully tell another person what his goals are. He might lie, but he can tell the truth. In the case he tells the truth the collaborator in actual fact knows the other mans goals, he just cannot know for sure that he knows.
With no scientific certainty whatsoever.
You can also never know the answer to any optimization problem with scientific certainty. But when you find an answer you test it some number of times and then assume it is true until new evidence disagrees.
Non sequitur, I’m speaking about academic analysis of the means-end framework of human action, nothing else.
I think twistedbydsign99 made a valid assertion. A human being in action is an experiment. We gather truths over time. If those truths of our nature become known as secondary truths with more primary truths that open up a whole new understanding, a larger genus to incorporate human action. We learn these truths and understanding culture provides definition to numerous secondary truths whereas human biology and generalization of human culture (such as humans have culture) then these are more primary truths.
That’s really not what was said.
It’s moot to say that you know what a rock fundamentally is and what its “fundamental” traits are when you can’t know anymore than what you observe.
The only fundamental trait I am currently stating is the rock is being. Metaphysics (to be or not to be is a truly metaphysical contingent) is a science. I know the rock is being (thus I’ve stated a metaphysical fact) and then any knowledge I gain about such a rock is either something true or false about the rock. Thus true or false knowledge/epistemology. Further inquiry about a rock extends into the fields of geology and physics (geo-physics) to name two. This all comes about due to the observation that a rock is. Thus I’m not debasing the metaphysical involvement from reality. Any further peering into what any particular rock is, applied scientifically, reveals more about the nature of such a rock. Is it round, smooth, what kinds of minerals, etc… But first and foremost the metaphysical fact - a rock is - sure it is observational and as I noted I’m not debasing metaphysics from reality. It is a science.