Saturday, April 28, 2012

New interests and curiosities bring other divisions of reality under the focus of investigation and provide fresh opportunities for disputation. It's fascinating that old endless debates on logical and metaphysical issues involved in free-will, conscience, duty, and merit are as fresh today as ever. If you're a genuine critical thinker, you are always traveling in a circle which inevitably drawsa flexible line around premises of principle and conclusions of detail, finding no point at which criticism can stop. 

To agree with a truth and not act on it is just as unintelligible as a man who knows a truth and is ignorant of it at the same time. What use is correct knowledge if it is not acted upon? None. If words are but to you empty sounds, exhalations of breath over the vocal chords of a noisy organism, and nothing more, then where might you even start finding meaning in anything? Surely you must bear in mind there is extraordinary value in a simple rearrangement of 26 letters in the English alphabet which are sufficient to convey every single idea in the history (and future) of human knowledge. But even further, what's most fascinating is that there are limits to what can be accomplished through the use of language. 

If your disposition, arguments and use of reason can be compared to that of a child, what does this say of you? You cannot be accused of arguing from the thoughts of infants, since we are incapable of concluding what passes through their understanding before they express it. And there is certainly a time when young children begin to think since their words and actions assure us that they do. But when a child is at last thought capable of rationality and basic reasoning, their notions lie completely open to everyone's view, as they are incapable of holding back. Are you that child? Are you easily led into flashy curiosities on metaphysical issues, perfectly willing to suspend your adult critical thinking skills by denying the magnificence of all creation, and moving on to make infantile philosophical intonations for all to see and hear?

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