Around the 40 minute mark, Tyler Cowen:
“I think all people hold onto some set of propositions which they do not subject to rational scrutiny in the same way that they submit other propositions to rational scrutiny. Furthermore, I think people use those propositions to socially bond with other people, and they tell themselves self-deceiving stories about how the whole picture fits together. In that sense of religious, I think all human beings, including myself, are religious.”
Tyler Cowen poses the question that is the beginning of philosophy: is the foundation on which we build our worldviews arbitrary? Tyler confesses that he begins with common-sense moral propositions which he is unable to justify (killing babies is wrong). Given one set of assumptions, the world is going to look completely different than given another set of assumptions. And if our most basic assumptions -- our philosophies – our lenses – are arbitrary, then how can we say anything? Nothing is clear. Nihilism won.
The alternative is that some things are clear. We can subject basic beliefs to rational scrutiny. We can test them for meaning. If one view is meaningless, that is, involves contradictions, then its contrary is the only meaningful view and the only possibly true view.
This assumes that rational scrutiny is how we determine what is true. This assumption prevails because reason is self-attesting. It cannot be questioned because it makes questioning possible. It cannot be doubted because one can’t doubt what they can’t question. Reason then is certain.
I think we ought to apply reason as a test for meaning to one foundational belief – something is eternal. If nothing is eternal then all came from nothing. Something from nothing is a meaningless proposition because these two are completely different. Being and non-being is the most basic distinction that can be made. And to make them the same at the point where one comes from the other, is to claim a contradiction. As previously said, if one view necessarily involves a contradiction, then its contrary is the only meaningful and true possibility. Something is eternal.
