Showing posts with label King Lear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label King Lear. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Doubt is a Core Value

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
- - - Richard Feynman

Here is how things go wrong: beliefs hold the believer. The believer acts, thinks and perceives the world through his beliefs and in order to support them, and is cognitively and morally blinded and enslaved; unable to inquire outside a narrow, nonthreatening sphere, and willing to use any means whatever to propagate the One Truth.  Then belief exists for it's own sake, and it can escape all moral restraints, with terrible consequences that are only too well known.The problem is not so much the belief systems themselves, but with the banishment of the one great value: doubt.