{"id":4750,"date":"2014-03-26T19:08:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T23:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/?p=4750"},"modified":"2014-03-26T19:08:19","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T23:08:19","slug":"on-metaphysical-proficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/2014\/03\/26\/on-metaphysical-proficiency\/","title":{"rendered":"On Metaphysical Proficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you good at metaphysics? How good are you at metaphysics?<\/p>\n

When I consider these questions, the only sure thing is that there is no objective measure of metaphysical proficiency. I can’t even imagine standards by which we could judge it. It would be at least as hard to estimate as intelligence, and anyway, I doubt smarts correlates with metaphysical skill. Lots of smart people have said a lot of ridiculous things. I like to think that I’m better than the next guy, because, well, I like to think that<\/a>. This reminded me of the old highway driving razor:<\/p>\n

\n
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? — George Carlin<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d amend it to say:<\/p>\n

Everyone who is more dogmatic than you is an idiot and everyone who is less dogmatic than you is a maniac.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we are the metaphysicians we think we are, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more metaphysically charitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you good at metaphysics? How good are you at metaphysics? When I consider these questions, the only sure thing is that there is no objective measure of metaphysical proficiency. I can’t even imagine standards by which we could judge it. It would be at least as hard to estimate as intelligence, and anyway, I doubt smarts correlates with metaphysical skill. Lots of smart people have said a lot of ridiculous things. I like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[259,268],"class_list":["post-4750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphysics","category-philosophy","tag-metaphysics","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}