<< his amateur philosopher looks at it this way:
> all knowledge (description) relies on many axioms and many undefined
(meaning not formally defined) words (terms). all ethics (prescription)
relies on many axioms and many undefined words.
Why think that empirical knowledge or ethics is axiomatic in structure? Generally people don't organize their thinking in tightly organized deductive structures. Also, it's controversionw hether ethics is merely prescriptive and doesn't involve substantive knowledge. That position is called prescriptivism or noncognitivism, and it;s respedctable--my dissertation adviser (from years ago) Allan Gibbard is pribably the best known and most sophisticated advocate of the view around. But it;s debtable. I think is wrong.
> religious "mysteries", whether of knowledge or ethics, are axioms. so are
the rules of "reason" or "rationality" which may or may not be used by
religious people. depending on which axioms and undefined words we accept
(believe), the remaining theorems and defined words follow, IF we reason (an
axiom) and define with care. however, who says we have to "reason"? there
are plenty of "normal" people who reject that axiom too. they derive
"facts" in other ways.
Maybe you can put the point without the axiomatic language. Quine says we can hold anything true if we make sufficient changes elsewhere in our web of belief. Btw, "raesoning" is not an "axiom," but a way of getting from some propositions to others. The alternative to reasoning, i.e., producing justified beliefsa ccording to the correct rules of inference, is obviously not reasoning, using the wrong inference rules to produce unjustified beliefs. But maybe you mean that which are the correct rules is up for grabs,w hich is true to a certain point. After that point, we cease to regard the systems that reason suffiently incorrect as thinking creatures at all.
. . . .
> ok, philosophers, fire away!
--jks