C.G. Estabrook:
[Forgive me for trying to answer Carrol's important questions by posting the following 25 grafs from a book by the late Oxford theologian Herbert McCabe, OP -- God Matters (London, 1987), at least a triple pun. AFAICT this particular text is not available on the web. It's part of a larger argument in which McCabe, a Wittgensteinian Marxist, was an active participant. --CGE]
Me: This was great. Thanks.
Do you know BTW of any good online stuff dealing with Godel’s version of the ontological argument? My knowledge of modal logic is so shaky that I have only the vaguest grasp of it.
^^^^^^ CB: I don't see how the central philosophical question can be irrelevant for human existence. I mean I could see how this question might be irrelevant for human existence, maybe, but I don't see then how it could be the central philosophical question. The central philosophical question has got to have something to do with human existence, doesn't it ? What's the answer to the question , by the way ?
Me: There is no answer. You cannot in principle cognize "something" that stands "outside" the mundane world, which is where cognition applies. I mean irrelevant in the sense that you can be completely happy without ever raising it, and it certainly serves no utilitarian function. I fail to see how any human being could be uninterested in the question ”Why the hell does all this stuff exist at all? Why isn’t it just a big empty void”? (Which is itself a poor metaphor, since a big empty void exists, but it’s the closest you can come to picturing Nothing.)
I had an anxiety attack as a child once contemplating this. J “Why does anything exist at all? Why doesn’t the universe just flick out of existence?” No answer. Pretty creepy when you think about it.
One reason why I love Heidegger and the negative theologians and mystics (I adore Meister Eckhardt) is that they address this issue. So does Wittgenstein, in his way; I consider him first and foremost a mystic from the start to the finish.
Carrol:
I would like to understand how one could claim (a) That a question (Q) was the most important question to be asked and (b) that Q cannot be answered.
Me: The most important question from the standpoint of ontological importance, not practical. It’s the central question of existence: “Why are there existing things anyway? What does it mean to exist?” It’s the eternal baffler. Asking the question is itself the point, not getting an answer. You never will receive an answer to the question “what is being?”, “why do things exist?”. I don’t see how a human being can AVOID asking the question, frankly. It’s what attracted me to philosophy in the first place.
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