Perhaps only peripherally related to the point of your post: I have a pet peeve about people using “X is absurd!” to mean they feel really strongly that X is false.
What I try to mean when I call a proposition P1 absurd in a context C1 is that P1 contradicts some fundamental organizing principle of C1, such that if I accept P1 the entire system of thought comes under attack.
I think this is what the absurdists (in a literary sense) are getting at: absurd statements, if taken seriously, challenge the ways we interpret events and leave us unable to trust the metaphorical—and perhaps the literal—ground under our feet. They challenge axioms, if you prefer.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re false, though it would of course be nice to believe that any system of thought I actually implement doesn’t allow for true absurd statements. It does mean that, if true, they are important.
If P1 is genuinely absurd, two things follow:
Any evidence that supports P1 (that shifts its probability up, if you prefer) is worth considering very carefully and explicitly, because the emotional drive to simply dismiss it will be strong.
If there is evidence supporting it, I should tread carefully around the implications of that, because it’s quite plausible that my normal habits of thought won’t work quite right for them.
(Yes, of course, careful and explicit and rigorous thought is always a good thing. But most of the time, its benefits aren’t all that immediate.)
Yes.
Perhaps only peripherally related to the point of your post: I have a pet peeve about people using “X is absurd!” to mean they feel really strongly that X is false.
What I try to mean when I call a proposition P1 absurd in a context C1 is that P1 contradicts some fundamental organizing principle of C1, such that if I accept P1 the entire system of thought comes under attack.
I think this is what the absurdists (in a literary sense) are getting at: absurd statements, if taken seriously, challenge the ways we interpret events and leave us unable to trust the metaphorical—and perhaps the literal—ground under our feet. They challenge axioms, if you prefer.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re false, though it would of course be nice to believe that any system of thought I actually implement doesn’t allow for true absurd statements. It does mean that, if true, they are important.
If P1 is genuinely absurd, two things follow:
Any evidence that supports P1 (that shifts its probability up, if you prefer) is worth considering very carefully and explicitly, because the emotional drive to simply dismiss it will be strong.
If there is evidence supporting it, I should tread carefully around the implications of that, because it’s quite plausible that my normal habits of thought won’t work quite right for them.
(Yes, of course, careful and explicit and rigorous thought is always a good thing. But most of the time, its benefits aren’t all that immediate.)
I think of this as “heresy”, and agree that it is a very useful concept.