Why Radical Fideist Absolutist Pragmatism is the Correct Ideolology

Radical Fideist Absolutist Pragmatism (What I call "FAP") is an epistemological ideology which I have coined, which seeks to make the best out of the 3 ideologies into 1 radical package. Firstly, it is Fideist - meaning that it claims that to claim to "know" anything is an act of faith. This is because of the secondary aspect absolutism - there is an absolute reality which knowledge should conform to. There is no way to ever directly interact with this objective reality - we are forever limited by our sense perceptions and language to never be able to experience "absolute reality". This is why I renounce knowledge as "justified true belief"; we will never know what is true because we can never "know" objective reality. This brings us full circle to the last aspect of the philosophy: knowledge can only ever be used as "know-how" - we "know" something if we can apply the knowledge to elicit the correct response.

Image result for fideism meme
A pastiche of a Walt Disney Panel Commenting on Fideism, taken from Tumblr

I, therefore, renounce all "knowledge" that makes a claim on the objective reality that does not interact on some act of faith. I believe that there is no "true" belief that we can ever know, and that there is, therefore, no point in trying to seek "justified true belief".

Considering this fact, it would lead to the logical conundrum that humanity has progressed to build a civilization more powerful than any other animal has ever known. This progress was built upon knowledge, which makes the rejection of said knowledge foolish until you consider pragmatism - knowledge is fundamentally for our use and applications.

I, personally, consider knowledge as know-how - if we can apply knowledge to elicit the right response (or what we perceive as the right response), we "know" that piece of knowledge. Whether or not this conforms to any objective reality is a matter of faith. Most people dislike the idea that knowledge is "know-how" - what if your knowledge is fundamentally incorrect. I think that if something looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and acts like a duck - it's probably a duck. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, Newtonian physics is wrong (Robson, 2013). That does not change the fact that it accurately describes the universe or that it can be applied to engineering. Anyone who claims to "know" that gravity is a force isn't wrong by pragmatism (but is wring if knowledge has to be "true").  

References
Robson, Colin. "Newtonian Physics Vs. Special Relativity." Futurism. N. p., 2013. Web. 8 Oct. 2019.



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