The gourmet has not proven that it is impossible to make a decision, only that it is impossible to make an optimal one. In order to do that, he would have to collect data, presumably by patronizing the restaurant multiple times and ordering the same dish each time with different quantities of cheese.
Had the waiter simply reminded the gourmet of this, he would have generated possibly substantial additional revenue for the restaurant, not to mention substantial savings on cheese. It is therefore my recommendation that
He’s using the fine grating side, as is appropriate for parmesan
When using one of the small sides of the grater, you hold it by the large edges, but since you’re not rubbing your fingers up and down the blades you will be uninjured
Eventually the cheese would begin to form a singularity and the grater would exist on the boundary, slowing their own perception of time with each subsequent grate.
If all knowledge is empirical, you have your solution already. Just make an experiment. Use a heuristic to estimate an amount, test it and adjust as you go.
He did! The heuristic was “what the chef recommends” and the next meal will adjust that estimate downward… assuming “as much cheese as possible” doesn’t result in the collapse of the universe.
All information is empirical, but all decisions are not. Life clearly requires approximation, and this is such a simple idea which a ton of really smart people fail to grasp.
I agree with the pasta, which questions if it’s good enough and takes the notion of an implied revisit of another ingredient as a validation of its inadequacies.
If the rationalist deduces what is logical based on their empirical experience then their reasoning is flawed. We have to accept the axiomatic truth that our senses are limited and cannot account for an absolute truth.
To separate valid perceptions from invalid ones, a person first must assume that the world can be known through the senses. They must also assume that the world is objectively real. These assumptions do not get along well with one other. To say the world is objectively real is to say it is independent of and indifferent to sense perception. Then what in the world can we know? We can know only the effects of the parmesan cheese upon our senses, not the cheese itself.
You jest, but some actually do often confuse objective perception with objective reality.
Fact is though, the pursuit of a perfect vessel with which to observe reality is silly and impractical, so we make due with common shared characteristics.
In other words, the cheese itself is not cheese, we only perceive it as cheese
How would you define objective perception? If empiricism is equally problematic for all humans, then what could possibly qualify as objectivity in perception?
The objectively real world may be separate from and indifferent to sense perception, but sense perception isn’t indifferent to the objective world. Sense perceptions are caused by an interaction of our sense organs and the world. Surely from repeated patterns of sense perception we can draw some correct inferences about the external world?
We experience a world through the senses. We have no other way to experience any world that may or may not exist. The world experienced through the senses is apparently consistent, and if we do not deal with it, we have bad sensory experiences, or cease to be experienceable to each other entirely. So, since this is the only world we can interact with, and how we do so matters to our happiness, all we can do is take this world on its own terms and deal with it.
Add comment