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froop t1_je5k2m4 wrote

Reply to comment by Emotional_Penalty in Our age of crises needs Bollnow’s philosophy of hope by ADefiniteDescription

'just because' really is the only reason though. It's the only reason for everything, ultimately. There is no rational basis for anything.

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Emotional_Penalty t1_je5kwht wrote

Not really, you can provide a basis for most claims, or grounds on which you form a judgment. I feel like baseless hope ultimately collapses into some form of religious thinking, where you expect things to go well because you just believe it will happen, with no good reason.

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froop t1_je5ofd1 wrote

You can provide a rational basis for less than ultimate claims. Rationality taken to its ultimate logical conclusion is nihilism, and the only escape is irrational hope.

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Emotional_Penalty t1_je5udej wrote

>Rationality taken to its ultimate logical conclusion is nihilism, and the only escape is irrational hope.

I disagree. Consider this example:

If I see clouds gathering and droplets on the ground, I can rationally claim that "It is going to rain" (putting probability calculus and wild cards aside for a moment). If I would say "It is absolutely not going to rain and it will be sunny" you can see that one of these claims is more rational than the other.

If I see governments taking action against climate change, trying to prevent nuclear proliferation and working towards a stable world I could rationally claim that "We can have hope things will improve in the future".

However, if there is really no basis for such hope, than saying that "We can have hope things will turn out okay" is honestly just a baseless claim and a similar type of religious thinking, as handing your life over to the lord because he has a plan that will always turn out alright (which is a perfect example of a baseless claim, however edgy it might sound).

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