{"id":3204,"date":"2020-04-09T06:39:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T06:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/09\/acting-as-if\/"},"modified":"2020-04-09T06:39:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T06:39:45","slug":"acting-as-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/09\/acting-as-if\/","title":{"rendered":"Acting As If"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Definitive answers to the Big Questions are beyond our ken. No one knows whether the soul is immortal, for example, and no proof is available to us either way.&#0160; There are arguments, and some are better than others. But there are no proofs. (If you have a proof, send it to me, and I will show you that it is no such thing.) So I say: Act as if the soul is immortal. So act as to <em>deserve<\/em> immortality.&#0160; &#39;Act&#39; means &#39;live.&#39; It does not mean &#39;pretend.&#39;&#0160; He who lives as if he has a future lives better than the one who lives as if he doesn&#39;t. That is true within this life and beyond it.&#0160;&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">It also does not mean: Act as if it is true while believing that it is false. That would be faking it. It means: Act or live as if it is true while not knowing whether it is true.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Does anything I do make a difference? The question is answered, not theoretically, but practically by acting as if what I do makes a difference. So acting, I make it true that acting as if what I do makes a difference makes a difference.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4fa0493200d-pi\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Act as if\" border=\"0\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4fa0493200d image-full img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0240a4fa0493200d-800wi\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" title=\"Act as if\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Definitive answers to the Big Questions are beyond our ken. No one knows whether the soul is immortal, for example, and no proof is available to us either way.&#0160; There are arguments, and some are better than others. But there are no proofs. (If you have a proof, send it to me, and I will &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/09\/acting-as-if\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Acting As If&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[497,372,310,250],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action","category-belief","category-james","category-pragmatism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}