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Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

#29: July - Sept. 2006 (Non-Fiction)
Saint Gasoline

Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Quote:Isn't he? That's certainly what it looks like when he writes, "A hypothesis to consider seriously, then, is that all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values...." And the arguments he presents throughout the rest of the book depend on that assumption for their exclusionary power.Well, there are many senses of the word "assume", and if you take it in a sort of scientific sense, then you could argue that Dennett is "assuming" that all values are instrumental. He isn't making an uncritical assumption that can't be supported by evidence, necessarily, though. In all science, a hypothesis and its effects must be assumed before it can be critiqued, and this is the type of assumption that Dennet makes. It isn't a sort of devious argument intended to fool theists into accepting his argument through accepting a dubious premise. Rather, he is asking them to assume the hypothesis and then he examines whether its implications are true, or whether such an account can adequately be made--if it can't, then the theists may have a point.So Dennett isn't stacking the deck against theists--he would only be stacking the deck if the premise was supposed to be assumed uncritically, without examination, and without the potential for being shelved.For instance, your point that "science can't touch these topics" seems to be a better example of stacking the deck against someone. What makes you think science can't touch these topics unless science has already attempted to address them and failed? As Dennett argues early in the book, to claim that these topics can't be touched by science assumes uncritically that science is incapable of explaining these various phenemonon--prior to even attempting to do so!Let us imagine a situation wherein people truly believed that a television set was something sacred and holy--something that science can't touch. They told all scientists that an examination of it would be futile, and that they wouldn't agree with their results. However, scientists soon uncovered a great many natural explanations for the television, and could even predict many things on the basis of their theories. Does it then make sense for someone to maintain that we can't examine this scientifically? Of course not. I'm with Dennett on this particular issue--if you claim that something can't be examined scientifically, you can only make this claim if it seems such an examination is impossible. Sadly, though, it doesn't seem impossible to provide a naturalistic account of religion.
MadArchitect

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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Saint Gasoline: And this is exactly why I believe methodological naturalism should lead people to assume an ontological naturalism. It is downright silly to claim that something outside of our epistemological framework exists for the simple reason that no one could ever have knowledge of this claim--anyone who maintains it would essentially be admitting that they have no justification for holding such a view.This would be true if everyone insisted on the same criteria, but bear in mind that the insistence on sense datum as the exclusive basis for knowledge is a relatively recent set of criteria, and the persistence of religious belief would seem to indicate that it isn't yet universal. All these attempts to get religious believers to justify their belief in accordance with methodological naturalism is a bit misguided until you can get everyone to agree that methodological naturalism ought to be the exclusive standard for all knowledge.This assumption doesn't break down when discoursing about immaterial phenomenon--we don't have knowledge of such phenomena because we have no evidence of such phenomena.I'm fine with that conclusion, but I think you ought to recognize that it paves the way for other conclusions which are not so easily brokered. Descartes pointed to one of the dilemmas, which is that we ultimately have no evidence that our senses are reliable indicators of what is happening around us. The gist is that evidence, even if we limit its efficacy to epistemology, cannot lead us back to any solid conclusion on its own.You seem to think either alternative is just as plausible as the other--naturalism is just as plausible as supernaturalism, and we can justify this on pragmatic grounds regarding the benefits we accrue from assuming one or the other.That's the philosophical pragmatist's view of the situation. I've been reading some philosophical pragmatism lately, so that probably bled into my discussion.Frankly, though, I'm a theist, so yes, I do think either alternative is just as plausible -- in very general terms.And the atheistic conclusion seems warranted.It's warranted in so much as the atheist assumes that lack of evidence is tantemount to lack of existence. I think that's a valid point of view, but an atheist who is honest with himself should recognize that such an assumption is something of a personal preference, and cannot be proven logically.If we want to insist on only drawing conclusions that are supported by logic and evidence, then the non-atheist agnostic's conclusion is the most warranted, because he recognizes the limitations of his access to the knowledge that could decide the question, and reserves judgement in accordance with that limitation.Clearly, the first hypothesis is superior to the second because it does not make needless and unjustified assumptions about the world.It does make an assumption about the world, though. What makes the other assumption "needless" is your interpretation of what is necessary to explain phenomenon within the world. What makes it "unjustified" is the same thing which makes the atheist assumption of an exclusively naturalistic world unjustified as well -- we are in no epistemic position to say for sure, one way or the other.An agnostic wants absolute proof for his beliefs, while an atheist is content with adequate justification, even though it is possible to be otherwise.I don't think either characterization is implicit or explicit in the terms. Atheism itself doesn't provide a methodology -- the atheist could just as well believe there is no God because his cat told him so, and she would know. And agnosticism doesn't depend on absolute proof -- just on evidence furnished by the senses.
Saint Gasoline

Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Quote:This would be true if everyone insisted on the same criteria, but bear in mind that the insistence on sense datum as the exclusive basis for knowledge is a relatively recent set of criteria, and the persistence of religious belief would seem to indicate that it isn't yet universal.Why is it that you think universality is necessary for epistemic criteria to be considered objectively valid? The simple fact that we are undoubtedly natural beings, capable of of reasoning about and experiencing natural objects out in the world, and incapable of "supernatural" experiences should lead one to conclude that naturalism is a lot more warranted than a belief in the supernatural. It doesn't matter if people exist who doubt that the entire universe is naturalistic. Universal agreement on epistemic standards isn't required, then--only universal abilities, and certainly all men are natural beings with the abiliy to sense natural objects.Quote:I'm fine with that conclusion, but I think you ought to recognize that it paves the way for other conclusions which are not so easily brokered. Descartes pointed to one of the dilemmas, which is that we ultimately have no evidence that our senses are reliable indicators of what is happening around us. The gist is that evidence, even if we limit its efficacy to epistemology, cannot lead us back to any solid conclusion on its own.And I'm a bit of a pragmatist in that regard. I don't look at "truth" as some sort of ontological reality outside of our experiences as human beings, but define it as something intrinsically bound with the way we experience reality as human beings. For instance, in order for Descartes' dilemma to stand, we must assume that we can take a perspective outside of our senses to see that they are unreliable, but this is frankly impossible to do. If we take a rationalist's bloated idea of truth, then yes, it is a possibility that our senses are not reliable indicators of "reality"--but a pragmatic view will look at truth as something more bound to our epistemic limitations. There is no need to ask whether our senses are adequate indicators of reality, then, because "reality" IS what we sense! What else could reality be? Why should we work with this festively plump and unverifiable conception of truth and reality when it makes more sense to describe truth and reality from our own perspectives as human beings? That is the problem with rationalists and that is where many of the problems of philosophy come from--because they look upon truth as something outside of human interests and experiences, when we should really only be concerned with explaining what is "True given human experiences" or "Real for a human". To speculate about anything beyond this is as silly as thinking that God exists. And, uncoincidentally, most rationalists believed in God! Either that or they gave way to a type of unmitigated skepticism like Hume.Quote:I think that's a valid point of view, but an atheist who is honest with himself should recognize that such an assumption is something of a personal preference, and cannot be proven logically.I agree that it cannot be proven logically, but this doesn't entail that a claim about God's nonexistence is based upon personal preferences. I do not believe that the possible epistemic rules we can take as foundational or basic are all equal--I think that we can distinguish between which rules cohere better with our exeriences as human beings, and so on. To me, not even foundational beliefs are exempt from criticism.With that said, even though one cannot logically disprove God's existence (except when it comes to contradictory deities, naturally), I still believe there is much reason to accept atheism. Given a lack of evidence, it makes much more sense to assume that something does not exist to produce that evidence than to assume that something exists and the evidence is hidden. Both views are compatible with the evidence, to be sure, but the atheistic view does not require assuming unnecessary entities without reason. This is why it is acceptable to believe that there is no elephant in your room if you find no evidence of such a creature--even though the alternative hypothesis that it is in the room but has somehow hidden the evidence of its existence is just as coherent with the lack of evidence.Quote:If we want to insist on only drawing conclusions that are supported by logic and evidence, then the non-atheist agnostic's conclusion is the most warranted, because he recognizes the limitations of his access to the knowledge that could decide the question, and reserves judgement in accordance with that limitation.I don't see any difference between the non-theist agnostic and the atheist, myself. Both an atheist and an agnostic can recognize that God is an open possibility, and yet disbelieve in God's existence. Nor is agnosticism that rational, when examined. An extremist agnostic would be forced to disbelieve in all scientific theories, all basic beliefs about the world, and so on, because nothing we know is "absolutely certain" and everything can potentially be wrong. The problem with agnosticism, then, and the reason it is irrational, is that it demands epistemic infallibility, whereas a more scientific or atheistic outlook is fallibilistic and recognizes that though our beliefs could all be wrong, this does not mean that all hypotheses are equally supported or that we cannot choose certain beliefs as more likely than others, given our experiences and a slight leap into the unknown.All knowledge requires a "leap of faith" in this regard--the difference between scientific faith and religious faith, of course, is that a scientific leap hopes to land upon some evidence and changes course if it doesn't, whereas religious faith is content to keep on free-falling.Quote:And agnosticism doesn't depend on absolute proof -- just on evidence furnished by the senses. I'm not so sure I agree with this assessment of agnosticism. To me, agnosticism entails an epistemic standard of infallibility. The reason agnostics reject claims about God's existence is because it is impossible to prove without a doubt either position. However, the same could be said of any knowledge we have, except for tautologies. Agnostics expect an infallible proof that either atheism or theism is correct, but we can't even get this sort of proof for accepted scientific theories. The best we can hope for is a hypothesis that accords very well with the evidence and makes no unnecessary hypotheses (especially if they entail the creation of "truth" conceptions that deluge our ontologies with conceptions of reality that stand forever outside of human experience or confimation).This conversation is amusing. Keep it comin'. Aye matey.
MadArchitect

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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Saint Gasoline: Why is it that you think universality is necessary for epistemic criteria to be considered objectively valid?I don't think we're capable of arriving at objectively valid criteria -- or at least, of knowing that it is objective. The best we can hope for, as a society, is consensus, and the closer that you get to universality in consensus, the better.The simple fact that we are undoubtedly natural beings, capable of reasoning about and experiencing natural objects out in the world, and incapable of "supernatural" experiences should lead one to conclude that naturalism is a lot more warranted than a belief in the supernatural.But those are not, at all, simple facts. Exclusive naturalism in reference to humanity is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint, but it is not in itself patently obvious. Again, the persistence of religion indicates a great deal here. Many religious beliefs holds that we are at least partly supernatural (ie. the soul or spirit is not a natural object), and mysticism as a whole is built on the idea that we are capable of supernatural belief. To tie this into our other conversation (ie. ekstasis), the character of some experience apparantly suggests to some people the possibility, if not the verity, of some forms of supernatural encounter.It doesn't matter if people exist who doubt that the entire universe is naturalistic.As I understood it, you were positing a direct correlation between methodological naturalism and ontological (ie. metaphysical) naturalism. I'm not claiming that universality or even broad consensus is necessary to justify a epistemic stance; I'm merely addressing the assertion that one should necessarily suggest the other. I don't think that's the case, and even a strict methodological naturalist should be capable of supposes the possibility of special cases -- unless, that is, he already assumes metaphysical naturalism.Me: Descartes pointed to one of the dilemmas, which is that we ultimately have no evidence that our senses are reliable indicators of what is happening around us.Gasoline: For instance, in order for Descartes' dilemma to stand, we must assume that we can take a perspective outside of our senses to see that they are unreliable, but this is frankly impossible to do.That doesn't really solve Descartes' dilemma. That merely describes an epistemic position, but recognizing our epistemic limitations says nothing about the nature of things apart from our knowing them. It would require a viewpoint distinct from our perceptions to verify the correspondence of those perceptions to the things perceived, but that we have no access to such a viewpoint does not mean that the perceived things don't have a reality of their own. Philosophical pragmatism, as I understand it, seeks to replace the idea of the thing in itself with a fully relational view of things. As a recognition of our epistemic limitations, I think that's a realistic transition, but philosophical pragmatism starts to fall into fallacy when it assumes that, because we're incapable of knowing the thing in itself, it necessarily follows that there is no thing in itself.(And, actually, as I understand it, philosophical pragmatism doesn't argue towards that conclusion, but rather borrows it wholesale from Wittgenstein.)There is no need to ask whether our senses are adequate indicators of reality, then, because "reality" IS what we sense!Maybe there are some schools of pragmatism that argue to this conclusion. I'm really only familiar the pragmatism via Richard Rorty, and I think he would eschew it. Rather, he would suggest that we do away with the notion of reality altogether. Whether or not we perceive reality is beside the point for him -- what matters is how we construct the relationships between perceived things in order to progress, in whatever way it is we hope to progress.I'd say that defining reality such that it invariably corresponds to whatever it is we sense ultimately does nothing but negate the value of the term "reality". It makes impractical, for example, any distinction we might have made between common perception and extreme states like paranoid delusion. If reality is what we sense, then the content of the paranoid delusion must also be reality, no?Why should we work with this festively plump and unverifiable conception of truth and reality when it makes more sense to describe truth and reality from our own perspectives as human beings?Because, a) experience tells us that a consensus view of reality is typically more reliable -- if nothing else, as a survival tactic -- than a simple correlation between "reality" and what is perceived, and b) once we accept the superior reliability of consensus reality, we stratify the notion of reality from the senses (since, after all, if our senses fail us on an individual level, they may also fail us as a group) and make possible the recognition that some hypothetical set of senses would be even more reliable.I do not believe that the possible epistemic rules we can take as foundational or basic are all equal--I think that we can distinguish between which rules cohere better with our exeriences as human beings, and so on.The problem with this, I'd say, is that it supposes a set of experiences which are typical of human beings, whereas it is entirely possible that our experiences are diverse enough from person to person as to render the notion of "our experiences as human beings" rather dubious. In fact, if our experiences are so commensurable as all that, I fail to see why we would have ever developed in the first place rules which failed to cohere to the extent that they produced an idea like God.To me, not even foundational beliefs are exempt from criticism.I'd say that nothing is exempt from criticism, but that the set of critical tools you choose may have their own limitations. That's a pretty fundamental critique I have of Dennett's thesis -- the critical tools he's chosen don't seem capable of performing the tasks I think he wants them to perform.Given a lack of evidence, it makes much more sense to assume that something does not exist to produce that evidence than to assume that something exists and the evidence is hidden.I won't go through the whole ringamarole again, but to reiterate my point on this, whether or not that "makes much more sense" depends entirely on the assumptions you've taken for granted.Both views are compatible with the evidence, to be sure, but the atheistic view does not require assuming unnecessary entities without reason.Ask around, and I think that you'd find something in the range of 99% of theists who disagreed with you on the subject of whether or not a concept like God was necessary. What I'm getting at is that your interpretation of the world does not necessitate the existence of God, but that interpretation is not necessarily compatible with the interpretations of others, and there isn't necessarily a consensible criteria for mediating or choosing between the two. If you had a fully articulated description of a theists worldview, you might agree -- without feeling the need to adopt either the worldview or the conclusions that it necessitated -- that, given those premises, the existence of a God would be necessary.Both an atheist and an agnostic can recognize that God is an open possibility, and yet disbelieve in God's existence.The very language itself suggests that a person can suspend judgement altogether and be an agnostic, but cannot suspend judgement altogether and be an atheist. If they were to sum it up as answers to the question of "Is there a god?" the atheist would say, "I don't know, but I believe there isn't," while the agnostic would say, "I don't know, and therefore I don't believe either way."Another way to look at it is that the agnostic might still go looking for some way to answer that question of whether or not there is a God (though that way would always be through sense experience), while the atheist would consider it a closed issue unless some new evidence presented itself.Before I get any flak about making assumption about other people's belief systems, let me make the apology that I'm only elaborating on the denotative sense of the words. There are, I know, plenty of people who choose to describe themselves in one term or another, but who don't exactly fit the descriptions I've made, and I don't mean to denegrate them by focussing on what those terms mean etylogically or denotatively.The problem with agnosticism, then, and the reason it is irrational, is that it demands epistemic infallibilityI don't think that's the case. True gnostic experience would, presumably, be infallible, because it implies the direct, unmediated experience of a thing. Agnosticism provides only for mediated experience -- that is, mediated by sense datum -- which is recognizably fallible. To that end, I think that agnosticism typically assumes fallibility as a feature of human knowledge, and is content to call that the best we have.All knowledge requires a "leap of faith" in this regardYou'd be surprised how many freethinkers resist this idea.--the difference between scientific faith and religious faith, of course, is that a scientific leap hopes to land upon some evidence and changes course if it doesn't, whereas religious faith is content to keep on free-falling.I'd say that's a pretty accurate description of most solid philosophy of science, and a pretty limited understanding of the way religion has developed historically.To me, agnosticism entails an epistemic standard of infallibility.I don't understand where you're getting this. Could you explain a little more?My understanding of agnosticism is that it rejects the notion of the mystical experience, specifically gnosticism, which entails direct knowledge of a thing. The alternative proposed by orthodox agnosticism is reliance on the senses as the only humanly available mode of knowledge. As such, the reason agnostics don't affirm belief in God is that the traditional Judeo-Christian God is normally imperceptible. I don't know that I've ever read anything to the effect that agnosticism demands infallible knowledge.This conversation is amusing. Keep it comin'.Agreed; as long as it keeps moving along.
Saint Gasoline

Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Quote:As a recognition of our epistemic limitations, I think that's a realistic transition, but philosophical pragmatism starts to fall into fallacy when it assumes that, because we're incapable of knowing the thing in itself, it necessarily follows that there is no thing in itself.I don't think it follows that there is no "thing in itself"--only that the thing in itself is something within our epistemic limits. Rather, there is no "supernatural" thing.Let us assume, for the moment, that there is some object that is totally incommensurable with our epistemic limits. Now, we know what it is to exist, to be true, to be real, and so on, but something totally outside of these meanings can't even be said to exist, to be true, or to be real. What could we possibly mean when we say that something supernatural "exists"? Surely we would no longer be using the word "exist" in the sense we normally use it, which would seem to mean that we can't even discourse about a truly supernatural realm at all. We can't speak of it as existing or even not existing, because these are terms only applicable to reality as we know it. It is in this sense that reality as we know it is all that reality can be--because these words like reality and truth and so on are formulated from this perspective, and there is no way they could be applicable from without it.Quote:I'd say that defining reality such that it invariably corresponds to whatever it is we sense ultimately does nothing but negate the value of the term "reality". It makes impractical, for example, any distinction we might have made between common perception and extreme states like paranoid delusion. If reality is what we sense, then the content of the paranoid delusion must also be reality, no?Now we are just getting bogged down in subtleties. When I say that reality is what we sense, all I mean is that something beyond our sensory apparatus and beyond the meanings of our epistemic words like truth, reality, and so on that are bound up with this sensory apparatus is not something we can hypothesize to "be".I think that ultimately this issue boils down to what we mean by "reality", "existence", and so on. In a way, we can argue that the content of illusions exist, but that they are also nonexistent. For instance, they exist as delusions in a sort of immaterial sense, in the way fictional characters, numbers, universals, or minds may exist. But, at the same time, we often speak of universals, minds, numbers, and products of the imagination as "not real", implying that existence entails a sort of physical manifestation.Could it be that God does exist--but only in the way something imaged or thought exists? An idea is certainly immaterial in the way that most conceptions of God would be, but ideas are generally said to not be real--if I have an idea of a unicorn, this doesn't mean a unicorn truly exists.Quote:I won't go through the whole ringamarole again, but to reiterate my point on this, whether or not that "makes much more sense" depends entirely on the assumptions you've taken for granted.What assumptions have I taken for granted, and how is it possible to see God's existence as "necessary"?If we examine what it is for something to not exist, it becomes increasingly clear that to demand evidence for something not existing is just plain silly--things that do not exist do not produce evidence. Given nonexistence, a complete lack of evidence is exactly what we would expect to see, and in terms of physical things, we could falsify this hypothesis by simply searching for and finding the evidence of the thing's existence.Now, the obvious theistic response to this is to argue that it is silly to demand evidence for God, because things that exist immaterially or supernaturally do not produce empirical evidence. However, as I've noted, this response assumes that there is such a realm as the supernatural or immaterial, and that it makes sense to speak of something "existing" or "being" in such a realm, even though these words are bound up with our human conception of existence.Naturalism, on the other hand, is not a needless assumption. It is clear that we are natural beings and our experiences are natural. (Indeed, to argue that humans are actually capable of sensing or experiencing the supernatural seems to me to be a contradiction in terms--if we could experience or sense something, then it is NATURAL, not supernatural. Besides, if one argues this way, then we could expect "supernatural evidence" to give us reason to believe in God, and it would make little sense to say that the belief produces no knowable evidence, as is the case with nonexistence.)I don't see how one could argue against the fact that it is indeed plausible to doubt the existence of God given the complete lack of evidence. This isn't based upon any unwarranted assumptions at all, but upon basic and obvious premises that no one doubts.Quote:You'd be surprised how many freethinkers resist this idea.I'm not surprised at all, actually. The only reason it provokes such a knee-jerk resistance is because it seems to have such similarity to religious faith, on the face of it. Of course, there is a huge difference between the two, in my mind.Quote:If they were to sum it up as answers to the question of "Is there a god?" the atheist would say, "I don't know, but I believe there isn't," while the agnostic would say, "I don't know, and therefore I don't believe either way."Personally, I take agnosticism to be a statement about epistemic standards while atheism is a statement about ontology. An agnostic is someone who says, "We can't possibly know for certain whether God exists or not". I would consider myself a sort of agnostic atheist in that regard--I agree that we cannot know for certain whether God exists, but I do not agree with the further agnostic claim that this lack of certainty should make it impossible to choose a side.Quote:To me, agnosticism entails an epistemic standard of infallibility.I don't understand where you're getting this. Could you explain a little more?Okay. Basically, an agnostic is someone who feels that we must suspend judgment concerning belief in God. Because there is no evidence either way, we cannot adequately justify atheism or theism. However, once we note that claims of nonexistence are NOT justified with evidence, but with a lack of evidence, it becomes clear that agnosticism entails an epistemic standard of infallibility in regards to claims of nonexistence. The agnostic expects someone who argues that something does not exist to prove this with some sort of evidence, and this is simply the wrong kind of thing to demand. It is like telling the person who denies that there is an elephant sitting on his head that he has to produce evidence of a lack of elephant on his head. How is he to do so? Can he just point to his head and say, "Do you see any elephant?" Not really--the other person can always reply that the elephant is there, but the evidence is somehow hidden. Both hypotheses accord with the lack of evidence. If the elephant was there but hid the evidence of its existence, we would expect to see nothing, just as we would expect to see nothing if there were no elephant. To an agnostic, there would be no way of choosing between these two positions, because they demand epistemic infallibility, that we prove beyond a doubt that there is no elephant, or that there is no God, when this simply cannot be done.
MadArchitect

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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Saint Gasoline: Now, we know what it is to exist, to be true, to be real, and so on, but something totally outside of these meanings can't even be said to exist, to be true, or to be real.Do we know what it means to exist? I don't think that's the case at all. Try providing a non-dogmatic, non-circular explanation of existence. It's more difficult than you might imagine.What could we possibly mean when we say that something supernatural "exists"?It would mean that, in reference to the characteristics we posit for a natural world -- and in naturalism, specifically, I understand that to mean every causal, material thing -- something exists which either does not have those characteristics, or which has some characteristics not included within the definition of natural. If you define existence in strictly natural terms -- eg. to exist is to be material -- then you're logically going to exclude supernatural existants from the picture. The question, though, is why we ought to define existence that way. From a pragmatic point of view, we may be able to argue that it is more useful in furthering our current goals to do so, but I haven't seen any argument that would lead me to believe that we have solid, evidential grounds for limiting existence to materialism. That correlation, ultimately, is taken on faith.It is in this sense that reality as we know it is all that reality can be--because these words like reality and truth and so on are formulated from this perspective, and there is no way they could be applicable from without it.If that were so, then it would also be impractical, and perhaps impossible, to talk about infinity, even as a mathematical concept.Me: If reality is what we sense, then the content of the paranoid delusion must also be reality, no?Now we are just getting bogged down in subtleties.I don't think that's a subtlety at all. In fact, it looks to me as though we were initially discussing subtleties, and I brought in a very practical reason for doubting the correspondence between reality and sensory evidence.I think that ultimately this issue boils down to what we mean by "reality", "existence", and so on.But you do recognize, don't you, that the terms "reality" and "existence" have historically been meant in ways that include non-material existence -- in fact, you might go so far as to say that, were it not for the question of non-material existence, we likely wouldn't have need of those terms at all. Rorty, in particular, objects to the use of the term reality as needlessly trying pragmatists to the dichotomies of traditional Western dualism.Could it be that God does exist--but only in the way something imaged or thought exists?I'd say that our epistemic position makes that a necessary conclusion. The validity of religion, then -- provided that we're not prepared to admit so-called revealed religion into our discussion -- depends on the correspondence between the imagined god and a possibly actual God existing independently of our image of god. If there is no such God, then we have to admit that our image of god is, in many ways, idle. But so far no one has given me good reason to deny the possibility of such a God....how is it possible to see God's existence as "necessary"?Have I argued the necessity of God's existence? I'd be pretty surprised if anyone could point to any thread on BookTalk (save one) where I've talked about the necessity of God's existence.Now, the obvious theistic response to this is to argue that it is silly to demand evidence for God, because things that exist immaterially or supernaturally do not produce empirical evidence. However, as I've noted, this response assumes that there is such a realm as the supernatural or immaterial, and that it makes sense to speak of something "existing" or "being" in such a realm, even though these words are bound up with our human conception of existence.That statement itself doesn't assume either of those things, and it could be taken as entirely hypothetical. It makes the same amount of sense to say, if there were some supernatural existant, then we would have no reason to expect it to produce empirical evidence. Given that such a statement is logically true -- and given our definitions, I'd say it is -- then we'd be unable to draw a conclusion either way.As for whether or not the terms "existing" and "being" are tied up with our "human conception of existence", whatever that may be, let's assume, for the moment, that limitation. Does that prevent us from expanding what we mean by those terms in order to embrace the existence of the supernatural? It seems to me like you're attempting to argue that the very terms by which we talk about existence render us incapable of conceiving of the supernatural. Frankly, given that people have been using just those terms to talk about and believe in the supernatural for the better part of human history, I don't see why we should take that contention seriously.I don't see how one could argue against the fact that it is indeed plausible to doubt the existence of God given the complete lack of evidence.It is plausible. I'm not arguing against that at all. What I'm arguing against is the contention that it is necessarily more reasonable to deny God's existence.I would consider myself a sort of agnostic atheist in that regard--I agree that we cannot know for certain whether God exists, but I do not agree with the further agnostic claim that this lack of certainty should make it impossible to choose a side.And on a personal level, I think that's fine. But the entire point of the tangent was to draw an analogy between science and the agnostic who reserves judgement.However, once we note that claims of nonexistence are NOT justified with evidence, but with a lack of evidence, it becomes clear that agnosticism entails an epistemic standard of infallibility in regards to claims of nonexistence.I doubt that's a standard that an agnostic would apply to a purely naturalistic question -- eg. what is the chemical composition of milk -- so I see no reason why they would also apply it to a supernatural question. In the case of a chemical analysis, I think the agnostic would be entirely comfortable allowing for the fallibility of sensory evidence. Where their agnosticism comes into play is the point of determining what sort of method allows for knowledge, and the agnostic's point of view is that our own limitations make sense perception the best choice, so much so that they exclude all other forms. I still don't understand how that would imply a standard of infallibility.It looks to me like part of the problem may be that of expecting a personal criteria to stand as a consensible criteria. In the case of proving that a person has an elephant sitting on their head, the proper question would be, can you provide evidence from sensory perception to demonstrate to me that there is an elephant sitting on your head, and if the person cannot, then the proper response is, then you cannot convince me that it is so. But the agnostic cannot expect the delusional man to accept the same criteria, for the simple reason that the choice of criteria is ultimately a personal matter. You can justify a particular choice with reason, but there are always, at base, premises that the person must either affirm or deny before reason can operate.
Saint Gasoline

Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Quote:I doubt that's a standard that an agnostic would apply to a purely naturalistic question -- eg. what is the chemical composition of milk -- so I see no reason why they would also apply it to a supernatural question. In the case of a chemical analysis, I think the agnostic would be entirely comfortable allowing for the fallibility of sensory evidence. Where their agnosticism comes into play is the point of determining what sort of method allows for knowledge, and the agnostic's point of view is that our own limitations make sense perception the best choice, so much so that they exclude all other forms. I still don't understand how that would imply a standard of infallibility.I don't think you understand the nature of my point, then. If we allow the possibility of "supernatual" realms or evidence that can never been known, then there is no such thing as a purely naturalistic question. For instance, in my example with the elephant, normally we would say that we are justified in saying an elephant is not on top of someone's head if there is no evidence of such a thing. However, if someone responds that the evidence is somehow hidden or unknowable, and that given this the lack of evidence accords with the theory, most people would recognize that this assertion is patently ridiculous and unwarranted.Surely an agnostic would have to grant this point--if a theist can say, "You can't argue that God does not exist from the lack of evidence because given the hidden and unknowable nature of the evidence we wouldn't expect to find any", then supposedly someone could use this justification for anything, simply arguing that the evidence is somehow unknowable or hidden. In essence, this makes it impossible to say that something does not exist, and the only reason it does so is because it sets too high an epistemic standard by allowing people to grant, without sufficient reason, that there is such a thing as "unknowable evidence" or that this sort of thing even makes sense.Quote:If that were so, then it would also be impractical, and perhaps impossible, to talk about infinity, even as a mathematical concept.The concept of infinity is not something that is "unknowable" or "beyond our reality", though. It is something that we can infer and discourse about based upon principles of logic and so on. This is in no way comparable to something "supernatural". For instance, most of the more obscure mathematical entities and rules are products of a large conglomeration of basic inferences and logical deductions. The fact that it is difficult to understand does not mean that it is utterly incomprehensible.Quote:Do we know what it means to exist? I don't think that's the case at all. Try providing a non-dogmatic, non-circular explanation of existence. It's more difficult than you might imagine.As I said later in my post, that's pretty much the heart of the problem. An atheist may say he does not believe God exists, but he may be totally fine with saying that God exists in the way that an idea or a thought exists--as something "immaterial" without any causal impact on the world, not unlike the way we could speak of the content of a delusion as "existing" even though it is not "real".However, I think you can still see my point. Regardless of whether it is difficut to define these concepts from our own perspective, it stands to reason that speaking of them from outside of it would be rather meaningless and absurd. To say that something "exists" outside of our reality is not quite the same thing as saying, "This cat exists" or "Greg's love for Yolanda exists"--we wouldn't even have the faintest idea what it could mean in that sense.Quote:Does that prevent us from expanding what we mean by those terms in order to embrace the existence of the supernatural? It seems to me like you're attempting to argue that the very terms by which we talk about existence render us incapable of conceiving of the supernatural. Frankly, given that people have been using just those terms to talk about and believe in the supernatural for the better part of human history, I don't see why we should take that contention seriously.The fact that people have talked about and believed in the supernatural is no evidence against my position. People will often speak of themselves as "seeing" something supernatural, but it seems clear to me that if something can be sensed, it is foolish to call that "supernatural". To me, it is a logical contradiction to say that you can sense or know about the supernatural. Those theologians with a better understanding of this concept admit that they do not understand it, that it is absurd and unknowable--and that is all they say about it. But then it would make no sense to say such a realm exists, because we wouldn't even know what that means when we say it. We might as well be saying nothing.
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Saint Gasoline: However, if someone responds that the evidence is somehow hidden or unknowable, and that given this the lack of evidence accords with the theory, most people would recognize that this assertion is patently ridiculous and unwarranted.If they made that assertion with no rationale to support it, then yes, I think we'd be right to suspect it. But as it happens, in the case of supernatural phenomenon as we've defined it, it logically follows that it would produce no empirical evidence.Surely an agnostic would have to grant this point--if a theist can say, "You can't argue that God does not exist from the lack of evidence because given the hidden and unknowable nature of the evidence we wouldn't expect to find any", then supposedly someone could use this justification for anything, simply arguing that the evidence is somehow unknowable or hidden.I think that's a limitation that the pure agnostic would be willing to accept. The agnostic position is essentially a position on which sorts of knowledge are available to us and which are not. And that's where it ends, really. The train of thought that takes you from agnosticism to atheism is not, that I can tell, implicit in agnosticism, and I can't see why it would be so objectionable to suggest that there is another premise at work in that transition.In essence, this makes it impossible to say that something does not exist, and the only reason it does so is because it sets too high an epistemic standard by allowing people to grant, without sufficient reason, that there is such a thing as "unknowable evidence" or that this sort of thing even makes sense.Why shouldn't there be unknowable evidence? Consider the position of a completely sightless animal. What would be his evidence for the existence of color? He'd have none, because his epistemic position provides no way of knowing the evidence necessary for that knowledge. Color, from his standpoint, would be a form of "unknowable evidence."Frankly, I see no reason to suppose that our epistemic apparatus is so comprehensive that there is no possibility of evidence that is unknowable to us. In a very real sense, the natural world is determined precisely by the extent of our epistemic apparatus.Me: If that were so, then it would also be impractical, and perhaps impossible, to talk about infinity, even as a mathematical concept.Gasoline: The concept of infinity is not something that is "unknowable" or "beyond our reality", though. It is something that we can infer and discourse about based upon principles of logic and so on.Not as an actual thing; rather we infer it as a concept, something imagined. We may be able to derive it based on the nature of our number set, but it's important to remember that the number set is an imaginative construction, not an artifact found in nature, and not something which produces evidence. Numbers themselves are not things; they're attributes of descriptions, and the descriptions themselves are not implicit in the thing being described. As such, infinity can produce no natural evidence, because the number set from which it is derived is not itself a natural existant. (This, incidentally, is a point that both Russell and Whitehead explain at length.)This is in no way comparable to something "supernatural".It is in precisely the sense that it is a) not a natural existant, b) incapable of producing evidence, and c) known to us only because we have derived it from axioms of our own construction.However, I think you can still see my point. Regardless of whether it is difficut to define these concepts from our own perspective, it stands to reason that speaking of them from outside of it would be rather meaningless and absurd.That may be so. But I think it's crucial that you recognize how much hangs in the balance. Because the fact of the matter is that so much of what we take for granted, and not just the supernatural, was achieved by, and is maintained by, acting as though such a point of view were possible. The very idea of a worldview supposes a view beyond the limits of our own immediate sense perceptions.To me, it is a logical contradiction to say that you can sense or know about the supernatural.It is so far as you assume that sensation is always relative to the natural world. Medieval man certainly didn't hold that to be true, and it's a fair bet that other cultures have held views related to the medieval.
Saint Gasoline

Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Quote:I think that's a limitation that the pure agnostic would be willing to accept. The agnostic position is essentially a position on which sorts of knowledge are available to us and which are not. And that's where it ends, really. The train of thought that takes you from agnosticism to atheism is not, that I can tell, implicit in agnosticism, and I can't see why it would be so objectionable to suggest that there is another premise at work in that transition.The fact that it is indeed possible to say that something does not exist, and the fact that we rule out the possibility of the thing existing but being unknowable, should lead us to reject all claims about existing "unknowable" things. If we don't rule out this possibility, then anyone who tells us that there are elephants on our heads but which produce unknowable evidence of their existence would be unassailable--we couldn't tell him he was ful of it. However, it should be clear that there is no reason to suppose this kind of "unknowable" evidence is a possibility. We feel it is reasonable to deny the existence of an elephant on our heads even if someone comes along and says this hypothesis is compatible with our observations because the elephant produces unknowable evidence--so then why shouldn't we also deny the existence of a supernatural realm? I feel it is reasonable to deny the existence of such a realm given the lack of evidence (for the same reason I deny the elephant is on my head), and it doesn't seem clear to me that saying the evidence is "unknowable" in the case of this realm is any different than making this claim in regards to the elephant on my head. It is quite reasonable to reject this unwarranted assumption.And, as I've said elsewhere, I think the concept of an "unknowable reality" doesn't even make sense.Quote:Why shouldn't there be unknowable evidence? Consider the position of a completely sightless animal. What would be his evidence for the existence of color? He'd have none, because his epistemic position provides no way of knowing the evidence necessary for that knowledge. Color, from his standpoint, would be a form of "unknowable evidence."Exactly! But let's carry this metaphor further. Let's say no one can see color at all. Color would be something "unknowable". Now, this is all fine and dandy, but it only proves your point because we are coming at this from a color-sensing perspective. If none of us could see or conceive of color though, then color wouldn't exist! It is in this sense that reality is in part "made" by our perspectives. "Color" would be unknowable if we could no longer see it, and by virtue of this fact it would no longer exist. "Color" is something that we add to our realities, and this is what I mean when I say we need to speak of "reality" and "existence" from our own perspective. It makes no sense for blind creatures to talk about the existence of colors--colors really do not exist unless there is someone there to see them.Quote:It is in precisely the sense that it is a) not a natural existant, b) incapable of producing evidence, and c) known to us only because we have derived it from axioms of our own construction. Again, I must insist that the concept of supernatural entities is not comparable to infinity in any way relevant to this discussion. I don't think that you can say that infinity is not a natural existent, for instance, because for me "natural" doesn't necessarily mean physical. One can be a naturalist and believe in the truths of mathematics--they just tend to believe that these concepts aren't "real".The concept of infinity is derived from basic axioms--axioms that can be "tested" in a very basic way by seeing if they accord with the empirical world--but the fact that it is not physical and doesn't produce physical evidence of its existence doesn't mean it is "supernatural". It only means that it is natural, but not physical. It isn't something that mathematicians go about saying cannot be comprehended or discoursed about, however--they frequently do discourse about it and the fact that it is implied from the rules of mathematics proves that it can be comprehended and isn't "unknowable". I really don't think this is a good example of something "supernatural".
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Re: Ch. 3 - Why Good Things Happen

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Saint Gasoline: The fact that it is indeed possible to say that something does not exist, and the fact that we rule out the possibility of the thing existing but being unknowable, should lead us to reject all claims about existing "unknowable" things.Who's "we"? And how did we decide that those were facts? It doesn't look to me at all that we, as a species, are capable of knowing that something does not exist, however much we may say it. And we as a culture certainly haven't ruled out the possibility of an unknowable existant -- for that matter, we as two lone conversants haven't agreed on that. It looks to me as though you're treating your own premises as though they were easily consensible, despite a situation in which they have failed to find broad consensus.If we don't rule out this possibility, then anyone who tells us that there are elephants on our heads but which produce unknowable evidence of their existence would be unassailable--we couldn't tell him he was full of it.Honestly, I don't really understand your motive here. Why are we so interested in telling him that he's full of it?There may be more, but there are in particular two uses of epistemology. One is personal: that is, it allows a basis for establishing a personal worldview and for determining what is and is not a valid criteria for personal knowledge of a thing. If that's the use we put epistemology to, then it should be immaterial to us whether or not someone else believes they have an elephant on their head. What really matters is whether or not we as individuals believe it. The other use is social: that is, it allows a basis for establishing knowledge as a form of social control or power, whereby we can reject certain claims by reference to a certain criteria of knowledge, and in doing so, further certain claims without having to give much consideration to objections that cannot be justified by the same criteria. It looks to me like telling someone that they're full of it is an example of the social use of knowledge. And of the two uses, I'd say that's both the less important one, and the one that warrants the most suspicion.We feel it is reasonable to deny the existence of an elephant on our heads even if someone comes along and says this hypothesis is compatible with our observations because the elephant produces unknowable evidence--so then why shouldn't we also deny the existence of a supernatural realm?On a personal level, I have no problem with that. If you look back through my posts, I think you'll see as much. But even if we maintain that on the personal level, I think it's prudent and rational to recognize that the epistemic criteria we set for ourselves may ultimately suffer from some defect, particularly when we take those criteria as an effective commentary on ontology -- that is, when we say something of the order of, what I can't know probably doesn't exist. Recognizing that fallibility doesn't necessitate that we change our epistemic assumptions. It simply makes us more felxible should we ever find good reason to change our minds.I feel it is reasonable to deny the existence of such a realm...And, again, I'm fine with that. I haven't tried to argue you out of that. What I'm questioning is any attempt to hold other people to the same standards, to direct them towards the same conclusions, particularly when you've failed, so far, to given any clear reason for why they should settle on the same personal epistemic criteria. And in doing so, I have argued for the possibility of other criteria.And, as I've said elsewhere, I think the concept of an "unknowable reality" doesn't even make sense.And that, as I see it, is a strategy for forcing a consensus. The question is why such a consensus is so imperative that it's worth attempting to negate the epistemic conclusions others have drawn.Me: Why shouldn't there be unknowable evidence? Consider the position of a completely sightless animal. What would be his evidence for the existence of color? He'd have none, because his epistemic position provides no way of knowing the evidence necessary for that knowledge. Color, from his standpoint, would be a form of "unknowable evidence."Gasoline: If none of us could see or conceive of color though, then color wouldn't exist!This is where your argument gets circular. Because the orthodox theists believes that there is a god who serves as the ultimate observer -- who has the capacity to "sense", in whatever sense that it's reasonable to say that god "senses", all qualities -- to whom, in effect, there is nothing unknowable. That presumably includes qualities which we are, because of our epistemic limitations, incapable of knowing. So to argue that there is no reason to believe in God, because we're capable of knowing all evidence, because there is no reason to suspect the ecistence of evidence we cannot know, because anything we cannot no cannot be known by anything, and therefore cannot exist, presumes a priori that these is no God -- ie. nothing that can know what we cannot know. The theist's argument is, of course, equally circular. It's a divide that apparantly cannot be bridged, and the decision to avow one point of view or another is likely premised on the adoption of propositions which are somewhat arbitrary.I don't think that you can say that infinity is not a natural existent, for instance, because for me "natural" doesn't necessarily mean physical.Then we can't make any headway until you've described in what way a thing can be a natural existant without being physical.One can be a naturalist and believe in the truths of mathematics--they just tend to believe that these concepts aren't "real".In precisely that sense I'd say that they avoid simultaneous classification as natural and existing. Either they don't exist but we're capable of supposing them in reference to the natural world, or they exist but as artificial constructions rather than natural kinds.The concept of infinity is derived from basic axioms--axioms that can be "tested" in a very basic way by seeing if they accord with the empirical world--Not according to mathematics since Russell, as I understand them. Russell demonstrated that mathematics is set which cannot be reduced to a completely consistent axiomatic set. Mathematics cannot, as such, be tested so as to demonstrate its correspondence to the physical world. It's a construction every bit as artificial as human language -- though perhaps more consensible and internally consistent.
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