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WillP
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Is there any other kind?
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davidv
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There are four types of evidence:
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WillP
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Emperical denoted by means of observation or experiment. I, therefore, submit that the term “emperical” encompasses all four of the genres you cite. Unless you have something further to add, I think you must agree that that there is no other kind.
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tonyrey
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Do you believe your thoughts, feelings and decisions are empirical evidence?
Do they count as evidence or not?
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WillP
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my feelings are emotive responses to internal or external phenonomen. Hence, not evidence.
My thoughts are mental processes by which I carry out conscious functions; chiefly and for purposes of our discussion, these are reasoning and the formation of conclusions so that I may then rationally develop a plan for action (i.e. make a decision). Hence, these processes are not themselves evidence.
When one comes to believe that his feelings are, in fact, evidence of anything other than his own emotional state, then, I suggest, he is given oven to fantasy and magical thinking.
Similarly, when one begins to decide and draw conclusions about reality based on his feelings he is acting irrationally and not on the strength of evidence. When one acts on irrational thinking, the most that he can hope for is to be lucky.
Even when we act rationally we can be wrong because the data may be inaccurate or insufficient, or, our rational processes may be misapplied.
At least by acting rationally, the success ratio is high enough that it is better than luck.
Make sense? Hope this helps.
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tonyrey
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The question is whether you reject your** power** of reason when you are interpreting reality. Is it totally insignificant?
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HisIsTheCrown
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Please be as harsh as you want on me. I do not mind.
Let’s reset.
The question is: human individual knowledge is tiny little bit. To pretend that “I do not understand” than this is all is to be related to this tiny little bit of one’s own knowledge. Science is not all. Faith is needed.
Science cannot answer to the existence of the Soul, of God, and as I put it, to the vey fundamentals of “being”. Cannot and they do not care.
One cannot argument without getting personal. If France plays against Italy in the European Championship, you are in favor of France because YOU are french. And so for many other arguments. Clean and sterilized logic chemically pure does not exist. Logic refers always to the person who is talking.
As for the sentence less clear it was meant to say that man knows nothing about the boundaries of the Universe and of the infinitely small.
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cc42
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WillP:
To say that all evidence is empirical is absurd and can’t substantiate itself. There are other ways for arguing and proving things based upon logic and analogy which are not empirical.
To say that all evidence is empirical is absurd and can’t substantiate itself. There are other ways for arguing and proving things based upon logic and analogy which are not empirical.
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WillP
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- Evidence is proof of a fact or proposition.
- A proposition or fact is proven by resort to observable phenonmen
- Empircism is the practice of observation in some systematic manner to rule out competing explanations
- Therefore…
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yppop
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Will
Was your decision to leave the Catholic Church based on feelings or evidence? Was your decision based on “fantasy and magical thinking” or was it a rational decision based on evidence? If your decision was based on evidence, as I assume, please inform me of such evidence. You see I am a practicing Catholic and I think I based my Catholicism on rational thinking. Am I wrong? When I consider the reasons that people leave the Church, there doesn’t seem to be any one thing that remotely resembles “evidence”, but a lots of “reasons” that suspiciously appear to be feelings. I am certain that the evidence that you implicitly possess that makes it a rational choice to leave the Church would be of great interest to those that have left for less noble reasons. Perhaps you should write a book.
On the other hand, the fact that of all the institutions and social contracts that man has taken part in, the Catholic Church seems to have outlasted all the rest. Hey, couldn’t that be some form of empirical evidence?
Hope this helps your search for stability
Yppop
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ReapReason
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No. Age is not an empirical argument for divine origins, unless you can prove that it could not have possibly lasted without divine intervention. At most, its an argument for a very well organised and powerful church.
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yppop
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RR
Of course it is not emprical evidence for divine origins. I think you may have missed the meaning within the context in which it was presented. The sustainability of the Catholic Church is a fact of history, and in that regard can be considered evidence that its longevity derives from the positive values it has offered countless souls throughout its long history.
On the other hand, what rational argument is there to justify leaving the Church?
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WillP
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Perhaps the better explanation for my departure from the faith of my upbringing is not so much based upon evidence, but, rather, upon the “the lack of evidence” for the claims of christianity.
The claims of christianity, you have to admit, are rather extreme. I think we come to believe these things in one of two ways. Certainly, if one is taught to accept christianity’s claims from the cradle, then those claims become inculcated in much the same way as Islam or communismm is introduced into young minds. And in that way beliefs, even if otherwise of a bizarre nature, become a background worldview that allows easy acceptance of certain claims. Such an acceptance also facilitates one to migrate from similarly situated traditions to others (baptist to catholic or methodist to lutheran, and, even exchange among “peoples of the book” such as christian to muslum, for example). As a second means, if one is disadvantaged, educationally or by inability to critically think or reason, such as, in an extreme case, where one is unlucky enough to live in an impoverished part of the world and much limited by educational opportunities, and, then encounters a sophisticated and educated group of missionaries who bring medical cures and technological marvels, such beliefs can be easily purveyed as they borrow on the credibility of modernity’s marvels. Yet, I would argue that if one is raised without the inculcated beliefs and is still given the benefits of classical learning and is grounded in science, that person will not convert to a system of doctrines so contrived and so laden with bizarre notions as inspired writings transmitted from a diety, or, that men/gods can save mankind from an original sin through redemptive suffering, or, that wine and bread are anything other than what they are at their chemical level, or, that men rise from the dead and that there is an accounting based on judeo/christian ethics at the end of time. All of this is simply magical thinking.
I also believe that the universe and the human condition both offer rich and profound questions for exploration, study and consideration. That we dwell in a finely tuned universe cries out for an explanation, for example, or, what is the nature of human consciousness? is there a “self” independent of the physical? What is a proper and rational ethos? But these are questions that are not answered by Christianity or any “faith”. Christians, in fact, think they have the answers,and, that we need to have more people, that we should go out and convert more of us, that ritualistic magic will placate a diety and invoke responses to our prayers and otherwise bring about a peace and resolution to the human condition. I disagree. I think the “book should not be closed on” the many questions and issues confronting us. The response of faith to these questions only promote more misery, more poverty, more impoverishment, particularly now as we encounter 7 billion of us now on this planet with deminishing resources. More wars, more famine, more poverty and yet there remains the stubborn resistence of people of faith to depart from their tired antiquated beliefs and turn to science and a rational basis for resolution of the many issues we have to deal with on a pratical level as well as the philosopical questions of who we are and what is reality?
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WillP
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It is curious certainly how christianity arose and was adopted into the empire. Pagan beliefs seem to have influenced its original form as it initially was a sect within judiasm, and, then with its introduction to the Western empire it seems to have taken on some of the characteristics of the mystery cults prevalent at the time. People were slow to depart from belief in the family and traditional gods, but, eventually had to do so under decree of Theodosious in the fifth century.
After the fall of Rome and the incursion of germanic tribes, church hierarcy modeled after Rome’s structure, did certainly keep western culture alive particulaly during the dark era that followed Rome’s collaspe. When Europe emerged from the dark ages the Church was pretty much the only game in town and certainly it soon became tyrannical and authoratarian for a good many decades until the protestant reformation broke the stanglehold on the church’s absolute power and there was some lessening of its strength.
Altogether the long life of the church appears to have been a function of the organization that Europe needed and that the church was able to provide, undoubtedly enhanced by what seems to be the pallative affects of religion and the inclination of people to resort to supernatural powers in times of crisis, and, of course in mideval Europe there was plenty of misery to share.
As we become more advanced and technologically proficient, better educated and more sophisticated, these beliefs may begin to winnow away. The secularization of the west certainly suggests such a movement, but, regrettably, the secularization we experience is accompanied by nothing sufficient to replace the ethos (morality) inspired by the judeo/hristian ethic. That is part of the reason I think we need to upgrade the quality of life for a much smaller population before religion is abandoned altogether.
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WillP
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Yes. Sounds almost Clinton-esque. The difinition of “is” is at last definitely found and it is what it is.
This is a great argument. I’ll try telling him this.
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cc42
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WillP:
A proof or fact is not based eniterely upon observable phenomenon. Mathematics is proven from established universal facts that do not have to be verified throughout nature. Other universals like ‘murder is wrong’ also do not have to verified through experimentation in order to proven true…
A proof or fact is not based eniterely upon observable phenomenon. Mathematics is proven from established universal facts that do not have to be verified throughout nature. Other universals like ‘murder is wrong’ also do not have to verified through experimentation in order to proven true…
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WillP
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You don’t think that pi being run out to an inderterminate point is an observable phenonomen with which reason can wrestle?
you don’t think that the fact that society is impaired if a crime like murder is permitted is knowable by means of experience?
I regret that I don’t see (i.e. “observe”) your logic.
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cc42
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WillP:
I didn’t say that those things couldn’t be applied to the world around us (of course I would say that they could) or that our senses don’t aid us in witnessing instantiations of them. My argument is that when something is totally empirical it is entirely baed upon particulars but the examples I gave are universals. Empiricism cannot tell us truths such as universals. Our senses guide is coming to recognize them, but you can’t say that it is totally an empirical matter. The fact that our mind and senses are always trustworthy it itself a universal that cannot be verified by our senses.
I didn’t say that those things couldn’t be applied to the world around us (of course I would say that they could) or that our senses don’t aid us in witnessing instantiations of them. My argument is that when something is totally empirical it is entirely baed upon particulars but the examples I gave are universals. Empiricism cannot tell us truths such as universals. Our senses guide is coming to recognize them, but you can’t say that it is totally an empirical matter. The fact that our mind and senses are always trustworthy it itself a universal that cannot be verified by our senses.
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WillP
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- A fact or proposition cannot be verifed except by resort to something which connects us to the outside world. What else can that be except our senses?
- Empiricism is the application of reason to experience. Empiricism proceeds to universal truths. For example, observing that a rock drops to the ground from a height over the course of one billion attempts ultimately induces a universal truth that rocks don’t float, they fall.
- If your claim is that moral propositions are exempted from empirical analysis, and, argue, for example, that a moral proposition such as “murder is wrong” cannot be proved through empirical means, then I have to disagree. First of all, the proposition that “murder is wrong” isn’t a “cosmic truth” in the same way that" E=mc squared" is a truth of physics. Rather the proposition that “murder is wrong” is a judgment which is, of course, made “universal” only as a result of mankind’s experience with the observations that dead citizens don’t pay taxes. This experience becomes inculcated into mankind’s cultures because all cultures, if they are to survive long enough to become cultures, are compelled to recognize that killing people isn’t good for a stable society. Some society’s have found it helpful to add that if you do kill someone, you’ll be tortured by demons and hence, over the course of time, we have something like the ten commandments, the Code of Hammarabi and corresponding codes of conduct…
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cc42
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WillP:
- Again except universals have to already be innately known or a person cannot make a universal judgement. Pure empiricism believes that only particular judgements exist.
- It does not matter how many times something is witnessed, that doesn’t make it a universal. It could have been that that event just happened to meet the same circumstances that many times.
- I think that the statement ‘murder is wrong’ is as much of a truth as E=MC 2. I cannot conceive a moral society that does not consider murder to be wrong. Therefore I conclude that it is a universal truth. I think that is difficult for materialist philosophy to accept (which in itself proves it to be true) so explanations are given such as ‘murder is considered wrong because society over time says it so’ but that statement doesn’t indicate that there is anthing truly wrong with murder only that society at this time happens to think it is wrong. So it would be theoretically possible for there to be a proper society that didn’t consider murder to be wrong, but im my mind that is ridiculous.
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