I am baffled, please explain

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Peter_Plato said:
I accept everything you say above is true, but I still don’t believe it.
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Bradski: Do you accept what I have just said is true?
Peter: Yes.
Bradski: Do you therefore believe what I just said?
Peter: No.

I’m not sure that there’s much I can add to that…
 
PRmerger said:
Huh?

You prove running exists because you prove legs exist?

Is that your argument?
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Nope, you prove running exists by demonstrating the function of running (which incidentally, would be impossible without legs by the way). But you’ll say, “you havent proven running exists, you merely proved that legs exist” (which is what you said about my previous post about the brain and mind), which of course is nonsensical, especially if you’re looking at someone running across a field.
 
Bradski said:
Check out Dennett’s talk on TED: ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness?language=en

I’d also recommend his book: ‘Consciousness Explained’.
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I will take a look. I have most of Dennett’s books, but have yet to read them. I have read Arthur Koestler (showing my age), but his contempt for “reductionism” seems to get more and more dated as more discoveries are made. I “believe” there is a separate mind and soul, but my belief is just that–more a matter of faith in religion than intellectual belief. I think it comes down to the usual–virtually everything (or maybe just “everything”) can be explained scientifically. Whether you choose to go beyond that and believe in something separate like “the mind” is more a matter of religion than rational thought.
 
Peter_Plato said:
If you parse the meaning of “Cancer goes into remission all the time from purely natural causes,” it is not very clear that such a claim can be known. Sure, cancer goes into remission in nature and somehow “naturally,” but I sincerely doubt anyone can identify what the precise “cause” of the remission was in those cases where the remission occurred spontaneously from “purely natural causes.” As such, the claim is somewhat of a vacuous one - in the absence of knowing precisely what the cause was, we’ll chalk it up to “natural causes.”
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I guess you’re agreeing with me??? Obviously if they knew exactly what mechanism made cancer go into remission, they would duplicate the process and wipe out cancer. They don’t know. But that goes for any biological process–vaccination, for example. It doesn’t work for some small percentage of people. Why? Who knows. It doesn’t mean it’s divine intervention–it’s just that we don’t know the mechanism yet. Come back in 2200 and we’ll probably have all the details.
 
Aloysium said:
Mind and brain describe different aspects of the person who is a unity. While the person is one, these different “dimensions” belong to separate categories.
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While I “believe” that, my belief is religious, not scientific. I think you’d run into serious problems if you tried to “prove” the existence of a “mind” or “soul.” But that’s OK.
 
tonyrey said:
What is the difference? :confused:
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You are told about something. That is, someone gives you some informarion which may or may not be true. You decide whether to accept that information or reject it.

If you decide to reject it, then you will not believe what you have been told. If you decide to accept it, then you will believe what you have been told. You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not.

You cannot decide what to believe - you can only decide whether to accept information or not which then leads to you believing it or not.

You obviously cannot believe something without knowing something about it. So you need the information first. If you say that you can decide what to believe, then what you are saying is that you can make that decision irrespective of accepting or rejecting the information. That leads to this:

Tony: I believe X.
Bradski: Why?
Tony: I don’t know yet…

Tony, you WILL have a reason. Which leads to your belief. If you disagree then tell me something that you either believe or disbelieve where you have not gone through any process of discernment.

To save you some time, I’ll let you know now that is it literally impossible.
 
Bradski said:
You are told about something. That is, someone gives you some information which may or may not be true. You decide whether to accept that information or reject it.

If you decide to reject it, then you will not believe what you have been told. If you decide to accept it, then you will believe what you have been told. You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not.

You cannot decide what to believe - you can only decide whether to accept information or not which then leads to you believing it or not.

You obviously cannot believe something without knowing something about it. So you need the information first. If you say that you can decide what to believe, then what you are saying is that you can make that decision irrespective of accepting or rejecting the information. That leads to this:

Tony: I believe X.
Bradski: Why?
Tony: I don’t know yet…

Tony, you WILL have a reason. Which leads to your belief. If you disagree then tell me something that you either believe or disbelieve where you have not gone through any process of discernment.

To save you some time, I’ll let you know now that is it literally impossible.
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Many of our beliefs are not due to a conscious decision, Brad. We take them for granted - like our existence and the existence of others. Most people never ask themselves these metaphysical questions! And if they do they often rely on intuition rather than logic:

“The heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t know.” - Pascal

We’re not biological machines but persons who can choose what to believe, how to live and who to love… 🙂

.
 
Bradski said:
You are told about something. That is, someone gives you some informarion which may or may not be true. You decide whether to accept that information or reject it.

If you decide to reject it, then you will not believe what you have been told. If you decide to accept it, then you will believe what you have been told. **You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not. **

You cannot decide what to believe - you can only decide whether to accept information or not which then leads to you believing it or not.

You obviously cannot believe something without knowing something about it. So you need the information first. If you say that you can decide what to believe, then what you are saying is that you can make that decision irrespective of accepting or rejecting the information. That leads to this:

Tony: I believe X.
Bradski: Why?
Tony: I don’t know yet…

Tony, you WILL have a reason. Which leads to your belief. If you disagree then tell me something that you either believe or disbelieve where you have not gone through any process of discernment.

To save you some time, I’ll let you know now that is it literally impossible.
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I don’t think so.

If you know someone really well, trust them and know they are far more knowledgeable than you in a certain area (omniscient even) you could believe them when they tell you “X is true,” and, therefore, believe X without knowing that X actually is true because your knowledge of why X could be true or not is simply non-existent. Revelation by God is exactly like this. We “take it on faith.”
 
SonOfMan said:
Nope, you prove running exists by demonstrating the function of running (which incidentally, would be impossible without legs by the way).
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So I see an image of a man running.

Show me an image of a man “minding”.
 
Peter_Plato said:
If you know someone really well, trust them and know they are far more knowledgeable than you in a certain area (omniscient even) you could believe them when they tell you “X is true,” and, therefore, believe X without knowing that X actually is true because your knowledge of why X could be true or not is simply non-existent. Revelation by God is exactly like this?
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You don’t HAVE to know something is true before accepting it to be so. How many times do I have to explain this! But you HAVE to accept it as true, for WHATEVER reason, before you can believe it.

If you DON’t accept something as being true, you CANNOT believe it to be so. I don’t give a tinkers cuss whether it’s true or not. I don’t give a damn whether you accept it on authority and have no idea if it’s true or not. But you HAVE to accept is as true before you can say that you believe it.

Is this not BLAZINGLY obvious!

If the world’s expert on quantum physics tells you something about quantum physics, you will have no idea if he’s telling you the truth or not. But you WILL make a decision on it and the THEREFORE believe him or not. You will probably accept what he is saying if you feel there is no reason why he should be lying and THEREFORE believe him

If God Himself comes down to you tonight and tells you that the world is actually 6,000 years old, you will either accept what He says and THEREFORE believe it, or you may think you are being delusional, reject what He says and THEREFORE not believe it.

Do you not see a sequence of events here? A sequence that has been pointed out time and time again?

You are given information.
You accept it or reject it.
You THEREFORE believe it or not.

You know what? You have dug yourself so deep into this hole of your own making in trying to avoid the obvious, you really should stop digging. I mean, seriously, please stop.
 
Bradski said:
You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not.

You cannot decide what to believe - you can only decide whether to accept information or not which then leads to you believing it or not.

You obviously cannot believe something without knowing something about it. So you need the information first. If you say that you can decide what to believe, then what you are saying is that you can make that decision irrespective of accepting or rejecting the information. That leads to this:

…

To save you some time, I’ll let you know now that is it literally impossible.
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You appear to keep shifting the grounds for believing something from “whether it is true or not” to “knowing something about it.”

Clearly, we have different grounds for believing things to be true.

One ground is that we know the proposition to be true in an epistemically convinced sort of way. We KNOW, full stop, that it is true.

Your claim, at least by using the phrase “whether it is true or not” seems to be insisting that we cannot TRULY believe anything unless we have that kind of epistemic certainty.

My first intuition is to respond that such a claim simply isn’t true. We believe, often without thinking or questioning, a great many things told us or implied by the people and events going on around us. We “have faith” that we are being told the truth more often than we actually delve deeply enough into the truth of the matter to KNOW with any kind of certainty at all.

Now, this is where your argument gets dicey.

Your implied claim is that epistemic certainty isn’t what you mean by “know to be true.” What you seem to be insisting is the rather trivial claim that we cannot believe anything unless we believe it, i.e, have some reason, even a reason totally independent of the truth of the matter, to believe it. Well, that is to say something quite irrefutable because it is vacuously true. We believe things because we find them believable for any reason whatsoever, even reasons that have nothing to do with the truth fo what is believed.

Suppose the reason I have for believing a proposition has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual truth value of the proposition, but on something else, entirely – the authority, for example, of the one giving me the information? In that case, I am NOT believing something because I think it is true but BECAUSE I trust the truth bearer.

Now you might insist that such a position would only be held by wide-eyed buffoons and simpletons, but I would argue that is not the case. All that is required is an honest appraisal of own’s own expertise/knowledge, a willingness to defer to an authority on the matter and a developed and accurate sense of the trustworthiness of that person.

In other words, some propositions are believed/believable not BECAUSE we know them to be true but because we trust the ability of the one relating the proposition to us.

Ergo, it is NOT true that “You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not.” There exist other reasons for believing what we are told aside from whether we have worked out their truth value for ourselves.
 
Bradski said:
I don’t give a damn whether you accept it on authority and have no idea if it’s true or not. But you HAVE to accept is as true before you can say that you believe it.
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In other words, you are claiming the rather perplexing notion that in order to believe something to be true, it isn’t required that it be true – we could, in fact, have no idea “if it’s true or not” –merely that we find the belief acceptable for some reason or other, even a reason that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the actual truth of the belief?

We could plausibly believe something that, in your words, we “have no idea if it’s true or not,” but simply “HAVE to accept it as true.” Could you explain how it would be possible to “accept as true” something we “have no idea if it’s true or not?” How would having “no idea” count as or be consistent with “accept as true?”

And you claim my hole is getting deeper when I am looking down into a rather dark chasm filled with viciously inconsistent claims gnashing and tearing at each other. 😃
 
Bradski said:
You don’t HAVE to know something is true before accepting it to be so. How many times do I have to explain this! But you HAVE to accept it as true, for WHATEVER reason, before you can believe it… . .
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I suppose it depends on the definition of belief.
One has faith one’s spouse will not cheat on them when they can never know it. Hope is involved.
That said one knows most things only after they are tested. But this would be because they don’t really exist until they are, like establishing a relationship with God.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Suppose the reason I have for believing a proposition has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual truth value of the proposition, but on something else, entirely – the authority, for example, of the one giving me the information? In that case, I am NOT believing something because I think it is true but BECAUSE I trust the truth bearer.

Now you might insist that such a position would only be held by wide-eyed buffoons and simpletons, but I would argue that is not the case. All that is required is an honest appraisal of own’s own expertise/knowledge, a willingness to defer to an authority on the matter and a developed and accurate sense of the trustworthiness of that person.

In other words, some propositions are believed/believable not BECAUSE we know them to be true but because we trust the ability of the one relating the proposition to us.

Ergo, it is NOT true that “You cannot believe what you have been told until you have decided whether it is true or not.” There exist other reasons for believing what we are told aside from whether we have worked out their truth value for ourselves.
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Is it OK to make this more concrete? Let’s say the proposition is this:

“The Third Adam was born in Korea sometime between 1917 and 1930.”

So, let’s say you had an unquestionably verifiable encounter with Jesus. He appeared to you along with dozens or hundreds of witnesses and the whole thing was videotaped. He then submitted the above proposition for your belief. Are you saying that you would believe it?

Consider if that same proposition came from Sun Myung Moon. Would you believe it? Does the content of the proposition matter at all, or merely the one who submits the proposition for your belief? Are you saying that you wouldn’t actually believe the proposition since you have no knowledge of it, but that you would “believe” the proposition because you think it ought to be believed since Jesus himself asked you to believe it? But, you wouldn’t believe it if Sun Myung Moon asked you to believe it since he has no credibility? Is everything staked totally upon the credibility of the one asking you to believe a proposition?

What if Jesus asked you to believe an obviously contradictory proposition? Or, what if the proposition is logically incoherent? Some propositions seem like they cannot be held, for instance: “I exist but I also don’t exist.” Would you “believe” that proposition in the sense that you “mouth” agreement even though your mind is literally incapable of acknowledging the truth of a proposition like that?
 
SonOfMan said:
Nope, you prove running exists by demonstrating the function of running (which incidentally, would be impossible without legs by the way).
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The tap is running.
The engine is running.
The stream is running.
The sap is running.
The candidate is running.
The soccer tournament is running.
The wound is running.
Your nose is running.
The text is running.
The TV program is running.
The operating system is running.
The printer is running.
The movie is running.
The company is running (smoothly.)

Impossible without legs, you say?
 
PumpkinCookie said:
. . . What if Jesus asked you to believe an obviously contradictory proposition? Or, what if the proposition is logically incoherent? . . .
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What makes something “obvious”?
One finds contrary propositions all the time. They result from a lack of understanding of the unifying, underlying or overarching factor (eg the mind-body discussion that has been going on). The realization/revelation/discovery of the truth, makes everything clear (e.g. Christianity).
Many things that are true are incoherent (e.g. the Japanese language and usually the stats part of a scientific paper for me).
 
Aloysium said:
What makes something “obvious”?
One finds contrary propositions all the time. They result from a lack of understanding of the unifying, underlying or overarching factor (eg the mind-body discussion that has been going on). The realization/revelation/discovery of the truth, makes everything clear (e.g. Christianity).
Many things that are true are incoherent (e.g. the Japanese language and post-doc math for me).
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An obviously contradictory proposition:
  1. This sentence is not a sentence.
An unintelligible proposition:
  1. Invisible yellow universes taste backwards.
An incoherent proposition:
  1. This truth value of this sentence is false.
I will not give examples from Catholic theology because I think they will be unnecessarily offensive. But, just by hinting at it, if you know what I mean, then you suspect that propositions like these exist within Catholic dogma as well. Are we obligated to pretend to “believe” things that seem to be obviously contradictory, incoherent, or unintelligible? From where does this obligation come? Is it derived purely from the credibility of the one proposing the propositions for belief?
 
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