Padding the Case for the New Atheism

[Betterave]

So Touchstone: Do you think that certainty/objectivity is really the most important/laudable/desirable goal for human cognition? Do you think that man’s only true intellectual end is to be found in contemplating the universe in an “objective” way, purified of exegesis and politics? That’s what I’m hearing, although I’m also hearing you completely avoid facing up to the nature of and grounds for this position.

I’d like to know what you make of the following claim of Thomas Aquinas:
Minimum quod potest haberi de cognitione rerum altissimarum, desiderabilius est quam certissima cognitio quae habetur de rebus minimis. [The least that can be had of the knowledge of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge that is had of the least things.]

Another thing: I hear you saying that hermeneutically complicated evidence isn’t evidence - it’s cognitively worthless. Now that, in my opinion, is the kind of claim that indicates a profound lack of education, a profound alienation from one’s own hermeneutic situation and your bluster about what would be admitted in the academy also reveals a profoundly fideistic belief in the power of the academy and an ignorance of its nature. Have you considered this possibility?

 

[Betterave]

Exegesis, like theology in general, has no feedback loop, no mechanism for objective calibration or error checking. You could be way off, and you’d have no way to know. You could be right on the money, and you’d never know that either. You’re just as right as you suppose you are, as is the next guy, and he totally disagrees with you. Do you suppose I’ve missed that calibration method, and theology has been grounded in some objective feedback loop after all?

Yes, you’ve missed the calibration method. How could you not, given the typical slipshod way in which you like to examine and dismiss both sides of complex questions in three sentences or less?

The bottom line is that no one “wins” at theology in objective terms. There are no experiments that disprove Calvinism in favor Arminianism like we can point to with the discrediting of the Steady State Theory by empirical evidence that clearly favors Big Bang Cosmology. The Steady State guys shrug and admit their theory has been falsified by CMB, and life goes on, and knowledge is gained.

So we’re back to experiment worship? I thought you weren’t into that. What did you mean when you denied that you limited human reason to the narrow confines of experimentation? I’m curious: what do you think mathematics essentially is (from the Greek mathemata - that which has been learned)?

Hermeneutic complication??? That is an outsided euphemism if there ever was one. This is epistemic incoherence. Protestants say “*sola fide”. *Catholics say “Not even!” And the sides form according to their tribes and intuitoin, and that’s as far as the epistemology goes – nowhere. All it admits is a subjective appeal to one’s intuition, an intution which informs the presuppositions which control any exegesis that’s going to trotted out as an argument one way or another.

What’s an outsided intuition? What’s up with your continuing to offer obviously stupid three-sentence summaries of hugely complex theological questions/historical (and current) debates. Why can’t you just look at your own all-too-human procedure in addressing these questions and grant that stale-mates can be artificially produced (in any domain) simply by the stubbornness of doctrinaire individuals/teams?

And stalemate rules the day, and the frontiers only move back and forth in response to political and culture dynamics.
Yes, but a scientist will tell you that when things drift that way, the situation is very bad, indeed. When there’s no empirical way to settle the matter, even in principle, it might as well be put aside – it’s theology at that point. String theory, one of my favorite physics subjects, has fallen into just this problem at points, and when it does, it’s a terrible thing for the enterprise.
What I mean there was that science operates on a shared epistemology, and one that gives empirical evidence primacy, and puts a premium on objectivity. There’s plenty of debate in science, but it’s amenable to resolution and knowledge building out of those controversies. Everyone is on the same “team” in that sense, scientifically. Susskind was right, and Hawking was wrong on black holes, and it’s now clear to everyone, and everyone is the better for it, and Susskind and Hawking are good-natured grown-ups about it. This is conspicuously at odds with how theology proceeds. The “teams” are committed to different epistemologies, epistemologies which do not share common ground around objective resolutions to questions at hand.

Really? Please explain this last sentence. Also, do you really think that there aren’t many good-natured theologians or bad-natured scientists, or that this is relevant to an assessment of the cognitive nature of any given project of human reason?

 

[Betterave]

I mean astrology as the ancient tradition – the study of the movements and positions of celestial bodies affecting and informing our daily lives here on earth. I don’t think it can be falsified any more than theology can – these are ideas that exist and subsist in their unfalsifiability. They can be shown to be superfluous and irrelevant to significant degrees, and it can be pointed out that the positive cases for each are weak. But as for how astrology and theology would falsify their own claims, I’m stumped. I can’t think how that would be done. There is no circumstances which would preclude the positing of an invisible, supernatural God, and neither are there circumstances that would show the positions and movements of the planets don’t in some way affect our personal lives here on earth.

This is based on your hermeneutic position: there are no positive claims to be made for theology. I would say that this is true of astrology, not theology, and that this constitutes a falsification of astrology. When a changed hermeneutic situation kills a particular theory/framework as a live option, that’s just what constitutes a falsification. That’s how natural science works too! The details of the internal mechanisms that are deployed simply happen to be of one particular more or less well-defined class which is different from others.

No. Like theology, it [astrology] survives because it’s perfectly immune to falsification. There’s not state of affairs that can prove it false. The most we can hope for is showing that is weak in a positive sense, and superfluous to a working knowledge of the world around us.

As I just said, I think you’re wrong about this and that your notion of falsification is merely an unrealistic theoretical construct, invented to justify/coincide with your unreasonable epistemological views which stipulate that the only knowledge worth having is ‘objective’. That said, astrology is a name; what is represents can change. You seem to ignore this. Astrology survives in name only, does it not? (I’m certainly not an expert on this, but that’s my more or less educated sense of the matter. What’s yours?)

 

[Touchstone]

There is a uggestion here, despite your use of the term “records” that Christianity somehow condones this law. You and I both know that this is not tue.

Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by “condones”. So far as I know, orthodox Christianity upholds the justice of that punishment during the era that Levitical law was in force. That doesn’t mean that Christianity commends that punishment now – it’s a new era now, and all, now that Christ has established a new covenant, etc. Paul in Romans 1 fulminates in all the “abomination-affirming” ways about homosexual practices, but indeed, no NT demands for the stoning of homosexuals are forthcoming; God will give them their just dues in the afterlife, after all.

But it’s nothing short of perverse and profoundly wicked to condone such practices even in an archaic sense – that was God’s justice then, we just do things differently now. Such a god, even if he has allowed himself to be reformed later by man’s conscience eventually surpassing his own, is a thing to revile.

But I may be wrong, and stand to be corrected, if so. Do you suppose orthodox Christianity does not teach that a) God declared homosexuality an abomination under Levitical law, and b) such offenders were to be put to death under that law?

It may be that Catholic teaching holds that such provisions in the OT were not given by God, despite its claims. I certainly have had many Catholics express doubt about whether God really demanded the genocidal slaughter of the Midianites, supposing this was some “political spin” but on a bloodthirsty episode in Hebrew political history, in efforts to sanctify such horrors by covering them in divine commands. The text says that God is source of the genocidal directive, though, in any case.

Does the Catholic church teach that God was not the source of this (and/or other) aspects of Levitical law as the OT claims? Could be. If so, though, I’m not aware.

See here, for example, a recent thread at CAF on stoning and the Levitical law. No one there speaks for the Vatican, or Christianity more widely, but you can clearly see the reluctance of Catholics to divorce themselves from the barbaric cruelty of the OT god. Who are we to judge God, etc.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

So Touchstone: Do you think that certainty/objectivity is really the most important/laudable/desirable goal for human cognition?

I think objective reasoning from evidence is singular in its demonstrability as knowledge. Certainty I think is a mythic goal – something to strive toward, but never reached for a human. But heuristics that emphasize empirical evidence, objectivity and falsifiability requirements are manifestly more capable of showing their knowledge to be actual, operative knowledge. So to the extent one values that, yes, such heuristics are best.

Do you think that man’s only true intellectual end is to be found in contemplating the universe in an “objective” way, purified of exegesis and politics?

Politics cannot be avoid. Man is a social animal. So no getting around that one – to be human is to be political. Politics can and should be informed by objective reasoning, but it will always be a subjective exercise, a matter of choices and preferences toward goals.

Exegesis, on the other hand, is a different matter. I note that a lot of my personal freedom in this country depends on the exegesis of the US Constitution, a dependency politics has wherever there is law – law must be interpreted to reified and effective. There is a practical imperative there. But what is the imperative of exegetical pronouncements from the Qur’an, the Bible, or the Vedas? It’s only as important as the authority one ascribes to the text beforehand. Unlike legal exegesis, which is a practical necessity for living under laws, the exegetical problems of those texts bear no such obligation for us.

That’s what I’m hearing, although I’m also hearing you completely avoid facing up to the nature of and grounds for this position.

My grounds are simple and clear: we allocate our beliefs in proportion to the case for such a belief, where “case” indicates evidence, objectivity and falsifiability as virtues commending that belief. Those grounds are post-facto justifications – it’s a heuristic that works when deployed as a model for knowledge and belief. Making belief commensurate with the strength of the evidence and reasoning behind it works to minimize errors and drive positive beliefs and the embrace of real knowledge.

I haven’t been ambiguous about this at all, I don’t think.

I’d like to know what you make of the following claim of Thomas Aquinas:
Minimum quod potest haberi de cognitione rerum altissimarum, desiderabilius est quam certissima cognitio quae habetur de rebus minimis. [The least that can be had of the knowledge of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge that is had of the least things.]

Equivocation on knowledge. Aquinas was just quite self-indulgent and frivolous about the concept of knowledge. In a modern sense, he failed to think seriously about knowledge, and this quote shows where that leads. But it’s not his fault that he lived in the 13th century. Modern thinkers today who embrace such frivolous notions of “knowledge” have no such excuse.

If you needed to have Aquinas demonstrate that his “highest knowledge” was in fact knowledge, as opposed to say, a 13 century Buddhist’s claims to knowledge of higher things, what would he do to demonstrate that, in your view?

Another thing: I hear you saying that hermeneutically complicated evidence isn’t evidence - it’s cognitively worthless. Now that, in my opinion, is the kind of claim that indicates a profound lack of education, a profound alienation from one’s own hermeneutic situation and your bluster about what would be admitted in the academy also reveals a profoundly fideistic belief in the power of the academy and an ignorance of its nature. Have you considered this possibility?

There’s nothing fideistic about at all. It’s anti-fideism in action – that’s what the “belief commensurate with the evidence” principle announces. I don’t have to have “faith in the academy” to see for myself, and along with everyone else the efficacy of real knowledge. I fly in 200,000 lb airplanes four or five times a month at 35,000 feet, doing 500 knots. I take FluMist vaccine in my nose – purposely acquiring a virus! – as a prophylactic against the non-attenuated, virulent form of the swine flu. I secure extremely high value digital credentials with “keys” generated from a random number generator based on isotope decay events, based on the scientific knowledge that such a source is as random as we are likely to get.

I don’t have to trust that this and so many other manifestations of real knowledge work in real life – I and the rest of the community around can witness it, and interact with it first hand. Real knowledge acquits itself through performance. It’s the strongest heuristic available, because it’s performative.

I am educated enough to understand and assess the epistemic foundations of a claim or a belief. On what does this belief stand? Through what means is it justified, and by what means is it proved out in such a way that we can reasonably expect truths to be identified objectively and errors, too? And surveying all the competing claims, theological ones fare terribly, for the most part, and get reduced to subjective soliloquies. There’s a place for that, too, but it’s not something to confuse with real knowledge.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Yes, you’ve missed the calibration method. How could you not, given the typical slipshod way in which you like to examine and dismiss both sides of complex questions in three sentences or less?

Fair enough, then. What is this calibration method I’ve missed. What is my method for finding cases where I’ve fallen into error, and have been fooling myself, indulging subjective intuitions as a proxy for objective truth?

It’s odd that you claim I’ve missed it, but yet make not even a passing reference as to what that method is.

So we’re back to experiment worship?

It’s no more worship than my “worship” of a good chain saw for cutting firewood for the coming winter out back. It’s a tool. It’s valued for its utility.

I thought you weren’t into that. What did you mean when you denied that you limited human reason to the narrow confines of experimentation?

Reasoning is something that gets applied experience and experimentation. We can reason about all sorts of things that are not grounded in states of affairs in the real world, too. One thing I’ve done in my software adventures is to develop exotic geometries, geometries which are not mappable to the real world at all, but are internally coherent and self-consistent, and which do (or may) have utility in finding resolutions to other math questions. That’s applied reasoning, but it’s not empirical.

I’m curious: what do you think mathematics essentially is (from the Greek mathemata - that which has been learned)?

Math is symbolic calculus – formalized rules systems.

What’s an outsided intuition?

It’s a typo. That should have read “outsized intuition”, there, apologies.

What’s up with your continuing to offer obviously stupid three-sentence summaries of hugely complex theological questions/historical (and current) debates. Why can’t you just look at your own all-too-human procedure in addressing these questions and grant that stale-mates can be artificially produced (in any domain) simply by the stubbornness of doctrinaire individuals/teams?

No stubbornness needed. Theology just doesn’t perform in an objective way. It only “works” to the extent their proponents believe it does. George Gamow goes out on a limb and says that if Penzias & Wilson’s discovery got interpreted right (Big bang Theory), then there are some novel, empirical predictions that proceed from that, the most famous of which he ventured would be the finding of cosmic microwave background radiation that matches the cooling/expansion dynamics proposed by BBT. And whaddya know, it took several decades, but the prediction came through in spades. And you don’t have to be a Buddhist or a Mormon or a Jesuit or an atheist to get it, to see that the prediction was spectacularly borne out by evidence.

Really? Please explain this last sentence. Also, do you really think that there aren’t many good-natured theologians or bad-natured scientists, or that this is relevant to an assessment of the cognitive nature of any given project of human reason?

No, I’m quite familiar with both many good natured theologians and evil scientists. That’s to be expected. The problem with theology, going right back through Aquinas (and further back to Aristotle and beyond) is that it is not rigorous in its epistemology. It’s lax and promiscuous in the way it construes “knowledge”. That doesn’t mean can’t be perfectly good natured in going about pursuit of “knowledge” based on frivolous epistemologies, it can be done, and happens all the time.

When the epistemology avails itself of objectivity, though, it changes its nature to the extent it moves toward objectivity (with humans involved, it’ll never be perfectly objective, of course). Now, epistemology becomes a “team thing” – not a team as in religious affinities where people get together in clusters of beliefs they happen to find similar, but which are based on their own subjective fancies, but as a team in the method of acquiring knowledge itself.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

This is based on your hermeneutic position: there are no positive claims to be made for theology. I would say that this is true of astrology, not theology, and that this constitutes a falsification of astrology.

My understanding is that claims are cheap and easy. People can and do make claims about all sorts of things, including astrology ('Jupiter is in the 10th house, approaching the dignity of Saturn – best to minimize your social contacts today, Capricorns!", or whatever), theology, and whatever other subjects you want to name, including all the scientific ones. If by “positive claims” you mean claims that correspond with evidence, there’s no way to judge what is evidence and what the implications are for that evidence without a guiding epistemology. And this is where theology, like astrology, is thoroughly pre-modern (and, all things old becoming new, thoroughly post-modern in a strong sense, too) as it helps itself to subjective qualifications to what counts as evidence and what its implications are. “Evidence is in the eye of the beholder”, under those epistemologies. And if you talk to people that embrace astrology seriously – I have two friends I’ve worked with on and off for years now who live in the UK (I guess astrology is more people there?) who are earnest subscribers to these ideas, for example – they help themselves to the same kinds of capricious and purely intuitional criteria as to what counts as ‘evidence’ as theologians do.

And indeed, scientists, on the “front side” of the process, come up with all sorts of diverse ideas, some pretty wacky – see, for example the (apparently straight faced) pair of scientists who suggested that “the future” was fighting back against the Large Hadron Collider to prevent the LHC from working so as to keep the universe in good order – the recent breakdowns in the equipment being a necessary “sabotage” by the future to protect itself.

Yow.

Science is, without the “backend” – the testing/validation/falsification/prediction regimen a hypothesis is subjected – as liable to be just as unhinged and goofy as astrology or theology, or any other philosophy that makes statements about reality but is not corrigible by that same reality. But science does have that corrective feedback loop and this is the crucial difference between it and astrology or theology in terms of epistemology. It is accountable – at the brutal mercy of the facts and evidence – for its claims.

But claims themselves are easy, trivial. Anyone can launch them for any reason. And they do.

When a changed hermeneutic situation kills a particular theory/framework as a live option, that’s just what constitutes a falsification. That’s how natural science works too! The details of the internal mechanisms that are deployed simply happen to be of one particular more or less well-defined class which is different from others.

This is really vague. Can you be more explicit here? When a hypothesis or theory is falsified in science, that is the hermeneutic holding together. The heuristic that guides the interpretation of data (the hermeneutics) is one that demands validation empirically. When the data overturn the current, best fitting interpretation, a new interpretation is embraced, if one can be found, because by “overturned” we mean to say that the evidence and data are authoritative in science, and outrank any interpretative goals. If Einstein thinks “God doesn’t place dice”, that sentiment just gets a shrug as the data rolls in – such a conviction isn’t economical in explaining the data, and is a non-performing model of reality, compared to “dice rolling” models.

As I just said, I think you’re wrong about this and that your notion of falsification is merely an unrealistic theoretical construct, invented to justify/coincide with your unreasonable epistemological views which stipulate that the only knowledge worth having is ‘objective’.

I’m not comfortable with the “worth having” part. There are lots of convictions we have and that I have that are not “knowledge” in the sense we’re talking about here, but are nonetheless worth having and keeping. That’s a value judgment the “worth having” part. My interest is in de-clouding the terminology and concepts here, and debunking some of the many false claims to knowledge – not just claims that are false in themselves, but something worse, claims that are not “true or false” in any meaningful sense, but simply seek to steal and exploit the good name and intellectual capital invested in the term “knowledge”. There’s lots of good reasons to embrace non-knowledge, and in many ways, we cannot avoid doing so, nor should we. But we can be honest and clear about what we are claiming, and to acknowledge what is non-knowledge as separate from knowledge.

That said, astrology is a name; what is represents can change. You seem to ignore this. Astrology survives in name only, does it not? (I’m certainly not an expert on this, but that’s my more or less educated sense of the matter. What’s yours?)

My understanding is that astrology, from its ancient Greek (or before, perhaps?) roots, was the investigation in to the role the relative positions of heavenly bodies played in the events and affairs of man in his life on earth. As such, I think astrology today, just as you see in the horoscopes printed in your daily newspaper, is predicated on the same claims to knowledge in this area as it ever was, and is substantially the same now it was 2000 years ago and more – the superstitious idea that where the planets are with respect to each other somehow controls or affects our destinies, relationships, priorities and circumstances here on earth. It’s a lot like theology in that respect, only pointing at planets for its *telos, *as opposed to some supernatural, invisible person (or persons).

-TS

 

[Fran65]

Touchstone,
There is a difference between teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered - which is Catholic teaching - although not accepted by some Catholics - and accepting that stoning to death is an appropriate punishment.

It is accepted by the CC that scripture is the inspired word of God, but that it has been filtered through human minds which are imperfect.This is one of the reasons that the CC teaches that scripture needs to be interpreted, in contrast to the Protestant teaching of sola scripture.

In addition, the CC also teaches that our knowledge and understanding of God and His ways are also developing. We do not have a perfect knowledge of God, as Paul says, we see as through a glass darkly. It is to be expected that we humans will misinterpret God’s teachings and that those misinterpretations will be influenced by society, culture and history. Tlhis understanding means that stoning was not God’s justice, it was man’s justice and how horribly different those are at times. Remember Jesus’ words regarding the punishment of the adulterous woman in John 8:7?

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her

.
That is the Catholic understanding of the stoning of the sinful.

Frances

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi Touchstone,

I’m hesitant to enter into the fray here, as I don’t have a lot of time up my sleeve and am happy to observe you and Betterave going at it. However, I am interested in a couple of things.

I think objective reasoning from evidence is singular in its demonstrability as knowledge. Certainty I think is a mythic goal – something to strive toward, but never reached for a human. But heuristics that emphasize empirical evidence, objectivity and falsifiability requirements are manifestly more capable of showing their knowledge to be actual, operative knowledge.

I know that I love my wife. I am absolutely certain about this. Am I using the term “know” incorrectly here? I definitely do not go through any process of obtaining objectivity for this knowledge (indeed how could I?), falsifiability seems completely out of place regarding this knowledge and what could be the empirical evidence acting on such knowledge? I would be interested in how you view this.

My grounds are simple and clear: we allocate our beliefs in proportion to the case for such a belief, where “case” indicates evidence, objectivity and falsifiability as virtues commending that belief.

What sort of beliefs or knowledge are you talking about here? Beliefs regarding such things as “electrons exist”, or beliefs regarding whether I am now looking at a computer screen, that I actually existed 5 seconds ago, that 1+1=2, that I love my wife, that other minds exist etc. The latter beliefs can all meaningfully be considered to be knowledge, but they in no way involve going through a process of acquiring evidence, getting others to test their objectivity and dreaming up ways to falsify said beliefs. Yet, these types of beliefs are fundamental before you can even start looking at scientific type beliefs. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Touchstone]

Hi Touchstone,

I’m hesitant to enter into the fray here, as I don’t have a lot of time up my sleeve and am happy to observe you and Betterave going at it. However, I am interested in a couple of things.

OK. Fire away!

I know that I love my wife. I am absolutely certain about this. Am I using the term “know” incorrectly here? I definitely do not go through any process of obtaining objectivity for this knowledge (indeed how could I?), falsifiability seems completely out of place regarding this knowledge and what could be the empirical evidence acting on such knowledge? I would be interested in how you view this.

Well, I think that’s a belief that is a good one to be accountable to your wife and others on. Does your wife agree that your actions, statements and the attitudes toward her support the idea that you love her? What would friends, family, kids say?

I’ve certainly had male friends refuse all outside testimony, the judgment of friends and family, the people who know them best, upset by the friend’s treatment of his wife and kids. “I love my, you know that. But it’s complicated…” he says from his condo shared with a new girlfriend after moving out, leaving Mom and the kids without Dad around anymore… Maybe the breakup is warranted, complicated, etc., maybe not. But the bottom line is that the easiest person for you to fool is yourself, and so while I feel quite confident that those around me, and any who should be called on to investigate would conclude that the evidence from my actions and demonstrated priorities supported the claim that I love my wife, I’m corrigible by outside testimony.

If my friends, wife and family agree, or even just a few of them dispute my claim, I would be shaken, dislodged from my confidence in my beliefs. Add in “independent investigators” if you want to take it further, etc., but this goes very much to a reasoned disposition, I think. If I claim to love my wife, but the outside witness from others around me disagrees, I am unreasonable to suppose that my interpretation of my actions trumps the collective judgment of everyone else, especially if my wife is one that disputes my claim.

If I do want to know the truth as best I can, I will not reject those outside assessments out of hand, no matter how much I “just know” that I love my wife. If my actions don’t support that claim, I must confront the possibility that I’m being dishonest with myself.

What sort of beliefs or knowledge are you talking about here? Beliefs regarding such things as “electrons exist”, or beliefs regarding whether I am now looking at a computer screen, that I actually existed 5 seconds ago, that 1+1=2, that I love my wife, that other minds exist etc. The latter beliefs can all meaningfully be considered to be knowledge, but they in no way involve going through a process of acquiring evidence, getting others to test their objectivity and dreaming up ways to falsify said beliefs.

I think they do. As I said, on the claim you are focusing on here – “I love my wife” – I can unfortunately say I know of several men who are adamant in claiming this, but their actions, objectively and fairly assessed, discredit the claim. One (ex-?) friend has shown by his actions that he is deeply confused about his real attitudes, and by far the best explanation for his actions and the available evidence is that he really is intensely in love with himself, and his wife is merely useful as a means to practical, selfish ends. He’s totally fooling himself, and in a “religious” way, so to speak; he’s not amenable to any outside evidence. He’s immune to critical review of his claims and beliefs.

As for some of the other propositions, some claims are not statements about the real world at all, and as such aren’t amenable to validation or falsification by real world evidence. Math theorems are an example – this is analytical knowledge. Other claims are unrescuably subjective, and therefore also immune to evidence. If I say “blue is my favorite color”, barring testimony from some as-yet-unknown mind-reading machine that we can establish as trustworthy instrumentally, such a claim is simply unimpeachable, a totally subjective proposition. It’s a statement about the world, but one that’s not accessible for testing in any objective way.

Yet, these types of beliefs are fundamental before you can even start looking at scientific type beliefs. What are your thoughts on this?

We certainly embrace beliefs without justifiying them first, often. Man is not a robustly disciplined or thorough thinker about all of life’s beliefs and claims by nature, and could hardly be as a practical matter. But the reasoning mind can take a given belief, and assess its warrant, it’s epistemic grounding, and its stance with respect to the evidence, it’s liability to falsification, and its corrigibility from outside. That doesn’t mean we have time or need to visit every belief we have – some are trivial, short term beliefs that become moot as soon as the moment passes (“That car’s blinker is on, and will turn left in front of me…”), but yet we remain capable, if we so desire, to visit the beliefs that we are interested in being serious about finding the truth, and applying critical analysis and objective testing in efforts to know reality as best we are able.

-TS

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi Touchstone,

Sorry if this is a little perfunctory.

If I do want to know the truth as best I can, I will not reject those outside assessments out of hand, no matter how much I “just know” that I love my wife. If my actions don’t support that claim, I must confront the possibility that I’m being dishonest with myself.

I can say with absolute certainty that at this moment I love my wife. Note: I love my wife. This is a purely internal claim (that features external participants), and is assessed completely via internal experience, without recourse to empirical evidence or objectivity. If someone came up to me and claimed that I don’t love my wife, this has absolutely no impact on how I feel, or know, in this regard. Say your favourite colour is purple, if a million people came up and told you that your favourite colour wasn’t purple, would that in any way affect that you know your favourite colour is purple?

As I said, on the claim you are focusing on here – “I love my wife” – I can unfortunately say I know of several men who are adamant in claiming this, but their actions, objectively and fairly assessed, discredit the claim

How on earth do you “objectively” assess a completely subjective, internal statement?

As for some of the other propositions, some claims are not statements about the real world at all, and as such aren’t amenable to validation or falsification by real world evidence. Math theorems are an example – this is analytical knowledge.

What is this “real world”? Where does it end and where does it begin? In any case, it seems that you agree that not all meaningful knowledge can be assessed by objectivity, empirical evidence and falsification. That’s good

If I say “blue is my favorite color”, barring testimony from some as-yet-unknown mind-reading machine that we can establish as trustworthy instrumentally, such a claim is simply unimpeachable, a totally subjective proposition. It’s a statement about the world, but one that’s not accessible for testing in any objective way.

How is this any different to the “I love my wife” claim? Even though it can’t be assessed in an objective way, do you believe that saying “I know that blue is my favourite colour” is somehow an abuse of the word “know”? Does this type of thing count as knowledge? When you say:

My grounds are simple and clear: we allocate our beliefs in proportion to the case for such a belief, where “case” indicates evidence, objectivity and falsifiability as virtues commending that belief.

does this criteria or “case” apply to beliefs such as “blue is my favourite colour”? Or are there exceptions to this criteria It seems you are saying that there are, just wanted to check.

But the reasoning mind can take a given belief, and assess its warrant, it’s epistemic grounding, and its stance with respect to the evidence, it’s liability to falsification, and its corrigibility from outside.

How does one subject the claim “I know I, and the rest of the universe, existed 5 minutes ago” to empirical evidence and objective assessment? How is such a claim falsifiable? I would argue that it can’t be objectively assessed (everyone could have popped into existence 5 minutes ago, with their memories), empirically verified (all the supposed evidence could have popped into existence 5 minutes ago) and that it can’t be falsified. How is it possible to show that the above claim is false? To show that this claim was false, it would somehow have to be possible to show that nothing existed 5 minutes ago. Is this claim therefore un-warranted?

We could do a similar exercise with the claim “I know other minds exist” and “I know I am not a brain in a vat”, and many others. Are these claims also un-warranted?

 

[Fran65]

How does one subject the claim “I know I, and the rest of the universe, existed 5 minutes ago” to empirical evidence and objective assessment? How is such a claim falsifiable?

There is an interesting case in the UK of a man called Clive Wearing who has lost his short term memory and a great deal of his long term memory. He ‘reawakens’ approximately every couple of minutes and writes the ‘fact’ down in his diary: 5.55pm, I am now fully conscious for the first time and having my first cup of coffee.". He then scribbles out his previous entries. Nothing could convince him that he was, in fact conscious all of the time, apart from when asleep. He becomes very distressed and angry when ‘confronted’ with contrary evidence. The point is that he cannot know that he existed in a conscious state 5 minutes ago because he is unable to encode, store and retrieve new memories. Although over the decades he has unconsciously picked up some new memories - for example he has procedural memory for finding his way to his room in his care home. He now also can behave as if he was fully conscious for longer periods. It is an interesting and famous case.

This case also illustrates how frail our tacit knowledge is and how important it is that we use it along with empirical knowledge. They are both necessary, but tacit knowledge is more error prone and difficult to challenge. The only person who knows if tacit knowledge is accurate is the individual - and unless there is substantial empirical evidence to the contrary - this should be respected.

 

[Touchstone]

I can say with absolute certainty that at this moment I love my wife. Note: I love my wife. This is a purely internal claim (that features external participants), and is assessed completely via internal experience, without recourse to empirical evidence or objectivity.

Well, fine. It’s nothing more than saying your favorite color is blue, then, as by your own admission, it’s not contingent on any outside facts or evidence. In my understanding, love is established through action and demonstration. Talk is cheap, and claims – like yours here – are simply trivial without being accountable to action. I believe your claim provisionally, as I don’t have reason to doubt it, but I do know many friends who claim, adamantly, that they love their wives, but their actions show, just as adamantly, that this is not the case. If your claim is not subject to any external validation, it just isn’t a meaningful statement, is it?

More importantly, I think this is quite an unfortunate position for the someone you love to be in. She’s at risk, now, as there is no accountability external to your internal sentiments in abiding your vow to love her. You could behave terribly toward her, and make a mockery of the term “love” by your actions, and she’d not have any recourse, because, as you say, your view is “purely an internal claim”.

For the record, I suspect you don’t really believe what you said, but as you’ve said it, I’d advise a woman to stay well clear of a man who held such an unaccountable view as that.

If someone came up to me and claimed that I don’t love my wife, this has absolutely no impact on how I feel, or know, in this regard.

That’s too bad, as it’s possible that someone would be a caring voice of reason and edifying correction for you, someone who can show you the error of your ways, the ways you’ve managed to deceive yourself, to the detriment of your wife.

Say your favourite colour is purple, if a million people came up and told you that your favourite colour wasn’t purple, would that in any way affect that you know your favourite colour is purple?

Know, because I can’t see anything beyond “purely subjective internally” as the basis for such an assessment. It’s an unfalsifiable claim (again barring some sort of mind-reading technology that could instrumentally indicate you were being dishonest). But the claim that you love your wife isn’t at all like declaring your favorite color – and frankly, it makes me a little sad to have such an important claim trivialized to that degree; when I claim to love my wife, I’m making a statement about the real world, a claim about my actions, attitudes and behaviors toward her. It’s liable to be falsified objectively, if my actions are to be observed and matched up against what we mean by “love” (acts of sacrifice, affection, emotional support, kindness, companionship, etc.)

But my declaration of my favorite color wouldn’t be like that at all, and I think would be perfectly unimpeachable from the outside.

How on earth do you “objectively” assess a completely subjective, internal statement?

You don’t. “My favorite color is blue” qualifies there. “I love my wife” doesn’t, in my view. A man who doesn’t think such a claim is reviewable is problematic from a relationship standpoint, I’d say.

What is this “real world”? Where does it end and where does it begin? In any case, it seems that you agree that not all meaningful knowledge can be assessed by objectivity, empirical evidence and falsification. That’s good

Knowledge is hard won, and there’s never enough to go around, to apply to all the places we would like.

How is this any different to the “I love my wife” claim? Even though it can’t be assessed in an objective way, do you believe that saying “I know that blue is my favourite colour” is somehow an abuse of the word “know”? Does this type of thing count as knowledge? When you say:

It’s not an abuse of the term, it’s just a form of equivocation if you make them interchangeable in context. I can say “I know all bachelors are unmarried”, and I don’t think that’s an abuse of the term at all. But “know” there is a statement about the general acceptance of a definition. The consensus is liable to objective verification (is that really what people mean by “bachelor”?), but if we understand that people can define terms anyway they’d like, “All bachelors are unmarried” is a true statement, but just true in a trivial sense – a tautology. It’s not an abuse to say that is something you know, but care should be taken not to conflate that with real knowledge, knowledge that involves statements about the real world, and is liable to the real world in terms of verification and falsification.

does this criteria or “case” apply to beliefs such as “blue is my favourite colour”? Or are there exceptions to this criteria It seems you are saying that there are, just wanted to check.

I think this has been adequately addressed above.

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

How does one subject the claim “I know I, and the rest of the universe, existed 5 minutes ago” to empirical evidence and objective assessment? How is such a claim falsifiable?

One doesn’t and can’t. This is a classic example of an unfalsifiable proposition (cf. “Last Tuesdayism”, Omphalos).

I would argue that it can’t be objectively assessed (everyone could have popped into existence 5 minutes ago, with their memories), empirically verified (all the supposed evidence could have popped into existence 5 minutes ago) and that it can’t be falsified.

Right. This is well understood.

How is it possible to show that the above claim is false? To show that this claim was false, it would somehow have to be possible to show that nothing existed 5 minutes ago. Is this claim therefore un-warranted?

It’s unwarranted in a positive sense – what evidence would you present that the zap was 5 minutes ago, versus 5 seconds, or 5 billion years? That case is equally self-defeating. But I think you are confusing warrant with falisfication. Even if you do have warrant for a proposition, it can still be unfalsifiable. When it’s unfalsifiable, it just gets downgraded epistemically in it’s own right.

So why reject Omphalos? Parsimony! The 5-minutes hypothesis is simply clumsy and awkward in terms of economy compared to the competing hypothesis that the evidence that implicates and ancient, law-based timeline reflects just that as the underlying history/reality. The reason Last Tuesdayism doesn’t get any traction is because it doesn’t bring any positive warrant on its own, but rather only offers an unfalsifiable challenge that is also ad-hoc, special pleading. Who can be bothered by such a proposition?

We could do a similar exercise with the claim “I know other minds exist” and “I know I am not a brain in a vat”, and many others. Are these claims also un-warranted?

Yes, in the same sense as above. Solipsism isn’t logically or empirically falsifiable. But no need – rejecting solipsism is biological necessity. We embrace the belief because we must, way before we can even talk. By the time we are able think in terms of abstract propositions, we have already galvanized our commitment to other minds and an extramental reality. It cannot be entertained otherwise, lest we die, and we have a strong biological urge to live, and thus to employ cognitive tools toward that end. See my recurring example of the cigarette lighter’s flame under the solipsist’s hand, refuting his claims as he yelps and his nervous system draws his hand away.

These are givens, then. Moot questions, due to our biology. We can muse about them as a matter of hypothetical musings, but they are ever only hypothetical. We aren’t free to deploy such beliefs even if we think we should want to.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

I think objective reasoning from evidence is singular in its demonstrability as knowledge. Certainty I think is a mythic goal – something to strive toward, but never reached for a human. But heuristics that emphasize empirical evidence, objectivity and falsifiability requirements are manifestly more capable of showing their knowledge to be actual, operative knowledge. So to the extent one values that, yes, such heuristics are best.

And to what extent do you value “showing your knowledge to be actual, operative knowledge”? (Is this like the “I love my wife” question? “I love knowledge.” You claim you do, but then maybe there turns out to be a great deal of evidence to suggest that you really only love yourself - but you disregard the evidence and keep telling yourself the same old thing anyway. That could happen, right?)

Much is simple and clear to a mind that is simple and clear, i.e., full of the obviousness of its own “common sense” convictions. Agreed? Now you clearly seem to think that the things you write are simple and clear - for instance, what you’ve written above(?). Now obviously from a certain parochial point of view, from the point of view of someone who is simply unaware that certain terms he uses are not as obviously unproblematic as he takes them to be (which claim would be verifiable, in case you’re wondering), it simply doesn’t matter to him that his point of view is parochial, and thus probably doctrinaire and shallow. It can’t matter, because he is unaware of it and quite prepared to ignore the evidence of it when it is presented to him, indeed unable not to ignore it, since his view of the evidence is crippled before the evidence ever gets presented, because his “beloved” conceptual straightjacket has him pinned into his parochial way of thinking and he doesn’t have the imagination/inclination to call what is “obvious” (to him and his set) into question. Agreed? (Sorry about the long sentence - maybe it’s the influence of those German philosophers on me.)

 

[Touchstone]

And to what extent do you value “showing your knowledge to be actual, operative knowledge”? (Is this like the “I love my wife” question? “I love knowledge.” You claim you do, but then maybe there turns out to be a great deal of evidence to suggest that you really only love yourself - but you disregard the evidence and keep telling yourself the same old thing anyway. That could happen, right?)

It depends on the confluence of the epistemic grounding of the claim, and the practical utility or need for validating the claim. If I say “My favorite color is blue”, I don’t particularly value showing that to be knowledge in any real sense, because a) it’s not amenable such testing in the first place, and b) it’s not (so far as I can see) a matter of any practical import as “knowledge” in the first place.

But “I love my wife” is a much different claim. It’s important to me that that claim is not “strictly internal”. It’s important that my wife finds agreement between that evidence as she sees it (and our kids, friends, her sister, etc.) matches my claim. Her actions toward me may (and I think should) depend on the congruence between “I love my wife” and my actions. It’s amenable to evidential analysis to some significant sense, and it is very important that that claim be credible outside my mind (in my wife’s mind, primarily, but also others).

“I love knowledge” strikes me as very similar to a claim that I love my wife. It may be important to demonstrate that, practically, and its amenable to outside analysis by looking at what supports (if anything) my “love” for knowledge.

Much is simple and clear to a mind that is simple and clear, i.e., full of the obviousness of its own “common sense” convictions. Agreed?

Hmmm. I think I get your idea, but I don’t think “simple and clear” are good labels for minds. I will say, though, that some minds are much more self-satisfied by their own intuitions than others, which I think will produce an affectiveness that resembles your description. Some people are just more tightly wed to the depth and innate “truthiness” of their intuitions than others.

Now you clearly seem to think that the things you write are simple and clear - for instance, what you’ve written above(?).

No, at least not in some way that avoids equivocation. Maybe this is why I resist “simple and clear” as labels for minds. I don’t think what I’m suggesting is simple at all, quite the reverse. I think my presence here is one of advocacy against the intuition as sufficient, and propounding an epistemology which is spectacularly complex and highly nuanced in contrast to the consulting of one’s intuitions. Sometimes intutions are all that’s available, and you can’t do what you can’t do in those cases, but my comments here on this thread are very much tied up in an epistemic commitment to “knowledge as a team sport”, and NOT just a team sport in the sense that people of like conclusions at the end get together and wear the same color jersey. Rather, a team method which incorporates intuition on the (name removed by moderator)ut side aggressively, but just as aggressively vets it with objective analysis and empirical testing.

It ain’t simple. I hope to be as articulate as I can be, but these are difficult concepts to wrap one’s head around. And they aren’t just conceptual difficult, they are emotionally difficult, requiring a level of discipline and rigor in that area that make the heuristic all the more difficult for us humans, who are, after all, highly emotional beings.

Now obviously from a certain parochial point of view, from the point of view of someone who is simply unaware that certain terms he uses are not as obviously unproblematic as he takes them to be (which claim would be verifiable, in case you’re wondering), it simply doesn’t matter to him that his point of view is parochial, and thus probably doctrinaire and shallow. It can’t matter, because he is unaware of it and quite prepared to ignore the evidence of it when it is presented to him, indeed unable not to ignore it, since his view of the evidence is crippled before the evidence ever gets presented, because his “beloved” conceptual straightjacket has him pinned into his parochial way of thinking and he doesn’t have the imagination/inclination to call what is “obvious” (to him and his set) into question. Agreed? (Sorry about the long sentence - maybe it’s the influence of those German philosophers on me.)

Sure, that’s trivially true. You can just cut to the chase there and say "one who isn’t aware of ‘other kinds of truth’ won’t except claims predicated on those other methods as truths’. Of course, by definition that is true, just like saying “all bachelors are unmarried”. That’s how you’ve chosen to define ‘bachelor’.

Here, if you want to help yourself to a definition of ‘truth’ that fits some other model than that of an empirical/rational epistemology, be my guest. But then we are simply at a loss to communicate further – an impedance mismatch, as they say in the electronics world. Once ‘true’ gets plastic and squishy like that, the basis for communication breaks down, at least in dealing with statements about the real world.

-TS

 

[AndyT_81]

Hi Touchstone,

Well, fine. It’s nothing more than saying your favorite color is blue, then, as by your own admission, it’s not contingent on any outside facts or evidence. In my understanding, love is established through action and demonstration. Talk is cheap, and claims – like yours here – are simply trivial without being accountable to action. I believe your claim provisionally, as I don’t have reason to doubt it, but I do know many friends who claim, adamantly, that they love their wives, but their actions show, just as adamantly, that this is not the case. If your claim is not subject to any external validation, it just isn’t a meaningful statement, is it?

I get what you’re saying here Touchstone, and I appreciate it. Being a Catholic, I believe that love has an objective standard, and is more or less pure depending on how it reflects God’s self-less and unconditional love of us. The more pure or genuine this love is, the more it will manifest itself in acts of self-giving, I agree here. However, I am trying to make a different point than that. How does one know that they are in love? Do they follow some sort of reasoning process such as “well, I seem to do things for this person that I don’t do for other people, therefore I must be in love”. I don’t know about you, but when I think about how I love my wife, it involves no reasoning process like that. Rather, something will prompt me to think about her and I am immediately conscious of a state of being that is love, and what a wonderful thing that is.

There is a dis-junction here I think. While I will agree with you that genuine love is shown by actions to outside observers, to the person who knows they are in love, this knowledge does not derive from such observations. It is much simpler than that, something that comes up from the very depth of a persons being. So, here I am siting at my computer, and knowing for certain that I love my wife, without thinking at all about whether I do certain things for her, whether others agree that I love her, or whether such knowledge can be falsified. See my point? Here is a form of knowledge that is not dependent on any of these things.

Knowledge is hard won, and there’s never enough to go around, to apply to all the places we would like.

What does this mean? Do you or do you not think that objectivity, empirical evidence and falsification are required for all knowledge?

It’s not an abuse to say that is something you know, but care should be taken not to conflate that with real knowledge, knowledge that involves statements about the real world, and is liable to the real world in terms of verification and falsification.

So now we have not just “knowledge” but also “real knowledge”? I have experiences of the colour green from the “real world” (I am appeared to greenly), and I know my favourite colour is green. Is this “real knowledge” or just plain old “ordinary” knowledge?

One doesn’t and can’t. This is a classic example of an unfalsifiable proposition (cf. “Last Tuesdayism”, Omphalos).

Ok, so do you consider the statement “The universe existed 5 minutes ago” to be knowledge (or “real knowledge”) despite it’s unfalsifiability?

But I think you are confusing warrant with falisfication.

On the contrary, I would respectfully argue that you are (or at least seem to be, from some things you say)! I consider warrant to be that something which makes mere true belief into knowledge. I certainly do not consider falsification to be warrant.

Even if you do have warrant for a proposition, it can still be unfalsifiable.

Ok, that’s good, I would agree that knowledge (i.e. warranted true belief) does not require falsifiability.

When it’s unfalsifiable, it just gets downgraded epistemically in it’s own right.

What does this mean? Should we downgrade the belief that other minds exist because said belief is unfalsifiable? Does that mean we should be less keen to accept such a belief when compared to other beliefs that are falsifiable?

Parsimony! The 5-minutes hypothesis is simply clumsy and awkward in terms of economy compared to the competing hypothesis that the evidence that implicates and ancient, law-based timeline reflects just that as the underlying history/reality.

Why should anyone in philosophy or theology care about Parsimony beyond the practice of science? Parsimony works in science because science is utilitarian, it only cares about what “works”. An un-complicated spanner is better at tightening nuts than a complicated one. But who cares about this principle when one is wanting to know the truth about how things really are? Economy is no necessary indication of truth.

 

[Touchstone]

I get what you’re saying here Touchstone, and I appreciate it. Being a Catholic, I believe that love has an objective standard, and is more or less pure depending on how it reflects God’s self-less and unconditional love of us. The more pure or genuine this love is, the more it will manifest itself in acts of self-giving, I agree here. However, I am trying to make a different point than that. How does one know that they are in love? Do they follow some sort of reasoning process such as “well, I seem to do things for this person that I don’t do for other people, therefore I must be in love”. I don’t know about you, but when I think about how I love my wife, it involves no reasoning process like that. Rather, something will prompt me to think about her and I am immediately conscious of a state of being that is love, and what a wonderful thing that is.

Indeed, and I do understand the emotional and psychological dimensions you are describing. And I don’t have a problem noting that generally, these subjective sensations do match up with one’s actions for most people, in a general way. People who claim to be in love with another can very often be associated with actions that support that idea. But just as a subjective matter, I do understand a sense of “love” that isn’t borne out (yet, perhaps) by any actions. Maybe a “crush” on someone you haven’t actual interacted much with would be a clean example – you “know” you are attracted, but you’ve not said anything to the person you’re attracted to yet.

Even there, I think you (or I) would light up an fMRI in ways that give away our attraction at the sight, mention, or presence of the person of our claimed desire. That would be a instrumented means of corroborating your subjective claim. But “mind reading” technologies aside, the visceral sense you are describing, prior to or outside of action would be just that – sensation, which is real in its own terms. But it’s not knowledge in the epistemic sense we mean when we make statements about the external world.

There is a dis-junction here I think. While I will agree with you that genuine love is shown by actions to outside observers, to the person who knows they are in love, this knowledge does not derive from such observations.

Right. I “know” when I feel angry. My “angriness” is self-evident, what we’d call “properly basic belief” in a classic foundationalist epistemology. The problem here that obtains is, again, overloading on the term “know” or “knowledge”. In this case, we are describing sense experience, a purely subjective statement about the world. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but it’s all too easy to equivocate, trading back and forth between quite different epistemic renderings of “know”. To “know” that one has the sense of “attraction” or “anger”, or “redness appearing-to” is a different proposition than to “know” that gravitational attraction follows the inverse square law.

It is much simpler than that, something that comes up from the very depth of a persons being. So, here I am siting at my computer, and knowing for certain that I love my wife, without thinking at all about whether I do certain things for her, whether others agree that I love her, or whether such knowledge can be falsified. See my point? Here is a form of knowledge that is not dependent on any of these things.

Yes, as above, what we call it is not important to me – words mean whatever we agree they mean – but it is important to keep the epistemic differences, which are profound, in view. “Knowing” that “my hand feels hot” is not like “knowing” that gravity obeys an inverse square function. It’s fine to use “knowing” for both cases, but it’s a categorical error to confuse these senses of “knowing”. When someone says “I am attracted to her”, or “my favorite color is blue”, I shrug. When someone says “gravity dissipates inversely to the square of separating distance”, I recognize that as a completely different animal. It’s a profoundly different sense of “knowing”.

If someone supposes that these two senses are somehow equivalent, or interchangeable, I suspect there are some very deep reasoning flaws at work, there.

What does this mean? Do you or do you not think that objectivity, empirical evidence and falsification are required for all knowledge?

No. It’s academic in many cases, want it or not, such is just not available. You can’t verify and test and attempt to falsify that which resists all those operations. And in many circumstances (you’ve raised several here already), those operations are simply not available. As a result, we just recognize what kind of ground we stand on, epistemically, for various propositions. “Knowing” that one is attracted to another person we might say is tautologically true – the sense of being attracted is the reality of attraction, for example. For propositions that we use, we can assess the epistemic foundations of the proposition, and proceed accordingly. If I believe in God, and understand that to be a claim that is wholly subjective (not saying it is, but consider it), that makes denying others some rights or legal status a dicey proposition, as I’m on shaky, dubious ground in propounding that belief.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

So now we have not just “knowledge” but also “real knowledge”? I have experiences of the colour green from the “real world” (I am appeared to greenly), and I know my favourite colour is green. Is this “real knowledge” or just plain old “ordinary” knowledge?

As in my previous post, “knowledge” as a term has different implications, depending on its epistemic credentials. Qualia like sense of color (which is different than 2nd order senses like “green is my favorite color”) are different kinds of statements about the world – private, personal, subjective. That’s perfectly legitimate to invoke, and is only problematic when it gets confused with statements that are amenable to shared, objective analysis and review. These different senses of “know” are way useful as a kind of shorthand, indexed to the various epistemic backings for each. Equivocation is a constant problem to watch out for here, though, because of that, as it is in so many other parts of the reasoning and communication processes.

Ok, so do you consider the statement “The universe existed 5 minutes ago” to be knowledge (or “real knowledge”) despite it’s unfalsifiability?

No, not in the general sense. The belief that reality is as old as the evidence suggests is the most reasonable, parsimonious conclusion, but we cannot falsify Omphalos. We can “know”, scientifically speaking, because scientific epistemology is predicated on both parsimony and the virtue of falsifiability. We could perhaps falsify the “ancientness” of the universe by uncovering strong evidence that supports “Last Tuesdayism” as a real process or phenomenon. The age of the universe as a positive claim is subject to falsification and positive support, qualifying it as ‘knowledge’ in the scientific sense. But the reverse case does not hold; there is no way to falsify a claim that by nature avoids all means of detection.

On the contrary, I would respectfully argue that you are (or at least seem to be, from some things you say)! I consider warrant to be that something which makes mere true belief into knowledge. I certainly do not consider falsification to be warrant.

Ok, that’s good, I would agree that knowledge (i.e. warranted true belief) does not require falsifiability.

OK, some ground gained between us, there, then.

What does this mean? Should we downgrade the belief that other minds exist because said belief is unfalsifiable? Does that mean we should be less keen to accept such a belief when compared to other beliefs that are falsifiable?

If they are competing on equal terms, then yes. The reason we accept other minds is that a) we “galvanize” that belief in our brains at such a young, uncritical age we are hardly at liberty to undo, making it a moot point in any case, and b) even to the extent we manage to doubt it, it becomes transcendentally absurd, for the very same reason thinking that the extramental world isn’t real ( in the efficacious sense) is absurd, and worse – lethally self-defeating.

One must use language to deny the utility of language – a serious transcendental problem, that. On the same line, one can’t reveal one’s doubts about other minds without affirming the legitimacy of the other minds one is revealing them to.

But where you have propositions that address the same question, and one explanation is perfectly unfalsifiable and the others are eminently falsifiable, no matter how the evidence bears out, there is a profound depth of meaning as a statement about reality in propositions that are falsifiable-in-principle that that unfalsifiable propositions do not have. To the extent one embraces an unfalsifiable explanation, one simply avoids the question, and accepts meaninglessness in favor of meaningfulness regarding the concepts of “true” and “know”.

Why should anyone in philosophy or theology care about Parsimony beyond the practice of science? Parsimony works in science because science is utilitarian, it only cares about what “works”. An un-complicated spanner is better at tightening nuts than a complicated one. But who cares about this principle when one is wanting to know the truth about how things really are? Economy is no necessary indication of truth.

No, it’s not. And indeed, many truths end up being fantastically more complicated than some of the simpler hypotheses that sought to explain them. Parsimony isn’t like what you are describing however. A simple wrench and a more complicated wrench that do the same work with same effectiveness both leave the nuts equally tight. The “complicated” part is not wrong in any sense beyond it being extraneous, superfluous. It’s just not needed for getting the job done.

That’s an important distinction you’ve missed, because there, the “truth” is accounted for on both cases, but one with some amount of unneeded “extras”. If the “complicated” wrench did the job better, it would be preferable to the simple wrench as the nuts would be tighter, or tightened faster, etc. Parsimony is just the principle that isolates what is minimally necessary for truth, for doing the job, and identifying the other parts that “come along for the ride”. A crucial preamble to the principle of parsimony is “all other things being equal…”

Parsimony is the focus on identifying what is needed to model truth, and what is not.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

But where you have propositions that address the same question, and one explanation is perfectly unfalsifiable and the others are eminently falsifiable, no matter how the evidence bears out, there is a profound depth of meaning as a statement about reality in propositions that are falsifiable-in-principle that that unfalsifiable propositions do not have. To the extent one embraces an unfalsifiable explanation, one simply avoids the question, and accepts meaninglessness in favor of meaningfulness regarding the concepts of “true” and “know”.

1. It seems that you assume a false dichotomy here. (If you really want to move beyond simplistic epistemological views, you might take more seriously questions such as, What is “the question”? What is thinking?)
2. Is this claim here, about the “profound depths of meaning…”, falsifiable? Or are your own claims about “profundity of meaning” nonsense in terms of your own epistemological view (think Wittgenstein)? (Or are they perhaps just overpoweringly obvious by the power of their innate truthiness?)