Reflection on Skeptical Theism

[empther]

Well, this one really takes the cake. This sounds like somebody desparately clutching at straws.

Perplexity’s latest:

God prevents all sorts of possible states of affairs and events from actualizing. For instance, God prevents the possibility of all human beings immediately ceasing to exist at this moment from actualizing by choosing to sustain our existence.

Keeping people in existence is an action of God. You’re saying he prevents himself from not stopping to keep people in existence? This is prohibiting an event, to use your words in post #1 ??? Does he prevent his own prevention of people’s continued existence?

God prevented the possible world containing only God as its concrete object from actualizing by creating ex nihilo.

Creating a world other than himself, and creatures other than himself, was an action of God. You’re saying he prevented himself from not creating ? This is prohibiting an event, to use your words in post #1 ??? Did he prevent his own prevention of anything existing besides himself?

The examples could be multiplied ad infinitum.

What examples? Certainly not of prohibiting an event, to use your words in post #1.

---

( Of course, I’m fully aware that this will start another round of tons and tons of verbiage leading to nothing useful to anybody, as has been the case with most of this thread. :takethat: )

 

[Perplexity]

Yes

This doesn’t follow - why can’t the ST simply say that X is likely and he doesn’t know God’s reasons from allow or prevent it from happening.

I think you are equating our uncertainty about God’s reasons for allowing an event to occur to uncertainty over God allowing or preventing that event from occurring.

You can have one without the other.

For example we can be certain that every time someone is shot they will either be injured or killed, despite wondering why God would allow that to happen.

The theist can say that it’s unlikely God would permit or prohibit an event only if he has a fair grasp of what God would and wouldn’t do in the situation. But, he can only have a fair grasp of what God would and wouldn’t do if he knew whether God had moral reasons/obligations one way or the other. Yet, this is precisely what ST says he doesn’t have. So, I don’t see how he could know what God would or wouldn’t do, and consequently, how he could say it’s unlikely that God would permit or prohibit any event.

As I said earlier, when the theist says some event is likely, he’s also saying it’s unlikely that God would prevent it. But, as just noted, he can’t say this on ST.

 

[Perplexity]

I’ll do a general post later tonight (hopefully) to address concerns about the subjectivity of Bayesianism, and the numerical assignments.

 

[Perplexity]

Upon reflection, it’s readily apparent that I have variant degrees of confidence in propositions. Let’s call whatever our strongest confidence is ‘1.0’, our ignorance ‘0.5’ and our weakest confidence ‘0.0.’

Now, my strongest and weakest confidence could very well be different than your strongest and weakest confidence, and so, if we’re both using the names ‘1.0’ and ‘0.0’ to signify our respective states, aren’t we equivocating?

No, because by ‘1.0’ I mean my strongest state, and by ‘1.0’ you mean your strongest state.

Upon further reflection, it’s also evident that I have states of confidence besides the aforementioned three. For example, I have a state, seemingly between ‘0.5’ and ‘1.0.’ I’ll call this one ‘0.75.’ Suppose I’m aware of a state stronger than this one, but still weaker than ‘1.0’, I’ll call this one ‘0.85.’ And so forth.

We use the numerical values as names, signifying a corresponding state. They represent a degree of confidence. It doesn’t matter if our states are different, or if our numbers correspond to different states. We’re only interested in our own states of confidence, not each other’s.

What Bayes’ theorem does, is takes such numbers and plugs them into a formula specifically designed to calculate how a piece of evidence should effect your confidence in a hypothesis. For this end, the numbers need to be subjective, otherwise it couldn’t say anything interesting about what your confidence should be.

So, is subjectivity a problem? Of course not. We want subjectivity here, that’s the whole point.

Does subjectivity mean that we are isolated from one another in such a way that we can’t know to what state of confidence given numbers are supposed to correspond to?

Of course not. Degrees of pain are quite subjective, yet we feel comfortable using a scale of 1-10 at a doctor’s office. Can you imagine a doctor saying ‘I’m sorry, but there’s just no objective fact to this matter. I have no idea what amount of pain you’re representing with the number 8, so I can’t administer accordingly.’ That’d be quite daft if you ask me. And so forth for any number of subjective states we numerically represent all the time.

But, even if the subjectivity involved in Bayesian calculations was isolationist, would that really matter? Not really. All we want from this is to know whether our own confidence in a hypothesis should be adjusted by a piece of evidence. For that end, we don’t need to know anyone else’s states.

I hope this clarifies the issue.

 

[Perplexity]

I edited your post to show the following point: he is saying it is just as subjective as I am. All you can say with Bayesian statistics is that your feeling about the probability can be related to other probabilities to which you are also giving subjective values. This is exactly what Swinburne says there.
Your numbers are completely subjective, by your own admission, and are not necessarily equally compatible (and ought to be comparable) to someone else’s completely subjective values. There is little reason to introduce Bayesian statistics because (a) they are not true statistics, just feelings and (b) you cannot prove your values.

I hope my general explanation of the numerical values before this post addresses your concerns. I’d like to just point out that nothing Alberti said preceeding the bolded statement, supports the bolded statement. As Ian Hacking (an expert on this subject) stated, Bayes’ theorem is of high importance to the subjectivist, and of little to none to the frequentist (an adherent of the theory Alberti is advocating).

Let’s grant that subjectivist Bayesianism isn’t true statistics (whatever that’s supposed to be), so what? All we want is to know how some piece of evidence should effect our confidence in a hypothesis, this is what subjectivist Bayesianism gives us. If it’s not true statistics, then we’re not interested in true statistics.

What does he mean we can’t prove our values? Why would we need to? I know what my numerical values correspond to, that’s all I need and that’s I want.

You are claiming the ‘it’ right there in these 4 lines. If ST is true, we are not privy to God’s moral justifications. If we are not privy to God’s moral justification, then we cannot be sure that a particular event would occur. Thus, if ST is true, then we cannot be sure a particular event occurred.

He’s still doing it folks. Look at the last word in the above quotation. Conditional probabilities have nothing (per se) to do with what actually occurs. So, I’ll reproduce the above citation, but with the appropriately ammended conclusion:

You are claiming the ‘it’ right there in these 4 lines. If ST is true, we are not privy to God’s moral justifications. If we are not privy to God’s moral justification, then we cannot be sure that a particular event would occur. Thus, if ST is true, then we cannot be sure a particular event would occur.

What does that last sentence mean? It means we have to say “I have no idea” to the question: If ST is true, would event E occur? Formally this is represented either as P(E|ST&K)=0.5, or P(E|ST&K)=Inscrutable, depending on what the skeptical theist wants.

QED: I am right, you are wrong here. You have stated it very clearly that with ST, you cannot know an event has occurred. It is your conclusion. That you are ignoring your own conclusion is mind-boggling.

I have never said that if ST is true you cannot know an event has [actually] occurred. I said supposing ST is true, we can’t say whether any given event would occur.

It is purely your degree of confidence, not everyone’s degree of confidence. And that is the massive hindrance to not testing a situation: you cannot get the real probability. All you can give is a subjective number about an objective situation, somewhat of a contradiction if you ask me.

I have no idea what real probability is supposed to amount to. I’m not interested in everyone else’s degree of confidence. All I want to know is whether I should adjust my confidence in a hypothesis because of some evidence. I don’t need all this other stuff you’re talking about to do that.

 

[Perplexity]

Ok. I see where we’ve been banging heads here. The problem is you’re being entirely too reductionist. Skeptical theism, whether true or not, does not eliminate other methods of deduction. Even if skeptical theism is true, we can still use other methods to predict events. Given that we accept that the universe and human beings are allowed an amount of independence, on theism, we can then use anything from psychology, sociology, physics, biology, other natural sciences, etc. to say whether something is likely to happen or not. We can add skeptical theism to these to say that, even though we know certain things are apt to happen, we cannot say exactly how the occurence relates to God.

I think the absurdity lies not in skeptical theism itself, but in your notion of it as a holistic worldview. I would say it’s more like fine print.

These other methods of deduction are insufficient for the skeptical theist. They’re sufficient for the naturalist and theist.

But, as I’ve said, when the theist says an event is likely, he’s also saying it’s unlikely that God would intervene. Because he’s a theist, he must say this latter part because an omnipotent, omniscient God could intervene (miraculously or not) at any point. Now, the theist can get away with this easily enough (as they do all the time).

But, skeptical theism won’t let him do this. It says, you can’t say God wouldn’t do X because you don’t know whether he has morally overriding reason(s) or obligations to do X, in which case, he’d definitely do it.

 

[empther]

Observe that Perplexity quickly “buries” the point I made in post #81 with “tons and tons of verbiage” last night as I predicted,
followed by more “tons and tons of verbiage” at four o’clock this morniing to make sure nobody sees post #81,
since it’s obvious nobody with any kind of a life actually reads all this junk. :coffeeread:

Get some sleep, Perplexity. :extrahappy:

 

[JDaniel]

Upon reflection, it’s readily apparent that I have variant degrees of confidence in propositions. Let’s call whatever our strongest confidence is ‘1.0’, our ignorance ‘0.5’ and our weakest confidence ‘0.0.’

Now, my strongest and weakest confidence could very well be different than your strongest and weakest confidence, and so, if we’re both using the names ‘1.0’ and ‘0.0’ to signify our respective states, aren’t we equivocating?

No, because by ‘1.0’ I mean my strongest state, and by ‘1.0’ you mean your strongest state.

Upon further reflection, it’s also evident that I have states of confidence besides the aforementioned three. For example, I have a state, seemingly between ‘0.5’ and ‘1.0.’ I’ll call this one ‘0.75.’ Suppose I’m aware of a state stronger than this one, but still weaker than ‘1.0’, I’ll call this one ‘0.85.’ And so forth.

We use the numerical values as names, signifying a corresponding state. They represent a degree of confidence. It doesn’t matter if our states are different, or if our numbers correspond to different states. We’re only interested in our own states of confidence, not each other’s.

What Bayes’ theorem does, is takes such numbers and plugs them into a formula specifically designed to calculate how a piece of evidence should effect your confidence in a hypothesis. For this end, the numbers need to be subjective, otherwise it couldn’t say anything interesting about what your confidence should be.

So, is subjectivity a problem? Of course not. We want subjectivity here, that’s the whole point.

Does subjectivity mean that we are isolated from one another in such a way that we can’t know to what state of confidence given numbers are supposed to correspond to?

Of course not. Degrees of pain are quite subjective, yet we feel comfortable using a scale of 1-10 at a doctor’s office. Can you imagine a doctor saying ‘I’m sorry, but there’s just no objective fact to this matter. I have no idea what amount of pain you’re representing with the number 8, so I can’t administer accordingly.’ That’d be quite daft if you ask me. And so forth for any number of subjective states we numerically represent all the time.

But, even if the subjectivity involved in Bayesian calculations was isolationist, would that really matter? Not really. All we want from this is to know whether our own confidence in a hypothesis should be adjusted by a piece of evidence. For that end, we don’t need to know anyone else’s states.

I hope this clarifies the issue.

Perplexed:

Personally, on a scale of 1 - 10, I’d give it a 10 that you should herewith abandon this thread and cogitate on something new.

God bless,
jd

 

[prodigalson2011]

These other methods of deduction are insufficient for the skeptical theist. They’re sufficient for the naturalist and theist.

But, as I’ve said, when the theist says an event is likely, he’s also saying it’s unlikely that God would intervene. Because he’s a theist, he must say this latter part because an omnipotent, omniscient God could intervene (miraculously or not) at any point. Now, the theist can get away with this easily enough (as they do all the time).

But, skeptical theism won’t let him do this. It says, you can’t say God wouldn’t do X because you don’t know whether he has morally overriding reason(s) or obligations to do X, in which case, he’d definitely do it.

As has been pointed out already, you are working from an entirely erroneous concept of skeptical theism. It has nothing to do with WHETHER God would or would not intervene, only WHY. Skeptical theism is a reflective philosophy, NOT a predictive one.

I don’t believe you have yet, throughout the several times this charge has been raised in this thread, addressed this problem. It is as though I were to argue a cat can’t breathe on dry land because it has gills.

Or perhaps a more closely related analogy: you cannot investigate a crime before it happens. In some cases, there will be insufficient evidence to determine a motive.
Skeptical theism applies to EVERY event in human history as a single unified “case,” in which there is insufficient evidence to determine God’s “motives.”
Surely you wouldn’t say a detective is absurd because he doesn’t foresee his next case?

 

[SteveGC]

Intrigued by things philosophical, I’ve been following this thread with some interest, and a healthy dose of confusion.

Could someone (preferably a philosophical theist, or theistic philosopher), enlighten me as to the end goal of such a thread as this? When the dust settles, and a point is made, what implications might arise in the realm of belief (or unbelief)?

This will be helpful for me (and perhaps others) in choosing whether or not to abandon the discussion prematurely.

thanks.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Intrigued by things philosophical, I’ve been following this thread with some interest, and a healthy dose of confusion.

Could someone (preferably a philosophical theist, or theistic philosopher), enlighten me as to the end goal of such a thread as this? When the dust settles, and a point is made, what implications might arise in the realm of belief (or unbelief)?

This will be helpful for me (and perhaps others) in choosing whether or not to abandon the discussion prematurely.

thanks.

What I gather from the OP is the assertion that, if skeptical theism can be proven false, we should then expect to know why God does or does not intervene in a given situation. Since we still cannot know even once skeptical theism has been discarded, it follows that theism is also false.

As I noted in the post above yours, Perplexity has been dependent upon a decidedly warped definition of skeptical theism to prove his point.

 

[empther]

SteveGG wrote:

Intrigued by things philosophical, I’ve been following this thread with some interest, and a healthy dose of confusion.

Could someone (preferably a philosophical theist, or theistic philosopher), enlighten me as to the end goal of such a thread as this? When the dust settles, and a point is made, what implications might arise in the realm of belief (or unbelief)?

The purpose of a thread like this is to give you the opportunity of pontificating an endless stream of useless nonsense,
long after your family, friends, and work associates have grown sick and tired of it and won’t take it anymore.

 

[Perplexity]

Maybe this thread should be abandoned. I can’t explain myself any better than I have, so I don’t think I could do anything but repeat myself at this point. I’m really quite baffled at the turn out of this thread…but, I thank everyone who participated.

(There is one point I think I might add here, actually. Prodigalson, I’m deducing stuff about whether God would or wouldn’t X from skeptical theism. I’ve never identified the inference from skeptical theism, with skeptical theism.)

Cheers!

 

[JDaniel]

These other methods of deduction are insufficient for the skeptical theist. They’re sufficient for the naturalist and theist.

But, as I’ve said, when the theist says an event is likely, he’s also saying it’s unlikely that God would intervene. Because he’s a theist, he must say this latter part because an omnipotent, omniscient God could intervene (miraculously or not) at any point. Now, the theist can get away with this easily enough (as they do all the time).

But, skeptical theism won’t let him do this. It says, you can’t say God wouldn’t do X because you don’t know whether he has morally overriding reason(s) or obligations to do X, in which case, he’d definitely do it.

Perplexed:

Not so. I guess you only read your own posting threads. And, you seem to selectively choose which posts herein you wish to lend credence to.

Now, I’d like you to listen carefully to the following as it will dis-abuse you of your predilections about what Catholicism believes, ST or not:

"1. God controls all events, whether good or bad;

"2. God does everything with supreme wisdom.

“Nothing happens in the universe without God willing and allowing it. This statement must be taken absolutely of everything with the exception of sin. ‘Nothing occurs by chance in the whole course of our lives’ is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, 'and God intervenes everywhere.’” - Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure

You are holding onto an overwhelming misconception. Do you have an idea of what that is?

It’s simple:

You believe that anything and everything is possible AND, if possible, must occur, happen, or instantiate. And if it does not occur, happen, or instantiate, it is because there exists a thoughtful preventer. I.e., everything and anything that is possible will and must occur, happen, or instantiate. Therefore, since “everything and anything that is possible will and must occur, happen, or instantiate,” and doesn’t, then there must be preventative measures being taken, in the background (by God, presumably), that prevent things that are possible, from occurring, happening, or instantiating.

The question is: Why must everything and anything that is possible occur, happen, or instantiate? What form of belief system is that? Is that uber-pantheism? Or, uber-materialism? Or, uber-naturalism? Moreover, how can we possibly know those things that are (supposedly), as of now, merely “possible?” Is there a list of such possibilities somewhere? Perhaps it is entitled, “A List of All that is Possible - (that has been prevented by God).”

Perplexity, this is absurd. How can we know what is merely possible yet not instantiated? I’d like you to carefully think this through and then, give me some examples of possibilities not yet instantiated in any way. Then we’ll have a thread!

(I’ll keep a watch for them.)

God bless,
jd

 

[Perplexity]

Perplexed:

Not so. I guess you only read your own posting threads. And, you seem to selectively choose which posts herein you wish to lend credence to.

Now, I’d like you to listen carefully to the following as it will dis-abuse you of your predilections about what Catholicism believes, ST or not:

"1. God controls all events, whether good or bad;

"2. God does everything with supreme wisdom.

“Nothing happens in the universe without God willing and allowing it. This statement must be taken absolutely of everything with the exception of sin. ‘Nothing occurs by chance in the whole course of our lives’ is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, 'and God intervenes everywhere.’” - Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure

You are holding onto an overwhelming misconception. Do you have an idea of what that is?

It’s simple:

You believe that anything and everything is possible AND, if possible, must occur, happen, or instantiate. And if it does not occur, happen, or instantiate, it is because there exists a thoughtful preventer. I.e., everything and anything that is possible will and must occur, happen, or instantiate. Therefore, since “everything and anything that is possible will and must occur, happen, or instantiate,” and doesn’t, then there must be preventative measures being taken, in the background (by God, presumably), that prevent things that are possible, from occurring, happening, or instantiating.

The question is: Why must everything and anything that is possible occur, happen, or instantiate? What form of belief system is that? Is that uber-pantheism? Or, uber-materialism? Or, uber-naturalism? Moreover, how can we possibly know those things that are (supposedly), as of now, merely “possible?” Is there a list of such possibilities somewhere? Perhaps it is entitled, “A List of All that is Possible - (that has been prevented by God).”

Perplexity, this is absurd. How can we know what is merely possible yet not instantiated? I’d like you to carefully think this through and then, give me some examples of possibilities not yet instantiated in any way. Then we’ll have a thread!

(I’ll keep a watch for them.)

God bless,
jd

Oh boy, this would take a lot of work. I guess, I have to ask first…are you familiar with possible worlds semantics, and if so, could you give me a rough outline of what philosophers generally mean by possible worlds?

 

[empther]

You see how this process works, SteveGG ?

:hey_bud::slapfight::crutches::takethat:

 

[prodigalson2011]

Maybe this thread should be abandoned. I can’t explain myself any better than I have, so I don’t think I could do anything but repeat myself at this point. I’m really quite baffled at the turn out of this thread…but, I thank everyone who participated.

(There is one point I think I might add here, actually. Prodigalson, I’m deducing stuff about whether God would or wouldn’t X from skeptical theism. I’ve never identified the inference from skeptical theism, with skeptical theism.)

Cheers!

Well, you could just as well try deducing whether God would or wouldn’t do X from a jar of peanut butter. There’d be no difference, because neither peanut butter nor skeptical theism bear any relation to your question. Let’s try Bayes’ theorem :

P(E|P.B. & k) = ???

Is peanut butter false?



Methinks you can’t explain yourself any better because there’s nothing to explain.
A valiant effort, though.

 

[Perplexity]

Well, you could just as well try deducing whether God would or wouldn’t do X from a jar of peanut butter. There’d be no difference, because neither peanut butter nor skeptical theism bear any relation to your question. Let’s try Bayes’ theorem :

P(E|P.B. & k) = ???

Is peanut butter false?



Methinks you can’t explain yourself any better because there’s nothing to explain.
A valiant effort, though.

Yeah, I can’t make any sense of this

 

[prodigalson2011]

Yeah, I can’t make any sense of this

This has been fun.

 

[SteveGC]

You see how this process works, SteveGG ?

:hey_bud::slapfight::crutches::takethat:

Starting to. But, with this thread, I’m a hopeless optimist. I enjoy watching chaos transform into clarity. I’m holding out for it.