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hazcompat
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infinity is a concept, not a number. define algorithm?
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hazcompat
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Imagine you are walking. You perceive God. you are compelled to describe this perception. if you write non stop for two hundred years you would not even finish a pixel of the detail. still you feel compelled. the totality of this vision ocurred in no time! instantaneous is a woefully inadequate conceptualization. Help me with the algorithm?
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warpspeedpetey
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dcrowmik
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Brother Spock - at some point you will have to step somewhat out of your strictly analytical and digital 1-0 thinking and actually begin to let go and listen to and begin to try to trust that tiny whisper of faith that is inside you (I know it’s there, Spock). Faith and wisdom go together and wisdom comes from faith in what you cannot COMPLETELY, with STRICTLY human logic, begin to fathom or understand. The “whole reality” is beyond our digital, logical understanding. Here’s a question: what is the difference between logic (or knowledge) and wisdom (or faith)? I asked you that question before and jokingly referred to tomatoes and a fruit salad.
If you haven’t already, please read in the Bible and meditate on (without coming from a strictly logical mind), the Book of Wisdom (you have also read the Book of Job and there is a passage in it about "what mind can begin to fathom the wisdom of the ONE who created everything, etc.)
After reading Wisdom, please read the book by Dietrich Von Hildebrand, “Transformation in Christ”. It’s a long read and it talks of transforming oneself to Christ and in the beginning chapters even talks of one’s readiness to change. As you said, you would be the “greatest convert” (your words) if you can just get your mind around it (my words). I feel you are there but your mind is not willing or is afraid to go into the “fuzzy logic” of faith and wisdom.
Sorry to tell your logical mind that without that leap of faith you are not going to be satisfied with all the seeming “loose ends” God has given us. The wisdom of it all is within you but the 1-0, A-B, IF-THEN mind is clouding it.
By the way, Spock, love is more than just a simple emotion or action. I’ve been praying for and with you these past months, Spock, please pray for me.
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John21652
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Induction is how most humn learning is done. We build on our knowledge, step by step. I have never heard of all knowledge being disproved by another observation. Take for instance the developments of science. God still exists!
Let me tell you a story. Up until 1697 all the world’s Swans were white. No-one had ever encountered a Black Swan. In that year, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh sailed into what is now the Swan River, in Western Australia. Lo and behold, what did he find? Black Swans!! That discovery was pretty amazing at the time, but it didn’t change the world view of anyone. No total reprogramming was required. It was just an addition to the knowledge of the world. Today, a Black Swan event refers to an event that is highly improbable and unforeseen, that nonetheless occurs and has a significant impact. A black swan event is significant and unprecedented;its probability can’t be measured because it is unprecedented. They are just something else that is factored into human knowledge as they occur.
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levinas12
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warpspeedpetey
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Whats the point you are trying to make?
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levinas12
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Warpspeedpetey:
I’m not sure your question is addressed to me … but I’ll be glad to clarify my posting … the discussion brought up “facts” in philosophy … in the context of tools of epistemology …mention was made of “facts” in philosophy … the notion of “philosophical” facts is somewhat ambiguous … especially in light of one type of argument … the transcendental argument … which presupposes that you are already in possession of certain truths (or facts) … the transcendental argument asks about the conditions that makes possible already existing knowledge …
In this reading, philosophy itself does not establish “new” facts … is only a buttress for old ones …
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warpspeedpetey
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Whoops, I messed up the quote and didn’t notice. I was wondering what point jack was trying to make. Sorry.
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awatkins69
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Why are so many old threads started by Spock being talked about all of a sudden? 
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Sair
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Sair
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This does kinda make sense, even to someone with my infant knowledge of philosophy.
However, I’m not sure a transcendental argument is really necessary for, say, space - space is that which exists between physical objects, so it may be argued that the awareness of space, as such, is related to perception or awareness of objects. Now, it may of course be the case (and most likely is so) that the actual existence of the totality of space is a necessary precondition for our awareness of objects-in-space, but it doesn’t follow that space must simply be assumed in order for us to consider objects-in-space. Space, as such, can be experienced in conjunction with our experience of physical objects.
I certainly have seen transcendental arguments employed for the existence of God, but they’ve never struck me as particularly effective. It is by no means clear how God is a necessary precondition for, say, the principles of logic - certainly not in the same way that it’s quite clear how the existence of space is a precondition for our awareness of objects in space. It is usually, in transcendental arguments for God, simply asserted that God is a necessary precondition for something, but never explained or even really hinted at why or how such is the case.
Another quite effective critique of TAG and its accompanying presuppositional position is that it confuses the order of being with the order of knowing. In the same way as our awareness of space as such may follow from our awareness of objects in space, this argument states that even if God is a precondition for logic or whatever else the TAGer is using to bolster his argument, our awareness of God could come after our awareness of logic, without diminishing the greatness or transcendence of said God in any way. This criticism is employed, it seems, by those who claim that the pursuit of knowledge ultimately leads to God, regardless of where one starts the process.
Apologies if I’ve misinterpreted what you meant or just gone off on a tangent, but hopefully my post makes some sense…!
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warpspeedpetey
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david friol keeps resurrecting them.Why are so many old threads started by Spock being talked about all of a sudden?
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warpspeedpetey
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Sair
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Logic only describes the process of reason, not the content of it. One can reach conclusions that are logically valid, but if one starts with premises that are undemonstrated, one’s conclusions will be no more demonstrable for being logically valid. Reasoning God into existence has been tried, but has so far failed to deliver any perceptible goods.
The notion of scientific ‘proof’ is a misunderstanding of how science works. It doesn’t deal in proofs, only in probabilities and plausibilities. Even Richard Dawkins doesn’t absolutely deny the possibility of a god’s existence - he just thinks that on the basis of perceptible evidence, it’s extremely unlikely.
Personally, I can’t see how perception and reason can possibly work in isolation - if all we have is reason, we have nothing to reason about, and if all we have is sensory experience, we would be aware only of a seemingly unconnected succession of events. Both perception and reason, then - as far as I can see - are vital to any exercise in knowledge acquisition.
As another poster pointed out earlier with regard to the white swans example, it would take a hugely contradictory observation to overturn a well-established theory arrived at by induction. The kind of difference we’re talking about here would be discovering that all one’s previous experience of swans was fabricated by skilful puppeteers - not merely discovering that some swans are not, in fact, white. Or the classic rabbit fossils in the Precambrian discovery as a disproof of evolutionary theory - that certainly would overturn our present model of the progress of natural history.
The truths of logic and pure mathematics are pretty much entirely self-referential, so I don’t see how it matters that they don’t conform to physical reality. They are mental constructs (which, of course, implies the physical reality of mental processes…) They can be used to reason about material reality, but they aren’t a perfect match.
I get what you’re saying, but it’s also fair to note that one man’s logical rigour is another man’s unnecessary nitpicking. Personally, I would be very surprised if Descartes - or any other philosopher since - actually entertained serious doubts about his own existence beyond the thought experiment of trying to prove it. I would venture to suggest that if one does not believe in one’s own existence, there’s really nowhere to go from there.
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levinas12
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You are on track here about confusing the order of being with the order of knowing. This is the critique of Kant employed by realists. But Kant is still interesting. He starts with experience, and then asks: what do you already have to “know” in order to make certain knowledge claims. For example, Kant says that we must already be familiar with “causality” in order to say that a specific cause has produced a specific effect. Likewise, with time and space - which Kant regards as two big singular “objects” - in order to know a specific date or a specific location, we somehow have to already be in possession of the “whole” of time or “whole” of space - we can’t build it piecemeal. According to Kant, we provide these peculiar totalities - they are our contribution (but there is a lot of ambiguity here - because time and space are also “pure” objects of our cognition, “pure” because they do not come through our special senses from “outside” of us).
Kant felt himself forced into this position by the scepticism of Hume. Hume argued, e.g., that we do not perceive “causality” - so Kant said OK, we contribute the “causality”.
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warpspeedpetey
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“demonstrable” is just the backdoor to “Empirical” which in the strong sense is a logical contradiction, and in the weak sense is so subjective as to be worthless. That was the failure of the logical positivists. Demonstrating things empirically, proves nothing. In order to believe it does requires the acceptance of a logical contradiction as valid. We only think it does because we already accept the premises of empiricism, which is really just begging the question. Its not intentional, its just a product of western education.
Yeah, the problem is the insistence on “perceptible evidence” the variable there is perception, not the evidence. A blind man cannot perceive color, of course that doesn’t make mean that color doesn’t exist, it means that the powers of percetion are very much unreliable indicators of the way that reality really is. Imagine if we had the perceptive tools to see angels? Then who would question it? It is our reliance on faulty tools of perception that gives rise to doubts, not on any real lack of evidence.
I understand what you mean, one has to have something to work with. But simply because we have very little to work with, with out admitting the unreliable results of perception, doesn’t mean that we should use it anyway. You wouldn’t use faulty data in a research paper if you knew it was faulty, even if it was the only data you had would you? Of course not. So it seems that using perception we know is faulty as any kind of guide to truth is a road map on which one is bound to get lost. This is an old problem and one which we are not likely to solve ourselves, given that it has occupied some of the greatest minds in history. The only thing we really seem to know is Cogito, and there doesn’t seem to be a leap from there to anything else. An unsatisfying situation but apparently the one wee are stuck with. I asked rossum, and he said that Buddhists only believe in thought, not a permanent thinker. Which to my metaphysically inclined mind is simply a restatement that existence is logically necessary. The interesting thing to me is that such synchronicities seem to indicat that truth is not nearly so subjective as people would like to believe.
As another poster pointed out earlier with regard to the white swans example, it would take a hugely contradictory observation to overturn a well-established theory arrived at by induction. The kind of difference we’re talking about here would be discovering that all one’s previous experience of swans was fabricated by skilful puppeteers - not merely discovering that some swans are not, in fact, white. Or the classic rabbit fossils in the Precambrian discovery as a disproof of evolutionary theory - that certainly would overturn our present model of the progress of natural history.
The truths of logic and pure mathematics are pretty much entirely self-referential, so I don’t see how it matters that they don’t conform to physical reality. They are mental constructs (which, of course, implies the physical reality of mental processes…) They can be used to reason about material reality, but they aren’t a perfect match.
I get what you’re saying, but it’s also fair to note that one man’s logical rigour is another man’s unnecessary nitpicking. Personally, I would be very surprised if Descartes - or any other philosopher since - actually entertained serious doubts about his own existence beyond the thought experiment of trying to prove it. I would venture to suggest that if one does not believe in one’s own existence, there’s really nowhere to go from there.
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warpspeedpetey
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“demonstrable” is just the backdoor to “Empirical” which in the strong sense is a logical contradiction, and in the weak sense is so subjective as to be worthless. That was the failure of the logical positivists. Demonstrating things empirically, proves nothing. In order to believe it does requires the acceptance of a logical contradiction as valid. We only think it does because we already accept the premises of empiricism, which is really just begging the question. Its not intentional, its just a product of western education.
Yeah, the problem is the insistence on “perceptible evidence” the variable there is perception, not the evidence. A blind man cannot perceive color, of course that doesn’t make mean that color doesn’t exist, it means that the powers of percetion are very much unreliable indicators of the way that reality really is. Imagine if we had the perceptive tools to see angels? Then who would question it? It is our reliance on faulty tools of perception that gives rise to doubts, not on any real lack of evidence.
I understand what you mean, one has to have something to work with. But simply because we have very little to work with, with out admitting the unreliable results of perception, doesn’t mean that we should use it anyway. You wouldn’t use faulty data in a research paper if you knew it was faulty, even if it was the only data you had would you? Of course not. So it seems that using perception we know is faulty as any kind of guide to truth is a road map on which one is bound to get lost. This is an old problem and one which we are not likely to solve ourselves, given that it has occupied some of the greatest minds in history. The only thing we really seem to know is Cogito, and there doesn’t seem to be a leap from there to anything else. An unsatisfying situation but apparently the one wee are stuck with. I asked rossum, and he said that Buddhists only believe in thought, not a permanent thinker. Which to my metaphysically inclined mind is simply a restatement that existence is logically necessary. The interesting thing to me is that such synchronicities seem to indicat that truth is not nearly so subjective as people would like to believe.
I am not sure that there is any level of contradiction is necessary to disprove any number of inductions. It seems that the quality of the contradiction ia ll that matters. After all it only took one black swan to disprove what must have been billions of inductions that all swans were white.
While I wouldn’t agree that there is an implication that mental constructs are a physical reality in the empirical sense. I think its important to notice that truth doesn’t arrive solely at the beck and call of the physical. Being self referential is the state of absolutely all knowledge, even Cogito. So I am not sure we can escape that.
Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Its an unfortunate thing to realize that our desires for absolute certainty are never going to be met. To my mind that desire speaks more to our emotional states than it does to any rational requirement. We* want* to be certain, there is no need for absolute certainty. It all boils down to “best guess”. The epistemological nihilism hiding behind the one sure thing, Cogito, scares most people senseless. But as a 4:20 friendly guy. I have ways to deal.
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Sair
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The problem being that we have no apparent alternatives.
Again this highlights the importance of the interplay of perception and reason - the point of the scientific method, since its inception, has been to endeavour to correct, as far as possible, the problems inherent in human reliance on sensory evidence. Now, a blind man certainly is not able to perceive colours with his eyes, although he can hear other people speaking of them - again, this is sensory perception. But what would colours mean for a blind man? Not much, and they are hardly a necessity to his understanding or enjoyment of the world. I would suggest that the same could be said for ‘immaterial’ entities such as angels - we can hear people speak of them, and read philosophers’ debates about how many of them can dance on the head of a pin, but we have no means of actually perceiving them, so how can we say with any degree of confidence what they are or what they mean to our lives?
If I were in such a position, I would need to acknowledge that even though the data I had was faulty, there were no alternatives and hence I could not address the topic of the research paper. I’m not sure our reliance on perception is in the same category, though - we do it even before we’re able to think about doing it, so I would suggest it’s largely instinctive. You’re also assuming here that we absolutely know that our senses are in all cases and at all times unreliable, which seems an odd claim to make.
Nor indeed, I would say, are we necessarily stuck in the dichotomy of absolute vs arbitrary. Truth can cover a range of possibilities without being wholly subjective. As one of my English professors once remarked, you can say that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is about many things, but it would be hard to make the case that it’s about strawberry jam.
I see what you’re saying here, and this might lead to consideration of what could be called a hierarchy of knowledge - from broad understandings to specific details. Discovering black swans where previously one had encountered only white swans is hardly the kind of observation that would unseat an entire worldview - it is quite easily accommodated by one’s general understanding of swans, which, whilst they are no longer generally defined as white, still fit the other established criteria for swanhood.
I would agree with your general point about knowledge being self-referential, pretty much of necessity given our nature as self-aware agents, although I’m not clear on your point about this state of affairs not having a physical existence, as such.
Quite. I’m sure that’s why I found Nineteen Eighty-Four such a terrifying book. That said, though, there’s something to be said for the pragmatic, best-guess approach. What else can we do, really?
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warpspeedpetey
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And that is the crux of the matter. Our desire to use even broken tools too achieve a false certainty is really just a reflection of what is broken in us.
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