What are an atheist's assumptions?

[Touchstone]

Okay, let’s not engage your “fancies”. Let’s look at the logic and the “facts”.

You certainly believe that a human is a real existence. But have you realized that a human is no more than the gathering lump sum of its components, known or unknown?

A “species” is also a gathering lump sum of it’s component “like items”.

Yes, but you are drawing lines on the map, now. The map is not the territory. If we decide to “regroup and rearrange” our species map, the real world doesn’t change. It is what it is, and only our thinking about it has changed. These “groupings” are real in the sense that they represent “brain-states” in your mind, useful for thinking about the world, but no such groupings are actual in the world.

**Can you think of anything **real that isn’t a gathering of its lump summed components?

I think not. All of the things we say are real are really merely the gathering of their lump sum components. And thus, if the components are real, the gathering of them into a single category makes the category the name of a real entity. This is a truth that I don’t think you could argue against with any sanity.

You know that the principle of gravity is real. But it isn’t real due to us conceptualizing it. It is real only because it has actual manifested instances. You can observe those manifestations and deduce from them, that a principle is being displayed.

Again, I’m sensing a deep confusion between what is map and what is territory. When we say a physical “principle” exists, by “principle” we mean a conceptual framework that provides a rule that is performative and consistent with our experience. That is, the principle is the mental “map” we have for the territory on this subject, say gravity. But the principle is not the dynamic, the map is not the territory. “Gravity” is a description of parts of our experience in nature, consistent to such a degree we can profitably deploy it as a rule.

If you take gravity and electromagnetic force, quantum principle, and the strong and weak forces, all together, you have a gathering lump sum of all physical behavior that Science has verified (forgiving that they still might have missed something).

Ok, but how is this different than “gathering” all “vertebrates” under the grouping “vertebrates”? Do either of thee conceptual reworkings change the reality we are trying to model?

Ever heard of “General Relativity”? That was one attempt to write one equation that truly displays all physical properties together - One Principle that all of the known universe obeys and is the harmony of all of the other principles summed together.

Right, but that principle is our “map”. The map is not the territory. Einstein’s map is demonstrably superior in terms of predictions, explanations and performance over Newton’s map, but it’s a better map, not a different reality, not a restructuring of reality.

One of my long term interests has been the quest for a “grand unified theory” at the fundamental physical level. We’re a bit stuck on this for the last few years, but it’s possible that something like that, a “unified map” of the territory will emerge in a way that brings together a number of other disparate maps we use.

But even with a breakthrough in that area, we would understand that this unifying principle, this “grand map” reflects some kind of effective unity in nature, in reality. But that “unifying element” is not the principle, or the theory. Those are just our best descriptions of how nature works.

Does such a “Relativity Principle” exist? Even if it has not been spelled out exactly properly, I don’t think you could argue that it doesn’t exist because if it is accurate, then all of reality is displaying it everywhere.

Nature behaves in such a way that our most effective map (so far) includes GR. From that we infer that nature has some intrinsic feature that constrains and governs matter and energy in the way described by GR. At least at macrophysical scales. GR breaks down at the edges, the map fails at the Planck line.

-TS

(con’t)

 

[Touchstone]

Now all of this is merely the very beginning of understanding the “God story” throughout human history. There is much more to say about it all.

OK, so let’s continue by understanding that the map is not the territory, and that our understanding of the territory is only qualified by the performance of the map.

But so far, you at least admit faith that such an entity (divine principle) actually exists even if not proven. Nothing fancy. No magic. No superstition. Just faith.

I have no such faith. I certainly understand the appeal of a “grand unified theory”, but in everything, the performance of the map is the index to how well I understand the territory. If my map says “divine principle here”, then what? How do I test my map against to the territory to see if that annotation performs? What does my “divine principled map” do for my navigation of the territory that my map cannot do without it? In the case of species, for example, there is utility in just having labels for different “clusters” of animal types. Even if the groupings are artificial or somewhat arbitrary, those “annotations on the map” are VERY useful for communicating with others, and in thinking about changes and similarities between groups for myself.

But again, I don’t suppose that “species exist” as a discrete actuality, apart from my conceptualizing them. A “divine principle” strikes me as similarly artificial, and useful for different ends. We often just want a “grouping” or a “holistic handle” on big questions. So we mark up our maps with such annotations, and we’re at a loss to show them as FEATURES OF THE TERRITORY, but we don’t care; our desires are that we have “divine principle” lines neatly circumscribing our map.

With much deeper logical analysis, we could get to actually understand that your faith really is justified by logic and thus becomes understanding, not merely faith. I don’t care which way you think about it right now.

A “god” is a “divine” entity (a principle - not necessarily a part of nature) that totally controls the behavior of whatever it is the god of.

So at this point, you really do believe in a God (cap G), you just think God is stupid and uncaring?

Well, as you have it, God is impersonal, a synonym for (meta-)physical law. “Stupid” doesn’t make sense one way or the other as an adjective, but “uncaring” does. Such a god would be maximally uncaring, but in a benign way – gravity is completely uncaring, right?

When I say I “believe” in the “God” of my pantheist friend, I mean that I understand how he has redrawn his map; where my map says “nature”, his says “God”. They are synonyms, then, and because I can’t be bothered to quibble over terms so long as we can understand each other, I recognize that what he means by “God”, I recognize as “STEM”, which I think has solid support for supposing is real and extant.

I’m fine with your reworking of my map, too, so long as you are saying “STEM” (my label" is some “grand gathering” of all physical laws and principles. I can translate that back and forth, not problem. But as soon as we start anthropomorphizing that principle, by make the impersonal parts of that map personal, the map suffers, and performs badly in comparison to the impersonal map of the territory.

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

You appear to be merely using the word “map” to escape honesty.

You know that your “map” is merely your concepts and understanding. And we haven’t been talking about any map. We have been pointing to concepts that happen to be on your “map” already and then discussing the reality of them.

So, by your replies, I need not continue. I don’t engage in politics beyond a certain point.

 

[wanstronian]

You appear to be merely using the word “map” to escape honesty.

You know that your “map” is merely your concepts and understanding. And we haven’t been talking about any map. We have been pointing to concepts that happen to be on your “map” already and then discussing the reality of them.

So, by your replies, I need not continue. I don’t engage in politics beyond a certain point.

Woo-hoo! James has “won” another argument by failing to provide proof of his claims, then accusing his opponent of dishonesty and going off in a huff!

Haven’t seen much evidence so far of your claim to be able to convert atheists with minimal effort!

 

[James_S_Saint]

Now how did I know that you were going to pop in with that exact comment…

Of course, you ignored that I had only claimed that I have no trouble in person and that online, I find it nearly impossible in these kind of forums. The primary reason is the honesty issue. Next to that is the presumption issue. Just like with you.

 

[liquidpele]

Woo-hoo! James has “won” another argument by failing to provide proof of his claims, then accusing his opponent of dishonesty and going off in a huff!

Haven’t seen much evidence so far of your claim to be able to convert atheists with minimal effort!

Don’t you remember? He said he could do that “in person” but it was harder on a forum. While I didn’t comment at the time, I’ll just use the word “convenient”

 

[liquidpele]

Of course, you ignored that I had only claimed that I have no trouble in person and that online, I find it nearly impossible in these kind of forums.

This post brought to you by the letters C, O, N, V, E, N, I, E, N, T, and the number 7.

 

[wanstronian]

Now how did I know that you were going to pop in with that exact comment…

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist!

Of course, you ignored that I had only claimed that I have no trouble in person and that online, I find it nearly impossible in these kind of forums. The primary reason is the honesty issue. Next to that is the presumption issue. Just like with you.

What is it that you can say to someone face-to-face that you cannot get across online, with all the time to compose your exact phraseology etc.? Why do you believe that people are somehow more dishonest when debating anonymously online, than face to face? I can’t think of any reason why that would be the case.

I do wonder (and have asked you) - if you have such a problem on-line, why do you bother?

I know that your excuse with me is my alleged presumption but really, I’m no more presumptious than the average person. I will readily admit to a presumption that God doesn’t exist, but that is hardly an outrageous presumption in light of the evidence. I’ve never seen a single piece of evidence in favour of God’s existence that I haven’t been able to find fault with at a very basic level. And religious ‘proofs’ should be no more exempt from critical evaluation at every level than any other. It’s all very well, when propounding a ‘proof’, to say, “bear with me,” but unless the foundations of the argument are solid, all that follows is potentially unstable. So there’s nothing wrong with challenging each element of a claimed proof, even before the conclusion of that proof is presented. The end doesn’t justify the means.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist!

That is the symptom of the problem - the inability to control yourself.

What is it that you can say to someone face-to-face that you cannot get across online, with all the time to compose your exact phraseology etc.?

This is another of your very many presumptions about life. It is an issue concerning communication. You, for example, presume attitudes coming from posters that are in fact, often no more than you deluding yourself into seeing what wasn’t there. It comes from insecurity and a lack of confidence. Both can be detected by the words you choose. You expose yourself when you so quickly and so often presume the attitudes of others.

In person, your emotional state gets disabled by you being able to see more directly my emotional state. In person, you sense that I am not attacking at all, in fact quite the opposite. Due to that, you attend more to what I say rather than presuming an attack and jumping into the defense mode of trying to exaggerate the tiniest possibility of error in anything I have said.

This is what terrorism is all about. If you can get people to be afraid, they will presume threat where there was none and become paranoid as they convince themselves into believing the enemy is at hand when often there was no enemy at all.

In person your ability to communicate is greatly increased over trying to merely read a posters statements. This is why they provide “emoticons”. But those little faces hardly makeup the difference.

I know that your excuse with me is my alleged presumption but really, I’m no more presumptious than the average person.

This is merely another presumption of yours and is very notably and obviously erroneous.

Why do you believe that people are somehow more dishonest when debating anonymously online, than face to face? I can’t think of any reason why that would be the case.

Another presumption that very many studies have well proven to be false. Experience (or reading the very many psych journals on the subject) would correct your presumption.

I do wonder (and have asked you) - if you have such a problem on-line, why do you bother?

I could easily ask you the same question. Do you think that you are changing anyone’s mind about anything? At best you merely convince more people that discussion online is pointless. But as to why you bother, that isn’t my business to presume of you, nor yours to presume of me.

I will readily admit to a presumption that God doesn’t exist, but that is hardly an outrageous presumption in light of the evidence.

The actual topic of religion is not what I am talking about. But when someone is so excessively presumptuous, they are in a constant state of deluding themselves as they so quickly try to defend a stance that they merely emotionally prefer (usually also derived from fear or insecurity). They end up not being able to “see” evidence because they are protecting their own ego stance by blindly rushing focus onto any excuse to prove the other guy wrong and thus don’t give equal mental time to seeing of what he might have been right about.

This is all fundamental as to how a real mind functions and gets misled by its unrestrained emotional state. And is actually why religions exist in the first place. Religions are not so much about any particular Truth as much as how to handle that Truth. They have made the huge impact that they have because of what has been very right about what they propose, not because people are just stupid and superstitious.

Kings have seldom been merely superstitious fools, yet kings often agree with one religion or another based on its actual effectiveness. In a sense, they have always been a bit scientific as they watch for what actually works rather than presuming their own preference of what they want to be real.

To make any real progress, anyone has to face reality and do what actually works. You discover what actually works by honestly and humbly viewing, not by passionately arguing or focusing on the fault in others.

Christianity changed the entire world. Such things do not happen simply because the entire world is made of superstitious fools. Other religions have made big changes as well, because they too have many right things within them.

“No great thing has ever been without greatness within.”

If you want to provide the design of a new and better religion, then by all means, go for it. But in reality, you would discover that you are merely re-“inventing the wheel”.

If you want to claim that ALL of those other people have just always been wrong and stupid, then you have quite a task on your hands because you are not facing the reality of what they accomplished and actually how. - You presume fault and attitude because you want it to be there. You are more afraid of the thought that they have been right all along and the guilt has really only been in you.

 

[wanstronian]

That is the symptom of the problem - the inability to control yourself.

This is another of your very many presumptions about life. It is an issue concerning communication. You, for example, presume attitudes coming from posters that are in fact, often no more than you deluding yourself into seeing what wasn’t there. It comes from insecurity and a lack of confidence. Both can be detected by the words you choose. You expose yourself when you so quickly and so often presume the attitudes of others.

In person, your emotional state gets disabled by you being able to see more directly my emotional state. In person, you sense that I am not attacking at all, in fact quite the opposite. Due to that, you attend more to what I say rather than presuming an attack and jumping into the defense mode of trying to exaggerate the tiniest possibility of error in anything I have said.

This is what terrorism is all about. If you can get people to be afraid, they will presume threat where there was none and become paranoid as they convince themselves into believing the enemy is at hand when often there was no enemy at all.

In person your ability to communicate is greatly increased over trying to merely read a posters statements. This is why they provide “emoticons”. But those little faces hardly makeup the difference.

This is merely another presumption of yours and is very notably and obviously erroneous.

Another presumption that very many studies have well proven to be false. Experience (or reading the very many psych journals on the subject) would correct your presumption.

I could easily ask you the same question. Do you think that you are changing anyone’s mind about anything? At best you merely convince more people that discussion online is pointless. But as to why you bother, that isn’t my business to presume of you, nor yours to presume of me.

The actual topic of religion is not what I am talking about. But when someone is so excessively presumptuous, they are in a constant state of deluding themselves as they so quickly try to defend a stance that they merely emotionally prefer (usually also derived from fear or insecurity). They end up not being able to “see” evidence because they are protecting their own ego stance by blindly rushing focus onto any excuse to prove the other guy wrong and thus don’t give equal mental time to seeing of what he might have been right about.

This is all fundamental as to how a real mind functions and gets misled by its unrestrained emotional state. And is actually why religions exist in the first place. Religions are not so much about any particular Truth as much as how to handle that Truth. They have made the huge impact that they have because of what has been very right about what they propose, not because people are just stupid and superstitious.

Kings have seldom been merely superstitious fools, yet kings often agree with one religion or another based on its actual effectiveness. In a sense, they have always been a bit scientific as they watch for what actually works rather than presuming their own preference of what they want to be real.

To make any real progress, anyone has to face reality and do what actually works. You discover what actually works by honestly and humbly viewing, not by passionately arguing or focusing on the fault in others.

Christianity changed the entire world. Such things do not happen simply because the entire world is made of superstitious fools. Other religions have made big changes as well, because they too have many right things within them.

“No great thing has ever been without greatness within.”

If you want to provide the design of a new and better religion, then by all means, go for it. But in reality, you would discover that you are merely re-“inventing the wheel”.

If you want to claim that ALL of those other people have just always been wrong and stupid, then you have quite a task on your hands because you are not facing the reality of what they accomplished and actually how. - You presume fault and attitude because you want it to be there. You are more afraid of the thought that they have been right all along and the guilt has really only been in you.

You just can’t get over yourself, can you? You are just a pompous, arrogant little fool who thinks you are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else. Maybe that’s why you spend so much time here - you have no friends because you condescend to everyone? Just a theory.

But yet you can’t even begin to provide a shred of evidence in support of your claims. You make excuses when challenged to accomplish what you claim to be able to accomplish with ease, and then fabricate personality flaws in other people because that’s the only way you can maintain your self-imagined aura of superiority.

Your behaviour is that of a 10-year-old child who wants everyone to think they’re really clever so assumes an authoritative air on every subject - the only reason I postulate you are older than high-school age is that you seem very literate. Shame it’s just empty rhetoric.

Shall we just agree to disagree on… well, everything?

 

[James_S_Saint]

You just can’t get over yourself, can you? You are just a pompous, arrogant little fool who thinks you are intellectually and morally superior to everyone else. Maybe that’s why you spend so much time here - you have no friends because you condescend to everyone?

No, just to you.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Shall we just agree to disagree on… well, everything?

…together in perfect harmony…

 

[James_S_Saint]

…together in perfect harmony…

I never “agree to disagree” that is the Devil himself. I just “agree that we disagree” and forgive the rest.

 

[tonyrey]

It is time we returned to the topic of an atheist’s assumptions:

Touchstone
Our experience is prone to subjective bias and error because our mind is a single mind. But consciousness itself implies an extramental (objective) reality.

                             Why does consciousness imply an extramental reality? Even though our experience is prone to subjective bias and error we have to **assume** we are thinking if we are to reach any conclusions at all. If we are mistaken there is no point in assuming that reality is intelligible because there will be no one to understand it (even partially).

So I cannot avoid the objective nature of reality, or deny it from the first, even if I was so inclined.

We cannot avoid the objective aspect of reality but neither can we avoid the subjective nature of our thoughts. But our starting point is our stream of consciousness. So there is no reason to** assume t**hat external reality takes precedence over internal reality.
:

I don’t think we need to postulate physical reality to conclude that other minds exist.
‘Physical’ is just a name for the conceptual framework that gives meaning to ‘exist’.

Here you are concluding that physical reality is the primary reality but why should we conclude that our sense data proceed from a reality which is “more real” than our thoughts? Again it is a conclusion rather than an assumption.

              It's a tautology; that which we can we can give meaning to the word 'exists' for implies a context for existence. As an assumption, we don't need to use the word 'physical', but it's a nice shorthand for 'that which bears distinctions of existence, attributes and behavior, based on our sense -data'. And if we do suppose other minds exist, that statement is only meaningful insofar as we can conceptually ground the word 'exist'.

We can just as easily conceptually ground the word “exist” in our thoughts - and the source of our thoughts. I think you find it difficult to detach yourself from physicalism!

              If telepathy were borne out experientially, empirically, we'd just make that part of 'physical', because it would qualify just like speaking and hearing words.

To begin with, we have experience **only **of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Our perceptions, for all we know, could be caused by other sources of thoughts, i.e. minds.

“Physical” is just a label pointing to ‘amenable to perception, qualification, qualification and/or interaction on an objective basis’. The extramental (objective) distinction is hard wired – an infant that touches a hot stove involuntarily pulls her hand back, as she is cognitive wired to treat the objects of perception as extramental.

Again this is a conclusion. Pain is perceived and at the outset we cannot** assume **it has a physical cause. No matter how much distress it causes it may be imaginary! It isn’t, of course, but in our search for assumptions we haven’t yet reached that stage of knowledge

 *You seem to be left with no physical assumptions at all! *

As above, those assumptions are unavoidably physical.

I have pointed out why they are conclusions rather than assumptions.

                The presences of other (intelligent) minds proceeds from the assumption of a (partially) intelligible reality. Given our commitment to the intelligibility of reality, on of the assessments we make from that, incorporating our experiences, is that other minds do exist, and that we can communicate on some level with some of them.

Strictly speaking the assumption that reality is intelligible presupposes the existence of at least one intelligence. Intelligibility cannot exist in a vacuum…

I’m focusing on the key element of your original post here, and making distinctions between assumptions and conclusions, which often get confused and conflated. Indeed, this is a major contributing factor to many errors in belief; assumptions are often just thought to be conclusions you aren’t obligated to justify for some arbitrary reason, rather than propositions that are accepted by necessity, and which cannot be avoided.

I entirely agree with you but we differ on our initial assumptions.

 

[wanstronian]

No, just to you.

Proves my point! Thank you.

 

[wanstronian]

I never “agree to disagree” that is the Devil himself. I just “agree that we disagree” and forgive the rest.

:yawn:

 

[punkforchrist]

Touchstone:

I’ve not said humans are a *tabula rasa. *You can find a lot of my posts here that argue right against that, and point to our physiological nature as a given that brings with it a large amount of beginning points – instincts and natural dispositions, for example.

I’m inclined to think that this suffices to show that not all knowledge is based on sense experience.

(1) does not demand that we deny our physiological nature. Indeed, if you interact with infants, its clear that they respond to the world around them in ways that are not learned. The sucking instinct, for example, supports the idea that the breast and breastmilk are real, and effective toward needs, and it doesn’t need to be taught or learned…

Right, I agree with that. It’s just that I also believe there are transcendentals to be added to this list. The laws of logic, for example, we know not through sense experience. Rather, we impose our knowledge onto our sense experience in order to make those experiences intelligible.

Rather, as a matter of reasoning, above and beyond our “wiring for reality”, we cannot dismiss out of hand that other avenues of knowledge may obtain than the sensory/validation methods we have learned since being infants. It is in this sense we are agnostic – what we know as we develop comes through our hands, our mouths, our ears, our eyes, but we don’t have grounds to say that those modes are exhaustive; if there is such a thing as “non-experiential” knowledge, perhaps we just have not discovered it yet.

Okay, so you’re using “agnostic” not in the sense that we cannot know, but that we currently do not know X. I think the law of non-contradiction is an example something we know apart from sense experience.

As for (2), even as you state it, it’s not circular; it’s not defined in its own terms. “Supernatural knowledge” may obtain with some form of objective validation that has nothing to do with experience. So it may obtain completely apart from the “loop” we use for experiential knowledge. The criteria for may be quite different, distinct.

There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch here, albeit unintentional. I wasn’t saying that non-experiential knowledge is supernatural, but that naturalists tend to say that all knowledge is based in experience. Not every naturalist will say this, however. I think Russell would be an example of a philosopher who held to non-experiential knowledge, at least insofar as logic and mathematics are concerned.

It’s just a matter of circumstance, and thus our conclusion, that no such alternative modes of knowledge obtain. I think perhaps your complaint is really with the implications/requirements of “knowledge”, rather than any circularity, above. All three terms are problematic outside of natural knowledge in “justified true belief”. It’s not NECESSARY that it be that way, but that’s the way it is.

I don’t see any reason to think that that’s really the way it is, though. The circularity doesn’t come about just by saying that knowledge is based solely through sense experience, but that the only examples we know of come about through sense experience. It doesn’t do much good to dismiss the arguments of philosophers who hold to non-experiential based knowledge without, in fact, dealing with those arguments.

So, what I’m saying is circular is not so much you’re own expression of your opinion, but rather the common assumption among atheists (but not all, or even necessarily most) that if God can’t be observed, we can’t know He exists.

 

[Touchstone]

I’m inclined to think that this suffices to show that not all knowledge is based on sense experience.

I think that just shows a deep confusion between ‘instinct’ and ‘knowledge’, doesn’t it?

To say that instinct is not knowledge does not dismiss instinct as being non-existent, unuseful or not valuable. Instinct is a powerful resource for survival and living. It’s just not knowledge itself. If you disagree, we’ll have to unpack both concepts and see where the stark differences are between them.

Right, I agree with that. It’s just that I also believe there are transcendentals to be added to this list. The laws of logic, for example, we know not through sense experience. Rather, we impose our knowledge onto our sense experience in order to make those experiences intelligible.

We do know logic through sense experience, just as we have eyes from sense experience, the sense experience distilled through a million generations of real world experience and physiological development before us. We don’t “learn to grow eyes”. They are “grown for us” in our physiology by those million ancestors that preceded us. Logic, a different kind of wiring than optical sensory wiring, comes to us the same way. Linguists discover that humans are born with a rudimentary sense of grammar, a predisposition to certain language structures, again, endowed to us by the trials and errors of a million million individuals that preceded us.

But none of these are knowledge in any epistemic sense. This is physiology. It’s a keen insight to say that all that is a form of distilling knowledge from the past, the acquired experiences of ancestors into our physiology, but this is not knowledge itself.

Logic isn’t knowledge however it’s acquired, but a rule set for acquiring and validating knowledge. There’s a lot more to say on that, but that’s enough for now.

Okay, so you’re using “agnostic” not in the sense that we cannot know, but that we currently do not know X. I think the law of non-contradiction is an example something we know apart from sense experience.

Well, as I said above, our eyes are not acquired by sense experience, but bequeathed to us by all the parents that have gone before us; Logic, however much we have that’s innate (certainly some features of logic are learned and do not come to us instinctively), is a “mental eye”, a feature of our physiology we inherit from our ancestors, and have in some rudimentary form when we are born.

It’s useful to note that a baby has eyes, but cannot “see” in the sense you and I can when she is born. It takes months of a process called “visual integration” to coalesce the wiring in the brain and the visual stimuli into a framework model of visual reality that recognizes shapes, patterns and objects and can use them as “logical chunks” for advanced cognitive processing. “Logical Nativism”, as I believe it is called in the research literature, is a parallel process, or possibly preceding/enabling process that starts with an innate logical framework at birth (and before), and which provides integration of cognitive functions like visual processing and language.

But even so, these are tools, physiological resources and faculties, not knowledge in the epistemic sense.

There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch here, albeit unintentional. I wasn’t saying that non-experiential knowledge is supernatural, but that naturalists tend to say that all knowledge is based in experience. Not every naturalist will say this, however. I think Russell would be an example of a philosopher who held to non-experiential knowledge, at least insofar as logic and mathematics are concerned.

Some of that is tautological. It depends on what you mean to include in “knowledge”. Is “2+2=4” knowledge. Well, we might say it’s an example of *analytical *knowledge, the produce of applied rules. And that’s fine – I’m OK with whatever perimeter we choose, as long as we’re consistent. But “2+2=4” is not a statement that pertains to the real world, it’s not synthetic knowledge (it’s an analytic a posteriori proposition, Kant would say).

I guess what would be needed to go forward from that is some indication form you about what you mean by knowledge. Do you suppose that synthetic a prioris are knowledge? And if so, how are they qualified as “true”?

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

I don’t see any reason to think that that’s really the way it is, though. The circularity doesn’t come about just by saying that knowledge is based solely through sense experience, but that the only examples we know of come about through sense experience. It doesn’t do much good to dismiss the arguments of philosophers who hold to non-experiential based knowledge without, in fact, dealing with those arguments.

If we demand something more than just conviction as the qualifications for knowledge, it’s hard to see what other options one has. It would be extremely useful to have examples of knowledge that we could qualify as knowledge that do not obtain from experience. The only reason you state your misgivings as you do, though, I suggest, is because those examples are conspicuously lacking.

And it’s a problem on the back end, not just the front end. If you come up with
“Proposition A”, your example of knowledge that man somehow acquires apart from sense-experience, how would your peers qualify that as knowledge. If Proposition A gets held up to empirical testing, it seems you are likely to be in trouble, although it’s conceivable that Prop A is obtained non-experientially, but confirmed experientially.

One of my philosophy professors had an interesting scenario along these lines. What if women “just knew” the gender of their next child, long before they were pregnant? Now, setting aside subtle hormonal cues and other physiological hints for the moment, what if they acquired this knowledge “out of the blue”. That could be, and would have to be confirmed by the evidence – the accuracy of their premonitions. IF women were 100% correct, that would be qualified as knowledge.

But for the kinds of propositions that typically get dressed up as “non-experiential knowledge” (cough, cough), validation is highly problematic.

So, what I’m saying is circular is not so much you’re own expression of your opinion, but rather the common assumption among atheists (but not all, or even necessarily most) that if God can’t be observed, we can’t know He exists.

I don’t claim that as my position, as you now know, but even as stated, I don’t see the circularity. Or rather, I can’t see any circularity beyond the necessarity of the tautology at work – we define “exist” as something we can observe, or can observe in principle, or can observe in some indirect way (seeing the bars on a spectrogaph of a distant planet is not seeing the sodium of that planet directly, for example).

The complaint seems to always be “you’re being to narrow about what ‘exists’ means!”. I respond “Fine, what’s your extended definition?” And HERE is where the break down occurs. No one can provide an annex to our current working definition of “exists” that is even coherent, let alone useful in practice.

Let’s check: what is your proposed “best, widest” definition of “exists”? If it’s not “extended in STEM”, what is the principle that cleanly divides that which “exists” from “that which does not exist”?

-TS

 

[James_S_Saint]

No one can provide an annex to our current working definition of “exists” that is even coherent, let alone useful in practice.

Existence that that which has effect.

Try it, you’ll like it.