Why Christianity Fails in Terms of the Evidence

[attofishpi]

Atto. I seldom find myself on the same side of an argument as you but on this occasion we find ourselves on common ground. Boole's Laws of Thought are derived explicitly from Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason and Boolean logic is nowadays seen as the understructure of all other logics. If this was not so then there would be no such thing as information theory and no such science as the science of computation.

Struuuth!! I must have lassoed that kangaroo before it got into the top paddock!

Nice to be educated along the way too..

[Sam26]

Sam. There is no such thing as objective evidence. Evidence is simply raw data and no data can be interpreted in the absence of a subjective narrative which applies a meaning to it, which means that ALL evidence is subjective by definition. Kant 101.

Most people would disagree that "All evidence is subjective," and most scientists and philosophers would disagree. Your confusing what's going on in terms of the subject, with what's happening in the world, they are two different things. It's true that we interpret the data, but we don't do it in a vacuum. Our senses put us in contact with the world, so that we can observe what's going on around us. What makes something objective, i.e., apart from the mind, is that others observe the same data. If I see a glass sitting on the table, that glass has existence apart from what my senses tell me. I could cease to exist and the glass would still be on the table. Moreover, if there wasn't an objective reality containing objective facts, there would be no input through your senses and into your brain. And facts cannot be interpreted in any way one likes, i.e., we compare what others observe to make sure that we are seeing objective reality the same way.

It's true that there is a subjective component, viz., what's happening in your brain, but that must be compared with the data, and with what others say about that data. If it was all subjective, as you seem to imply, then all interpretations of scientific data would have equal value, and that certainly is not the case. You cannot leave out the facts (states-of-affairs) that surround us, which by definition are objective.

You need to read Kant again, because it's not what Kant is saying in Kant 101. In fact, he talks about knowledge a posteriori, which is that which we receive through our senses (sense experience); and there is knowledge that is a priori, which is knowledge quite apart from our sensory experience, unless it's tainted by our sensory experience, then it's impure a priori knowledge. Kant doesn't argue what you're arguing for, and actually I agree with Kant, for the most part.

[Obvious Leo]

Most people would disagree that "All evidence is subjective," and most scientists and philosophers would disagree.

Name one.

[thedoc]

Most people would disagree that "All evidence is subjective," and most scientists and philosophers would disagree.

Name one.

I believe Sam26 would be one, and I would be another.

[Obvious Leo]

Most people would disagree that "All evidence is subjective," and most scientists and philosophers would disagree.

Name one.

I believe Sam26 would be one, and I would be another.

OK then, try this. Give an example of evidence which is objective.

[Sam26]

Most people would disagree that "All evidence is subjective," and most scientists and philosophers would disagree.

Name one.

Address my argument.

Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Planck, Wittgenstein, Russell, etc., etc. I would be listing for the rest of my life.

[Obvious Leo]

Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Planck, Wittgenstein, Russell, etc., etc. I would be listing for the rest of my life.

All of these stated exactly the opposite. I don't think you know what objective means so that's why I asked for an example of what constitutes objective evidence.

[Sam26]

OK then, try this. Give an example of evidence which is objective.

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. This is an objective fact beyond dispute. If this fact depended on what people perceived (not that perception isn't involved), then we wouldn't be able to come to any agreement about whether it INDEED is a fact. It's true that we do perceive, i.e., through our senses we can see that it's the third planet from the sun, but that perceiving is because there IS INDEED something objective existing in space and time.

Here is another reason why your argument fails. If you say, "All evidence is subjective," and argue in favor of this being true, then presumably you're arguing in favor of an objective fact, because if it's not objective, i.e., it's purely subjective, then it wouldn't make any difference what anyone thought. The reason is, is that any subjective fact is as good as any other subjective fact. For example, it's a subjective fact that I like purple, and it's subjective that you like whatever you color you like, but these facts are totally dependent upon how we feel and think. But the fact that the Earth is the third planet from the Sun is not dependent upon how I feel or think. It's dependent upon the existence of the Earth in relation to the Sun and other planets, viz., it's dependent upon states-of-affairs.

[Sam26]

Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Planck, Wittgenstein, Russell, etc., etc. I would be listing for the rest of my life.

All of these stated exactly the opposite. I don't think you know what objective means so that's why I asked for an example of what constitutes objective evidence.

Leo that's not the case at all. I have been studying philosophy and some science for over 35 years, especially Wittgenstein, and he definitely wouldn't say that all evidence is subjective. There might be some nuanced differences between them, but all of these gentleman believed (for the most part) that there are objective facts or evidence. If scientists didn't believe this, then the reality they're describing when they describe their experiments, isn't going to mean much.

[henry quirk]

"Evidence is simply raw data and no data can be interpreted in the absence of a subjective narrative which applies a meaning to it, which means that ALL evidence is subjective by definition. Kant 101."

But some subjective narratives are better than others, yes? A narrative aligned with the 'raw data' is more accurate and more useful than one that isn't, yes?

For example: the narrative declaring 'fire burns' is more in keeping with the 'raw data' than the narrative saying 'fire freezes'' and so has more use to me (in describing and understanding how the world works).

The declaration "ALL evidence is subjective", while accurate, misleads, has a body thinkin' all perspectives are equal, which, you know as well as I do, is manure.

[thedoc]

"The Earth is flat, it says so in the Bible", that is a subjective judgement. "The Earth is an oblate spheroid", is an objective fact.

[Obvious Leo]

If scientists didn't believe this, then the reality they're describing when they describe their experiments, isn't going to mean much.

It doesn't mean a thing. Explaining the objective nature of physical reality is not now and has never been the stated goal of science.

"It is not the role of the physicist to explain the universe but merely to determine what he can meaningfully say about the behaviour of matter and energy within it."....Niels Bohr.

"It is the THEORY which determines what the observer will observe".....Albert Einstein

"All observations of nature must first be filtered through the prism of human consciousness".....Werner Heisenberg

"All of our speculations in science survive only until we learn a better way to speculate"....Max Planck

What all of these these eminent pioneers of 20th century science are saying is essentially the same thing and is purely Kantian in its perspective. It is also canonical doctrine in cognitive neuroscience and perfectly in accord with Wittgenstein. We DO NOT observe the external world at all but rather we construct a COGNITIVE MAP of it from raw information which has been presented to our minds via our senses. We cannot make any truth statements about the validity of this cognitive map without using tautologous reasoning.


“(...) Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognising it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object”.

....Emmanuel Kant (from the Jasche lectures.)

You are committing the logical fallacy of conflating the map with the territory it was designed to be mapping. A dog is only a dog because that's the way we've mutually agreed to codify a particular configuration of matter and energy. It's "dogginess" is NOT a property of physical reality but only a property of the observer of it. The same reasoning applies to every "object" we choose to define. A quark is only a quark because that's the way we've mutually agreed to codify a particular class of observations in our interrogation of the subatomic world. Its "quarkness" has no ontological status whatsoever and once scientists find a more coherent way of codifying their observations the quark will have outlived its usefulness. It will simply disappear into the luminiferous aether to join phlogiston and everything else which seemed like a good idea at the time.

That's what science is.

[thedoc]

So as far as you know, you're just a brain in a vat. The question then becomes, who is keeping you alive, and why?

[Obvious Leo]

But some subjective narratives are better than others, yes?

YES. That's what science is designed to do. Science is "what works" and better science is "what works better". But there is no such thing as a science which can define an Absolute Truth. In the Kantian metaphysic this is the distinction between Noumenal and Phenomenal reality and conflating the two is not metaphysically kosher. The early pioneers of 20th century physics were mostly well schooled in the philosophy of knowledge and thus they well understood the shortcomings of what they were doing. Unfortunately for the past half century or longer the physicists have regarded metaphysics as we would regard somebody who farted in the elevator. By mistaking the map for the territory they've ontologised their toolkit.

[Obvious Leo]

"The Earth is an oblate spheroid", is an objective fact.

No it isn't. It is a definition predicated on a subjective interpretation of evidence. There is nothing objectively real about an oblate spheroid.