Philosophy Now Forum

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 8:37 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 19, 2025 3:04 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Mar 19, 2025 9:53 am
By which measure the heliocentric model of Copernicus is a good hypothesis, because it accounts for the data better than the geocentric model it replaced.

It would only be a better one than the geocentric theory, not the best hypothesis. And we should always aim for the best.

Do you not think that, in its time, Copernicus's heliocentric model was the best?

If the Sun itself did not move, it might have been the best hypothesis. As things stand, it was only the first step in better cosmology. But there was more to learn than Copernicus knew. His was a step, but not the last.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 19, 2025 3:04 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Mar 19, 2025 12:01 amHow then could we ever know that there isn't some phenomenon that we are not currently aware of that our best hypothesis cannot account for?

We cannot. That is why all human creatures live by faith, whether they know it or not. We cannot avoid the expedient of putting trust in things for which we have only indicative evidence, not absolute certainty.

The "indicative evidence" is what we know with absolute certainty.

If it were "certain," it would not have to be "indicative." The truth is, as Idealists have long pointed out, we cannot be absolutely certain that reality itself, and all of its data, actually exists. We can be probabilistically convinced of it, and reasonably so...but not absolutely certain. It is possible, after all, that we are "a brain in a vat."

Similarly, what anyone who has indicative evidence of God knows with absolute certainty is that they have indicative evidence; what they cannot be absolutely certain of, at least as long as they live, is why.

You're still too confident, I would say. Neither the secular scientist nor the theologian has "absolute certainty" of any kind...not even about the existence of physical reality itself. It is always possible, in extremis, that the world itself is an illusion. And while you and I would, in faith, reject that as highly improbable, it is only by dint of that final commitment of faith that we can do so. It is not certainty.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 19, 2025 3:04 pmStill, always, something will end up being true. So some hypothesis will be the right one.

Of course something is true, but it doesn't follow that any hypothesis we come up with will reflect that.

But we must not confuse epistemology (i.e. what we happen to know at a given moment) with ontological reality (i.e. what is really the case, when perhaps we don't yet know it). I have not even remotely suggested that we have the right hypothesis NOW, or have to. All I'm suggesting is the ontological side: there will always be a best possible hypothesis, whether or not anybody possesses it yet. There will be some postulate that accurately reflects what reality is, in a given case.

But just as 100% of the people in the world once believe it was flat, that did not mean there was not a better hypothesis -- namely, that it is round -- and an even better one -- that it's only roughly so, not exactly so. And the third turns out to be the truth -- assuming, of course, that it all doesn't turn out to be an illusion. Human hypotheses are not the definer or creator or shaper of reality. They're only human attempts to come to grips with the reality that already pre-exists our attempts.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 1:23 pmHuman hypotheses are not the definer or creator or shaper of reality. They're only human attempts to come to grips with the reality that already pre-exists our attempts.

Which is what I have been saying all along. Can you at last see that human evolution is an hypothesis, which you are quite free to reject, but which nonetheless is a response to evidence?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:22 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 1:23 pmHuman hypotheses are not the definer or creator or shaper of reality. They're only human attempts to come to grips with the reality that already pre-exists our attempts.

Which is what I have been saying all along. Can you at last see that human evolution is an hypothesis, which you are quite free to reject, but which nonetheless is a response to evidence?

Well, let's grant that it's a hypothesis. But I submit to you that it's a weak hypothesis, lacking the very evidence it tells us should exist -- those billions of "transitional forms" that should not only be clearly indicated by the proportion of fossils, but also by the evidence of our own eyes every day. As such, it does not deserve serious consideration as a contender for truth. It deserves to be classed with things like phrenology and alchemy, which are now regarded as pseudosciences because of their persistent inability to produce evidence of efficacy. Evolutionism just does not have the evidence it invites us to expect.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 2:08 pmWell, let's grant that it's a hypothesis. But I submit to you that it's a weak hypothesis, lacking the very evidence it tells us should exist -- those billions of "transitional forms" that should not only be clearly indicated by the proportion of fossils...

So you therefore reject any evolution. What is your view of dinosaurs?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 3:32 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 2:08 pmWell, let's grant that it's a hypothesis. But I submit to you that it's a weak hypothesis, lacking the very evidence it tells us should exist -- those billions of "transitional forms" that should not only be clearly indicated by the proportion of fossils...

So you therefore reject any evolution.

Your OP deals with "human evolution," specifically. I don't really care about the evolution debate otherwise, because there's nothing theologically relevant in the mechanics of how God created lower animals. We aren't told. Whether the "days" of Creation are 24 hour periods or eras, and by what methods God chose to create, we are not specifically informed; so it would be useless of me to speculate. But what we are certainly told is that we cannot generalize from lower animals to human beings, who are a unique, privileged and responsible creation of God, in a way that no mere animal ever is or could be.

And we know it's true. Deep in our hearts, we cannot escape it. Moral duty devolves particularly and specifically on human beings, as does responsibility for the world in which we live. It's one of the few points of truth upon which both Theists and Atheists seem to agree...at least, those Atheists who still believe in morality and/or environmentalism. If human beings are animals, then they have neither moral obligations nor any responsibility whatsoever for what they do with the world.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pm...we are certainly told is that we cannot generalize from lower animals to human beings, who are a unique, privileged and responsible creation of God, in a way that no mere animal ever is or could be.

Well, at best, it says so in a book.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pmAnd we know it's true. Deep in our hearts, we cannot escape it.

So you believe the difference between you and I is how we interpret a feeling deep in our hearts. How do you explain that difference?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:52 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pm...we are certainly told is that we cannot generalize from lower animals to human beings, who are a unique, privileged and responsible creation of God, in a way that no mere animal ever is or could be.

Well, at best, it says so in a book.

So also say all the moralists and the environmentalists...by logical implication, even if they are Atheists. They all are accepting a special status for human beings; they just usually don't think about what they are implying when they do it.

So, for example, the environmentalist will insist that human beings have a unique responsibility to tend to the welfare of the planet. But why? Why would we think so? If man is just another animal, no such unique responsibility can exist. We don't place such a responsibility on termites or foxes or fish...if that's all mankind is, why make an exception for only man? Why put the whole custody of the planet at the doorstep of a mere belated chimp, even if it's the most "advanced" chimp on the planet?

Likewise, morality. Lions, canaries and microbes do not have a thing called "morality," and no duty to it if they ever did. Why say that mankind, alone of all species, had to observe the special responsibility to follow moral codes, especially when many of those codes do not serve his "survival value" at all (-- not, of course, that there can be such a thing as a "duty to survive," either; things go extinct all the time)? So we can't say that morality either increases man's powers of survival, or that surviving is man's duty. Maybe, like bacteria, our destiny is to overwhelm the planet and consume it...who is to say us nay, if that's what we wish to do? And if it suits one man to do it, who's to say he's wrong, too?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pmAnd we know it's true. Deep in our hearts, we cannot escape it.

So you believe the difference between you and I is how we interpret a feeling deep in our hearts. How do you explain that difference?

Actually, "we" is a plural. I was saying we all know it, all human beings. I wasn't singling you out.

Human beings were, and are, CREATED through and by EVOLUTION, and although 'this' is an IRREFUTABLE Fact' some people will BELIEVE otherwise. As can be clearly seen, here.

What can also be very clearly seen, here, is two people who do NOT just LOOK AT what is IRREFUTABLY True FIGHT and ARGUE OVER what can NOT be fought NOR argued over.

What evidence? That depends on how you define god. The evidence would have to be via my senses and as such would have to satisfy the requirements for reproducibility in order to be a JTB. And it would have to be beyond the laws of nature.

commonsense wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 3:14 pm What evidence? That depends on how you define god. The evidence would have to be via my senses and as such would have to satisfy the requirements for reproducibility in order to be a JTB. And it would have to be beyond the laws of nature.

Well, if it's "reproducible," then it couldn't be miraculous, could it? I mean, if something can be done over and over again, by normal scientific manipulation, maybe under controlled conditions, if not in lab conditions, then there's nothing miraculous about such a thing, is there? So it couldn't be "beyond the laws of nature." It would then be under natural laws...and not miraculous at all.

And if it's "via [your] senses," then it has to be something that happens to you, or in your presence. That would mean that anything miraculous that merely happened to another person, or happened historically, even if genuinely miraculous, could not impress you or meet that standard. You'd be asking for a personal miracle, one that both couldn't be doubted and was "beyond the laws of nature," but also was "reproducible" in the way we just described.

So maybe there's a problem in that test or standard. It certainly would seem to require mutually-contradictory things, in that it would have to be non-miraculous (i.e. "reproducible" and empirical, in that it would be your experience) but also miraculous (in that it would be "beyond the laws of nature").



Could we adjust for a better kind of test, something that avoids that inherent contradiction?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:52 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pm...we are certainly told is that we cannot generalize from lower animals to human beings, who are a unique, privileged and responsible creation of God, in a way that no mere animal ever is or could be.

Well, at best, it says so in a book.

So also say all the moralists and the environmentalists...by logical implication, even if they are Atheists. They all are accepting a special status for human beings; they just usually don't think about what they are implying when they do it.

What special status for human beings do even atheist moralists and environmentalists accept, by logical implication, other than the fact that we are the only creatures that unambiguously has the means to contemplate the consequences of our action, and to consciously manipulate our environment.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am So, for example, the environmentalist will insist that human beings have a unique responsibility to tend to the welfare of the planet. But why?

For the simple reason that, as far as we know, only we have any sense of responsibility.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am Likewise, morality. Lions, canaries and microbes do not have a thing called "morality," and no duty to it if they ever did. Why say that mankind, alone of all species, had to observe the special responsibility to follow moral codes...

I don't.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am Maybe, like bacteria, our destiny is to overwhelm the planet and consume it...who is to say us nay, if that's what we wish to do? And if it suits one man to do it, who's to say he's wrong, too?

Certainly not any god who would send a flood to destroy nearly every living creature. Nor one who for whom our destiny is the apocalypse.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:52 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 4:10 pmAnd we know it's true. Deep in our hearts, we cannot escape it.

So you believe the difference between you and I is how we interpret a feeling deep in our hearts. How do you explain that difference?

Actually, "we" is a plural. I was saying we all know it, all human beings. I wasn't singling you out.

Well, something you feel in your heart is what some of us can see quite clearly using our head. Yes we have a specific range of skills that is unique to our species, but it is not certain that any one of those skills is unique to us, even if there are those which are more developed in us than any other animal. That is entirely consistent with evolution, as it is with creation. In my view, the evidence for evolution is more compelling, in no small part because it doesn't rely on having to deny what is quite clearly evidence for evolution as a conspiracy. Nor does it rely on a bogus argument about billions of fossils. Where are the billions of fossils of creatures you do accept once lived?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 10:24 am-- --

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am-- --

Hi guys, I captured the ABC show "Australia: The Time Traveller's Guide Part 1"

It's quite fascinating regarding the current topic. As you probably know, Australia has had so little erosion over so 3 billion years that it truly is a time-capsule from the early soup of life to now..

https://androcies.com/Videos/TimeTraveller1.mp4


00:00 | The Time Traveller's Guide Ep 2 intro
04:45 | The Ordovician, 488 to 444 million years ago
08:52 | The Silurian, 444 to 416 million years ago
18:54 | MacDonnell Ranges, Northern Territory Australia
25:29 | The Devonian, 416 to 359 million years ago
31:00 | Dr Gavin Young, Palaeontologist, Australian National University
32:34 | Associate Professor Kate Trinajstic, Palaeontologist, Curtin University
43:17 | The Carboniferous, 359 to 299 million years ago
45:48 | Lisa Worrall, Chief Geoscientist, Zeus Resources Limited
47:14 | The Permian, 299 to 251 million years ago
53:50 | "The bitter end for over 80 per cent of all species alive"

I'll delete it within a month because I am being a naughty boy so by May it's gone. Not sure if you could find it outside of Oz via a streaming, or torrent perhaps but it is a good watch.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 10:24 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:52 pm
Well, at best, it says so in a book.

So also say all the moralists and the environmentalists...by logical implication, even if they are Atheists. They all are accepting a special status for human beings; they just usually don't think about what they are implying when they do it.

What special status for human beings do even atheist moralists and environmentalists accept, by logical implication, other than the fact that we are the only creatures that unambiguously has the means to contemplate the consequences of our action, and to consciously manipulate our environment.

Moral responsibility to "do the right thing," (however you want to define that). It's one thing to "contemplate" or "manipulate": not only animals can do that, but all human beings of reasonable mental capacity. The problem arises when contemplation involves a duty to manipulate "in the morally right way," so that there's a difference between contemplating and manipulating reproduction as relationship versus reproduction by rape, for example, or acquisition as wages versus acquisition as theft, or labour as coordination of effort versus labour as slavery.

In other words, if an Atheist is looking at "right" and "wrong" in these cases at all, he's according to man a status we do accord, and cannot reasonably accord, to animals. So he knows that man is not merely an animal at all.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am So, for example, the environmentalist will insist that human beings have a unique responsibility to tend to the welfare of the planet. But why?

For the simple reason that, as far as we know, only we have any sense of responsibility.

Nothing gives us reason to suppose that "sense of responsibility" is at all legitimate. There are "senses" we should trust (like the feeling of being in danger, if we are, for example), and "senses" we should ignore (like the sense you had as a child that there was a crocodile under your bed at night). The having of a "sense" means nothing, until the legitimacy of that sense impression is validated.

So what would validate to us that we have a duty to manage the environment, but one that absolutely no other creature in the world has? And what if, as is clearly the case, some people don't have that "sense," but rather, say, the "sense" that they should seize every opportunity to acquire and exploit opportunities in the interest, say, of feeding their families? What makes the environmentalist's concern with the global condition legitimate, and a man's desire to improve his own lot or to feed his family illegitimate?

You see, "having a sense" doesn't tell us much. Most importantly, it doesn't prove that "sense" should be obeyed.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am Likewise, morality. Lions, canaries and microbes do not have a thing called "morality," and no duty to it if they ever did. Why say that mankind, alone of all species, had to observe the special responsibility to follow moral codes...

I don't.

Then you wouldn't have a problem. You would then be an amoralist Atheist. But many, many of your compatriots in the Atheist ranks want to insist that Atheists are moral people, and that Atheism itself does not necessitate the illegitimacy of all moralizing. You're evidently an exception to that norm, I must suppose, if you say so.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 12:22 am Maybe, like bacteria, our destiny is to overwhelm the planet and consume it...who is to say us nay, if that's what we wish to do? And if it suits one man to do it, who's to say he's wrong, too?

Certainly not any god who would send a flood to destroy nearly every living creature. Nor one who for whom our destiny is the apocalypse.

You don't believe in any of that, right? So, as the old saying goes, "no harm, no foul." Besides, remember: you just declared that you don't believe we have any responsibility to follow moral codes, so God doesn't have any responsibility not to do the above, and it wouldn't be "wrong" if He did.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:52 pm Yes we have a specific range of skills that is unique to our species, but it is not certain that any one of those skills is unique to us, even if there are those which are more developed in us than any other animal.

"Skills"? That's the wrong word, for sure. All animals have "skills," but none by man has actual moral responsibility for what he does with his "skills."

In my view, the evidence for evolution is more compelling, in no small part because it doesn't rely on having to deny what is quite clearly evidence for evolution as a conspiracy.

Ah, the old "conspiracy theory" accusation. Unfortunately, in this case, it's too obviously merely a way of avoiding the point.

The point is very simple: that if Evolution is a good "theory," then it should be able to provide some of the evidence that that "theory" itself instructs us to expect. In this case, it should, at the very least, be able to supply a fossil record that contains the transitional forms it tells us must have existed. If it can't then the problem's not with the critics of the "theory," but with the "theory" itself. And that would be regardless of what any critic says: it would be a fault inherent to the "theory" itself.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 3:19 pm

In other words, if an Atheist is looking at "right" and "wrong" in these cases at all, he's according to man a status we do accord, and cannot reasonably accord, to animals. So he knows that man is not merely an animal at all.


For the simple reason that, as far as we know, only we have any sense of responsibility. Nothing gives us reason to suppose that "sense of responsibility" is at all legitimate. There are "senses" we should trust (like the feeling of being in danger, if we are, for example), and "senses" we should ignore (like the sense you had as a child that there was a crocodile under your bed at night). The having of a "sense" means nothing, until the legitimacy of that sense impression is validated.

So what would validate to us that we have a duty to manage the environment, but one that absolutely no other creature in the world has? And what if, as is clearly the case, some people don't have that "sense," but rather, say, the "sense" that they should seize every opportunity to acquire and exploit opportunities in the interest, say, of feeding their families? What makes the environmentalist's concern with the global condition legitimate, and a man's desire to improve his own lot or to feed his family illegitimate?

You see, "having a sense" doesn't tell us much. Most importantly, it doesn't prove that "sense" should be obeyed.

Nonsense. What differentiates humans from other animals is culture. Culture, of course, includes the knowledge and ability to manipulate the physical environment by building things (and polluting). It also includes manipulating out ability to think -- without language we would be quite different animals. Our moral duties are products of our culture. This is true for atheists as it is for the religious. I assume that you think that religious non-Christians accept a morality that is culturally constituted -- just as I think your morality is culturally constituted. Indeed, it is undeniable that your morality -- since it is based on the Bible and since the Bible is a cultural artifact, whatever else it might be -- is culturally constituted.

I won't bother responding to your silly "no transitional forms" argument, because it has been successfully refuted many times.

Alexiev wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 4:20 pm What differentiates humans from other animals is culture.

That is a second thing, of course, and quite true: animals don't have culture. If they did, then given the timespans invoked by Evolutionism, we'd have chimp Michaelangelos and Shakespeares by now, or dolphin cities, or bird airports, or whatever. Billions and billions of years is a long, long time; and even a tiny bit of culture would surely be manifest by now, in some other species. But it's not. (Well, bacteria have cultures, but that's different. )

So now we have three things: environmentalism, morality and culture.

...without language we would be quite different animals.

That is true, as well. Human language is quite distinct from so-called animal "languages" of beeps, squeaks, brays and howls. Unlike their "languages," ours is a morphing system of shared-concept cognitions, not a stable set of instinctual noises. This is why, for all their "languages," there is no philosophy among wolves and chimps, smart as they may be...they don't have metacognitive abilities or a transforming ability to conceptualize.

So now we have four things that make human beings not animals: environmental responsibility, morality, culture and language.

All this is merely solidifying the case against any confusing of human beings with mere animals.

Our moral duties are products of our culture.

Really?

If so, it would be the moral duty of Islamists to protect their cultural product of the subjugation of women? And it would be the moral duty of Southern Democrats to protect their cultural institution of slavery? And it would be the moral duty of Red Stalinists to protect their culture against the hated Kulaks, and of Maoists to protect the Cultural Revolution by robbing and killing intellectuals, and of the German Volk to protect the Fatherland against the alleged predations of Jewish bankers?

Those beliefs are all "products of a culture" as well...but I don't think you would want to say we had any duty to protect them...