Philosophy Now Forum

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:49 am I was once in the Insurance Consultant industry and we have to review the particular risk management system of each client and make recommendations. So I am reasonably familiar with the general principles of risk management.

I come from praxis. I build complex, mission-critical, real-time systems. So I have to make constant (moral) trade-offs given incomplete knowledge etc.

If we ever need to dive deeper on these issues - that will be good common grounding.

Ginkgo wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:59 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 am

Ginkgo wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:39 am Objective morality is equally a problem inherent to theism.

Why do you suppose so?

Because there isn't a theory of God and/or morality that is not subject to criticism.

There isn't ANY point of view that is not subject to criticism. The question is not "are there critics," but "are the criticisms apt or inappropriate to the facts."

If God exists, then morality can be objective and grounded. The presence of "critics" has no effect on that, one way or the other: their approval would not make God exist if He did not, and would not make morality objective if it's not. But likewise, their disapproval cannot make God not-exist, and cannot make morality not-objective. In both cases, things are as they are, regardless of opinion, as I'm sure you know.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:37 pm If God exists, then morality can be objective and grounded.

Fool.

If god exists then it must present itself and speak on its own behalf on matters of morality. And most importantly PROVE that it is, in fact God and not an impostor.
Otherwise everybody will claim THEY have the "correct" God. And that THEY have the "correct" revelation and kill each other over bullshit (Q.E.D)

What proof would you accept as sufficient that god stands before you, and not just some technologically superior alien race?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:37 pmIf God exists, then morality can be objective and grounded.

Mr Can, if your god exists then its morality is the subjective opinion of a being who believes that we are born guilty of a crime we didn't commit, for which we will burn in hell forever, unless we give thanks for human sacrifice.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:27 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:07 am And yet you claimed to have "unqualified" certainty. I find those claims implausible to reconcile. One of them must not be true.

I have made no epistemic claims anywhere in our interaction.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 1:17 pm
...in an Atheistic world. That was my conditional clause. We must not forget it.
TS responded: Performative contradiction.

The world is. Unqualified.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:07 am So if you still have that "unqualified" certainty, on what basis are you so certain?

Can you quote the exact sentence of mine which you call 'unqualified certainty'?

Above.

"god" is a signifier without a signified.

There's the knowledge claim again. How do you KNOW this? Or are you just saying, "I wish God did not exist"? It's got to be one of the two, or you're saying nothing at all.

So the non-answer I can give you is "I have heard the word. I don't know what it means". Hence - null-pointer.

Ah. You're professing your own uncertainty, not making an epistemic claim. Well, you can do that.

What if it was? Then what would and wouldn't we (humans) observe?
What if it wasn't? Then what would and wouldn't we (humans) observe?

Until you can propose a procedure (EXPERIMENT!) for us to distinguish those two cases science bows out gracefully.

So your test is, "If we can get God into a beaker, then He's real; if we can't, he's not." You're a believer that human science is the totality of truth. But that's just the so-called Lucretius Fallacy -- the belief that "the biggest mountain in the world is the biggest one I've seen," so to speak.

surreptitious57 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:35 am

Immanuel Can wrote:
Atheism is not true

Atheism is the non acceptance of a specific truth claim pertaining to the existence of a metaphysical being commonly known as God
Non acceptance of the truth claim is not the same as rejection of it and as it cannot be disproven then the claim cannot be falsified

Then you're an agnostic, not an Atheist. You admit you don't know, but rationality requires you to remain open to future positive demonstration.

Atheism qua the denial of the existence of God cannot be rationally defended at all. Even Dawkins admits that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:59 pm The world

That's not a knowledge claim. It's an axiomatic ASSUMPTION. This place I find myself in - I call it "The world". I know nothing else of it. I just gave it a label.

It was you who ascribed the adjective “atheistic” to it. Which *IS* a knowledge claim!

So back it up (something tells me that you won’t).

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:07 am There's the knowledge claim again. How do you KNOW this? Or are you just saying, "I wish God did not exist"? It's got to be one of the two, or you're saying nothing at all.

How do I know that I have no conception of God? Because I can recognise my own ignorance!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:59 pm So your test is, "If we can get God into a beaker, then He's real; if we can't, he's not." You're a believer that human science is the totality of truth. But that's just the so-called Lucretius Fallacy -- the belief that "the biggest mountain in the world is the biggest one I've seen," so to speak.

Strawman. You suck at this philosophy thing You know what a mountain is because you have seen one. You know a bigger one when you see it.
You don't know what a "god" is because you've never seen one. So you can't recognise a bigger or a smaller one even if it stood before you right now.

I don't have a test! I am asking YOU to produce one.

I am claiming that if YOU can't tell the difference between the two universes - then it doesn't make ANY epistemic difference.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:04 pmThen you're an agnostic, not an Atheist. You admit you don't know, but rationality requires you to remain open to future positive demonstration.

Atheism qua the denial of the existence of God cannot be rationally defended at all. Even Dawkins admits that.

Ah, Mr Can; good to see that you are finally qualifying your definition of 'Atheism'. You clearly still don't understand agnosticism though, so here it is again from the man who invented the word:
"Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology. On the whole, the "bosh" of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not."
Thomas Huxley

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:06 pm It was you who ascribed the adjective “atheistic” to it. Which *IS* a knowledge claim!

So you were NOT saying you had any "unqualified" certainty about that. Good to know.

So back it up (something tells me that you won’t).

I do not believe the world is as Atheists describe it. So I am not in a position to make their case for them, if they have one. Personally, I believe they have none that can be rationally defended.

I can recognise my own ignorance!

As can we all, I imagine.

You know what a mountain is because you have seen one.

I thought you were saying there was no such thing as a "signified." But now you're a "common-sense Realist," all of a sudden?

You don't know what a "god" is because you've never seen one.

And now you're making epistemic claims on behalf of others, are you?

I don't have a test! I am asking YOU to produce one.

You may as well fault the Pacific Ocean for not fitting into a coffee mug as to fault God for not being subject to a test you design.

But like the Pacific Ocean, while you cannot get ALL of it in a mug, you can get a little of it. However, you'd have to be in a frame of mind to recognize that cup of water as indicative of the existence of a much bigger entity...I really have to doubt you're in that epistemic frame of mind.

Just so, you can recognize the works of God as indicative of His existence; or you can see only what you can put in the coffee mug, and refuse to see it as indicative of anything at all. The choice, in either case, will be yours.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm So you were NOT saying you had any "unqualified" certainty about that. Good to know.

It's not a matter of certainty.Never was - your are (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreting my meaning.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm I do not believe the world is as Atheists describe it. So I am not in a position to make their case for them, if they have one. Personally, I believe they have none that can be rationally defended.

You don't get to do that

1. You believe "the world is" or" the world isn't" ( A vs ¬A)
2. You believe the world is "theistic" or "atheistic" ( B vs ¬B)

Your claim is A ∧ B (world exists AND god exists).
Atheist claim is A ∧ ¬B (world exists AND god doesn't exist)
My claim is A (world exists).

So fuck both of your camps

https://repl.it/repls/PrivateMealySequence

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm As can we all, I imagine.

I have evidence that you can't. For starters you think belief/disbelief is a dichotomy. It's not. It's a continum

disbelief<-------non-belief------->belief

You can conceptualise it as a Qubit instead of a Boolean.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm I thought you were saying there was no such thing as a "signified." But now you're a "common-sense Realist," all of a sudden?

And you are intentionally switching perspectives from the general to the particular. I imagine. Because you are a slippery troll.

I have no signified for "God"
I have a signified for "mountain"

That's why I insist on dealing you in formal logic.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm And now you're making epistemic claims on behalf of others, are you?

An epistemic challenge. Tell me about your "God" signified.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:50 pm You may as well fault the Pacific Ocean for not fitting into a coffee mug as to fault God for not being subject to a test you design.

Well. I haven't designed a test. You claim to have.

It's 2018 - we are still arguing over theism vs atheism instead of statistical under-fitting vs over-fitting!

Which is the general case for all of these types of arguments. Bias vs variance trade-offs. Maybe it's time we mandated statistics in high school...

https://towardsdatascience.com/overfitt ... 4ee20ca7f9

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:58 pm It's not a matter of certainty.Never was - your are (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreting my meaning.

"Unqualified" was the misleading term.

My claim is A (world exists).

You have no certainty of that. Once one starts the game of radical doubt, that acid washes out the empirical world and everything else, at least down to the "self," as Descartes showed. Some think his critique is even more acidic by implication than that, and issues in pure Nihilism.

How do you manage to stop with conviction on the claim "world exists"?

For starters you think belief/disbelief is a dichotomy. It's not. It's a continum

You're incorrect. I'm an advocate of the plausibility criterion for all empirical questions. Plausibility rates from low to high.

An epistemic challenge. Tell me about your "God" signified.

Justify the challenge, first. What is the basis of your assumption that "mountain" is a signified, but "God" is not?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm You have no certainty of that. Once one starts the game of radical doubt, that acid washes out the empirical world and everything else, at least down to the "self," as Descartes showed. Some think his critique is even more acidic by implication than that, and issues in pure Nihilism.

It's not Nihilism. I draw a distinction between myself and the world, while recognizing that I am part of the world. And I am stuck in a meat sack. I don't know what I am beyond labeling myself human (and I also have a name), but I want to continue this experience. And I quite like the other humans too.
You haven't committed live YouTube suicide yet - so I think you do too, and it's unlikely that you are a nihilist.

Although I am guessing you enjoy being a contrarian, more than you enjoy being human.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm How do you manage to stop with conviction on the claim "world exists"?

Easy. It's not a claim - it's an axiom. I could have simply said "I exist and therefore something other than me exists". Individuation ( I ∧ ¬I ). The label is unimportant.

Absolute certainty is a red herring: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Absolute_certainty (which you have now ignored twice so you earn another point for poor trolling)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm You're incorrect. I'm an advocate of the plausibility criterion for all empirical questions. Plausibility rates from low to high.

I don't find such a scale very useful in my line of work. I use the Decibel scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel

It allows for disbelief, non-belief and belief.
It allows for improbable, I don't know, and probable

This is very important when you are testing multiple hypotheses side by side!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm Justify the challenge, first. What is the basis of your assumption that "mountain" is a signified, but "God" is not?

My own epistemology. I have no signified for "god". I have one for "mountain". I am staring at Table Mountain right now.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:30 pm It's not Nihilism. I draw a distinction between myself and the world, while recognizing that I am part of the world.

But you have no proof the world is anything but a figment of that mind. There may be nothing for you to "be a part" of. That's the point Descartes takes us to.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm How do you manage to stop with conviction on the claim "world exists"?

Easy. It's not a claim - it's an axiom. I could have simply said "I exist and therefore something other than me exists".

You can't get "something other than me exists" from "I exist." From "I exist," all you get is "I exist." Moreover, even if it turns out somehow that "something other" exists, as Descartes argues, that "something other" could be a delusion or an evil entity that deceives you. You have no way to know it's a "world" -- far less the world as you believe it is.

Absolute certainty is a red herring.

It was you who appeared to claim it: remember? "Unqualified" knowledge. I never asserted the existence of such a thing. If you read my last message at all, you know I'm an advocate of probability in regard to empirical knowledge.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm Justify the challenge, first. What is the basis of your assumption that "mountain" is a signified, but "God" is not?

My own epistemology.

Are you arguing for Common-Sense Realism? If you personally see something, it exists; and if you don't, it doesn't?

I have no signified for "god". I have one for "mountain". I am staring at Table Mountain right now.

You can't trust your own epistemology. Remember?

Perhaps the mountain is less real than God. Meanwhile, your knowing that would not change that fact, if it is so. Nothing at all depends for its real existence on you having seen it; and as Descartes showed, you can have no certainty about the appearances in your own mind.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:19 pm But you have no proof the world is anything but a figment of that mind. There may be nothing for you to "be a part" of. That's the point Descartes takes us to.

Cool! If my mind can do all that - that's pretty awesome. I still don't understand much of it, but I got time.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:19 pm You can't get "something other than me exists" from "I exist." From "I exist," all you get is "I exist." Moreover, even if it turns out somehow that "something other" exists, as Descartes argues, that "something other" could be a delusion or an evil entity that deceives you. You have no way to know it's a "world" -- far less the world as you believe it is.

Do you not believe your eyes? Can you not tell your left arm from your right? Do they not respond at your will? Does it not hurt when you burn yourself?
I have (arbitrarily) decided to draw a distinction between that which I have most control over and that over which I do not. And just like that - BOOM! I have "I" and "Something other than I".

Try it. It's that easy.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:19 pm It was you who appeared to claim it: remember? "Unqualified" knowledge.

And I told you to disregard the poverty of English. But since you are incapable of formal logic, I guess you are going to have to stop bending my words to suit your agenda, otherwise I'll outsmart you at that game (trust me - I am better at it than you).

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:22 pm Are you arguing for Common-Sense Realism? If you personally see something, it exists; and if you don't, it doesn't?

I am not arguing for or against anything. Least of giving my taxonomy a stupid name like "common-sense realism". What's the difference between uncommon and common sense?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:19 pm You can't trust your own epistemology. Remember?

Maybe you can't? I trust mine just fine. My imaginary predictions work very well. And my imaginary desires are being fulfilled. This video game is fun to play!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 7:19 pm Perhaps the mountain is less real than God. Meanwhile, your knowing that would not change that fact, if it is so. Nothing at all depends for its real existence on you having seen it; and as Descartes showed, you can have no certainty about the appearances in your own mind.

I don't care about the real/not-real distinction. You do.
Also - you still haven't committed suicide. And here you are you talking to your self right now...