[luke warm]

winston, what i've said is philosophically valid, it contains no internal inconsistency, no contradiction... the point isn't to convince you (or anyone), it's to show the logical problems with other views... for example, the 'conventions' view is, i'm sure you'll agree, arbitrary in that it requires a consensus, meaning that it lacks an objective certainty (requiring a vote of sorts)

for example, why should "all laws of logic are conventional" be accepted as true while "some laws of logic are not conventional" is false? after all, if conventional either might be true...yet there would be a contradiction there, violating one of the laws we're speaking of

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 26 2008, 06:21 PM, said:

it's easier to dismiss them as merely semantics than argue against them

the fact remains, from a philosophical POV no one has yet given a convincing argument accounting for abstract entities... richard is the only one who actually took a stance when he acknowledged their existence and attributed them (or at least one of them) to 'conventions'

I'll note again the starting sentence of my last posting

"I don't accept the basic premise of the argument. "

I suspect the main reason that no one else is bothering to respond to this line of argument is that they don't believe that there is any special about "abstract entities".

I see no reason to treat the "Laws of Logic" any differently than the number four, a rock, or my pet rat Garm.

I readily admit, I don't know where the universe came from. I don't expect this issue to be solved in my life time. However, I don't accept that this lack of certainty requires me to believe in the supernatural.

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 26 2008, 07:22 PM, said:

for example, the 'conventions' view is, i'm sure you'll agree, arbitrary in that it requires a consensus, meaning that it lacks an objective certainty (requiring a vote of sorts)

for example, why should "all laws of logic are conventional" be accepted as true while "some laws of logic are not conventional" is false? after all, if conventional either might be true...yet there would be a contradiction there, violating one of the laws we're speaking of

Here once again you are presupposing that "objective certainty" is necessary / desirable...

As I noted earlier, Euclidean geometry is self consistent. However, hyperbolic geometry and elliptic geometry are equally valid system.

Somehow, mathematicians manage to muddle along and make use of geometry. They do so by agree amongst themselves which type of geometry that they are going to be using at a given point in time.

Yes, this can cause problems. If half the mathematicians are basing all their work on Euclidean geometry and the other half are basing their work on hyperbolic geometry they won't be able to communicate effectively. The proofs that they offer one another won't be accepted as valid by the other side because they lack any common frame of reference.

Some might claim that this hypothetical is quite applicable to the current conversation.

[Winstonm]

luke warm, on May 26 2008, 11:22 AM, said:

winston, what i've said is philosophically valid, it contains no internal inconsistency, no contradiction... the point isn't to convince you (or anyone), it's to show the logical problems with other views... for example, the 'conventions' view is, i'm sure you'll agree, arbitrary in that it requires a consensus, meaning that it lacks an objective certainty (requiring a vote of sorts)

for example, why should "all laws of logic are conventional" be accepted as true while "some laws of logic are not conventional" is false? after all, if conventional either might be true...yet there would be a contradiction there, violating one of the laws we're speaking of

Yes, you are closer to my view now that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty, as an objective certainty must by its nature be judged against some standard (non-objective non-certainty), and that judgement then makes it relative and if it is relative it is no longer an objective certainty but simply another convention.

Quote

A particularly clear example is Gilbert Harman's moral philosophy (1996), according to which moral truths result from social convention. Conventions vary among societies. One society may regard infanticide as horrific, while another may regard it as routine and necessary. Moral statements are true only relative to a conventional standard.

To be more precise, in my view I find no contradictions between the existence of a higher power and non-absolutism - but I am of the opinion that Christian dogma requires absolutism due to the penal nature inherent in that configuration of God.

I believe the logic you find in your beliefs stems from the definition applied to God, and not so much as pure logic - i.e., for the statement of God exists, and God created man's conscience, therefore yada yada yadi has to be logical, the definition of God must fall within certain parameters, but is there any logic to the establishment of those parameters?

[helene_t]

PassedOut, on May 26 2008, 03:08 PM, said:

I don't see that the idea of proof has much utility when we get outside the realm of formal systems. My experience tells me that when I walk into a tree I'm going to bump my nose, but I can't prove that.

Right, in a similar wain one of the contributors wrote that he believed that Australia exists. He couldn't prove it since it's possible that all the people he knew who had been to Australia in fact were taken by a 20-hour round trip ending at the local zoo to watch kangaroos. The Apollo conspiracy theories come to mind ...

But most took "proof" to be meant as something weaker. Maybe "evidence" would have been a better word. Anyway, the responses to the Edge questions make fascinating reading.

[mike777]

"Yes, you are closer to my view now that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty, as an objective certainty must by its nature be judged against some standard (non-objective non-certainty), and that judgement then makes it relative and if it is relative it is no longer an objective certainty but simply another convention."

I always find this an interesting discussion and this has been discussed in other threads. A belief is a particular kind of Mental state. Any belief must have a propositional content; any belief can be assessed as true or false; and any belief can be assessed as justified or unjustified, rational or irrational.

Or as Kenberg put it and no doubt can explain it clearer S's belief that p is true if and only if P

With the left hand side of this biconditional attributing truth to a belief with a given context and the right-hand side describing the fact that would have to obtain if the attributrion is to be true.

I argued that facts about what belief would be justified by a given piece of evidence are facts that must be thought of as absolute, and not as varying from social context to social context.

An example of an absolute belief may be that "nothing comes from nothing" Even God cannot create God out of nothingness.

However there are arguments in favor of epistemic relativism or global relativism. One interesting book on moral relativism is by Harman and Thomson. Prominent Phiosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam and Nelson Goodman defend relativism and constructivism.

[luke warm]

hrothgar said:

Here once again you are presupposing that "objective certainty" is necessary / desirable...

actually i'm not arguing that it's necessary and/or desirable, merely that there are logical problems when it isn't (or when abstracts don't exist)...

winston said:

Yes, you are closer to my view now that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty, as an objective certainty must by its nature be judged against some standard (non-objective non-certainty), and that judgement then makes it relative and if it is relative it is no longer an objective certainty but simply another convention.

it isn't my view that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty... and i agree that if something is simply conventional, it might be otherwise - depending on the ones reaching the consensus

mike777, on May 26 2008, 02:49 PM, said:

I always find this an interesting discussion and this has been discussed in other threads. A belief is a particular kind of Mental state. Any belief must have a propositional content; any belief can be assessed as true or false; and any belief can be assessed as justified or unjustified, rational or irrational.

which is exactly why a study of how we *know*, or of epistemology, is so critical

Quote

However there are arguments in favor of epistemic relativism or global relativism. One interesting book on moral relativism is by Harman and Thomson. Prominent Phiosophers such as  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary  Putnam and Nelson Goodman  defend relativism and constructivism.

and even though i might not be convinced by their arguments, as richard wasn't convinced by some of plantina's, it pays all of us to understand that those views can't simply be dismissed by neophytes such as us... these men have spent lifetimes studying and formulating logical arguments, few of us have the time, experience, or knowledge to examine them enough... even so, it would take a disbelief in immaterial realities to argue as they argue, and i've seen very few philosophers with that stance... read plantinga's proof re: naturalism vs. evolution

that's why we each take whatever authority we find palatable and go from there

[matmat]

luke warm, on May 26 2008, 04:26 PM, said:

which is exactly why a study of how we *know*, or of epistemology, is so critical

i thought we reached a consensus in this thread (we really should find a journal and publish it there) that certain beliefs are undoubtedly true, because we believe them to be so.

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 27 2008, 12:26 AM, said:

read plantinga's proof re: naturalism vs. evolution

I've always thought Plantinga's "proof" regarding naturalism and evolution to be laughable. There is a hole in his argument big enough to drive a truck through.

Simply put, its very dangerous to build a formal proof that presupposes that you're right. It becomes very easy to flip this assumption on its head and reverse all of the conclusions.

I'm not going to restate Plantinga's entire post. Rather, I'll point y'all at the following. http://fitelson.org/plant.pdf The article is a critique of Plantinga, however, it provides a fairly decent summary regarding his reasoning. I recommend that folks pay particular attending to the variable "R". (R can be understood as the likelihood that our "psychological mechanisms for forming beliefs [are] 'generally' reliable") More importantly, note that Plantiga argues that R should be assumed to be approximately equal to 1.

Pay close attention to that last statement... Plantinga's whole proof is based on an assumption that folks psychological mechanisms for forming beliefs are extremely reliable.

Moreover, he is using this to prove that his own psychological mechanism for forming beliefs is reliable...

Do you see the basic problem?

[mike777]

luke warm, on May 26 2008, 04:26 PM, said:

hrothgar said:

Here once again you are presupposing that "objective certainty" is necessary / desirable...

actually i'm not arguing that it's necessary and/or desirable, merely that there are logical problems when it isn't (or when abstracts don't exist)...

winston said:

Yes, you are closer to my view now that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty, as an objective certainty must by its nature be judged against some standard (non-objective non-certainty), and that judgement then makes it relative and if it is relative it is no longer an objective certainty but simply another convention.

it isn't my view that there are no absolutes, no objective certainty... and i agree that if something is simply conventional, it might be otherwise - depending on the ones reaching the consensus

mike777, on May 26 2008, 02:49 PM, said:

I always find this an interesting discussion and this has been discussed in other threads. A belief is a particular kind of Mental state. Any belief must have a propositional content; any belief can be assessed as true or false; and any belief can be assessed as justified or unjustified, rational or irrational.

which is exactly why a study of how we *know*, or of epistemology, is so critical

Quote

However there are arguments in favor of epistemic relativism or global relativism. One interesting book on moral relativism is by Harman and Thomson. Prominent Phiosophers such as  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary  Putnam and Nelson Goodman  defend relativism and constructivism.

and even though i might not be convinced by their arguments, as richard wasn't convinced by some of plantina's, it pays all of us to understand that those views can't simply be dismissed by neophytes such as us... these men have spent lifetimes studying and formulating logical arguments, few of us have the time, experience, or knowledge to examine them enough... even so, it would take a disbelief in immaterial realities to argue as they argue, and i've seen very few philosophers with that stance... read plantinga's proof re: naturalism vs. evolution

that's why we each take whatever authority we find palatable and go from there

Jimmy I may be misunderstanding your theme but it seems you are asking or stating the theory that:


There is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is ojectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the revelent evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective.

As opposed to a competing theory that:

It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe soley on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence: our contingent needs and interests must also be involved.

Or to rephrase, our exposure to the evidence is either sufficient to explain why we believe what we believe or that our contingent social interests must ALWAYS play an ineliminable role.

I find comparing Richard Rorty to Paul Boghossian interesting in this discussion

[sceptic]

Quote

i know without a doubt that there are questions which humans are incapable of answering

I agree, (should you not add, at the moment on the end of your statement?)

here are my four questions

1/. Is there a God?

2/. Can some one prove the existance of God? (please dont ask can I prove he does not exist as I can't prove fairies live at the bottom of my garden, either)

3/. Can some one tell me what happened to Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra (the list may be almost limitless)?

4/. Do Gods stop existing if no one believes in them any more?

can some one write just one post answering just one of these questions

[blackshoe]

I'll take a shot.

1. Insufficient data.
2. I doubt it. I certainly can't.
3. Again, I don't know what happened to them, or whether someone else exists who can.
4. That is certainly one possible answer to your question 3. For another, read Robert Heinlein's The Number of the Beast.

Edit: one further comment: the construction "is there a God?" is flawed. When you capitalize that word, you limit its referent to one particular god - He of the "People of the Book". Properly phrased, the question would be either "Do gods exist?" or "Does God exist?" To either of those questions, the answer is the same as above.

[kenberg]

For the answer to number 3, try reading American Gods a novel by Neil Gaiman. The general story line is that various Gods were brought to this country by immigrants. These Gods have lately been neglected, they are really pissed, and they decide to do something about it.

[blackshoe]

Heh. Yet another possible answer. Gaiman is interesting, I should read that.

[Codo]

sceptic, on May 27 2008, 09:11 AM, said:

Quote

i know without a doubt that there are questions which humans are incapable of answering

I agree, (should you not add, at the moment on the end of your statement?)

here are my four questions

1/. Is there a God?

2/. Can some one prove the existance of God? (please dont ask can I prove he does not exist as I can't prove fairies live at the bottom of my garden, either)

3/. Can some one tell me what happened to Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra (the list may be almost limitless)?

4/. Do Gods stop existing if no one believes in them any more?

can some one write just one post answering just one of these questions

Nice one, I give it a try.

1. Yes, of course. (Fully aware of the fact that the "of course not" fraction is as convinced as I am)

2. The concept I learned here is the following: If you can prove that there is a God, God becomes a fact. And if he is a fact, you can logically not believe any more- just because you simply know. So noway you can prove his existence with our limited minds.

3. Most theologies belive that these Gods had been no real gods. Just "their" God is the one and only. I really disagree with this concept. Lets say for the moment that just one church is right and only their God is the real one. Lets say the muslims got it right. I was born in Western Europe, so my chance to become a muslim are remote. Can God be so unfair? (It could be possible, but I simply do not belive it)
I belive that the evolution of most of these big religions had been the right way to worship God in the given century and regional area. So, I belive that HE does not care if you call him Jahwe, Allah, Zeus or Ra. But I do accept that this view is the view of a small minority.

Another idea is that we are somehow like fishs in a fish bowl. And the owner of this bowl is "God". He is able to feed us, to cure us, but he can take some of us away and kill us too. In my aquarium, my wife is "God" for the fishs. But when she is not there, I take her place. So in this time, the fish "see" another God. Same could be true for us.

4. Nice question, but easy yes. I will live even if all my fishs are dead.

[helene_t]

PassedOut, on May 18 2008, 03:50 PM, said:

In many cases you can plainly see that people act in ways that would be out of the question if they genuinely believed what they profess.

I used to wonder if people who profess to believe in astrology, but never base any important decision on the planetary configurations, genuinely believe.

Then I read some books about contemporary research in human decision making and consciousness (Pinker, Shermer, Dennett, Freedman & Fraser) and now I am not sure if it is at all clear what "genuine belief" means, and I think it could even be argued that inconsistency in behavior indicates genuine belief, rather than faked belief. This may sound paradoxically and I should add the disclaimer that it is just my own home-baked idea so it's probably wrong, but here it goes:

One person I know is a chain smoker. As a reasonably rational person he is aware that smoking is bad for his health. If you ask him why he never even tried quiting smoking he will just say "well yes, I recognize that I should, but ......". And that's it. You won't get more reasoning than that out of him.

Another person I know of used to be a heavy smoker. Being a knowledgeable person she might be expected to acknowledge that it was bad for her health, but she kept saying that the link between smoking and cancer has not been established and besides it has been established that smoking reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease.

My interpretation is this: the first person doesn't need consistency between his behavior and his belief so he is able to stay faithful to his genuine belief (that smoking is bad). The second person wouldn't be able to cope with the inconsistency and therefore makes up a fake belief. That her belief was fake was confirmed when she quit smoking after having been diagnosed with cancer.

While conventional wisdom maintains that consistency between belief and behavior is caused by an optimization algorithm that choses the optimal behavior given some belief, there is amble evidence in support of the opposite hypothesis: we often chose our behavior first, and then we construct belief systems that justify them. Did GW attack Iraq because he thought Iraq had WMDs? Possibly. But more likely, he believed in the WMDs in order to justify the war. Whether his belief in the WMDs was "genuine" I don't know, but I would give it a higher score on the genuineity scale if it had been incosistent rather than consistent with his decision.

[luke warm]

hrothgar, on May 26 2008, 05:49 PM, said:

luke warm, on May 27 2008, 12:26 AM, said:

read plantinga's proof re: naturalism vs. evolution

I've always thought Plantinga's "proof" regarding naturalism and evolution to be laughable. There is a hole in his argument big enough to drive a truck through.

for you to be correct tell me what warrant you can give for truth and evolution to be necessary for survival... he is simply saying, and his proof is compelling, that evolution is an epistemic defeater for naturalism... are you really telling us you have read him enough to understand what he means by defeaters, how he arrived at the term, and that you can formulate an epistemology that can compete with him, or are you saying what i said above, that we all take authorities we find palatable and run with them?

also, alvin plantinga's accomplishments speak for themselves, and i find it extremely arrogant that you, with your accomplishments, can call his views "laughable"... for those who care, he is currently the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame... the following is simply meant to show that you have no (pardon the use of this word) warrant for your use of "laughable"

* Calvin College, A.B., 1954
* University of Michigan, M.A. , 1955
* Yale University, Ph.D., 1958

* Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1968-69
* Guggenheim Fellow, June 1 - December 31, 1971, April 4 - August 31, 1972
* Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1975 -
* Fellow, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, 1979-1980
* Visiting Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford 1975-76
* National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, 1975-76, 1987, 1995-6
* Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 1980-81

* Vice-President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1980-81
* President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1981-82
* President, Society of Christian Philosophers, l983-86

Books
1. Faith and Philosophy, (ed) Eerdmans, 1964
2. The Ontological Argument, (ed) Doubleday, 1965
3. God and Other Minds, Cornell University Press, 1967
4. The Nature of Necessity, Oxford University Press, 1974
5. God, Freedom and Evil, Harper Torchbook, 1974
6. Does God Have a Nature? Marquette University Press, 1980
7. Faith and Rationality (ed. with Nicholas Wolterstorff), University of Notre Dame Press, 1983
8. The Twin Pillars of Christian Scholarship; the Henry Stob Lectures (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College: l989) (pamphlet)
9. Warrant: the Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
10. Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
11. Essays in Ontology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
12. The Analytic Theist: A Collection of Alvin Plantinga's Work in Philosophy of Religion, ed. James Sennett (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming)
13. Warranted Christian Belief in process

Books about him
1. Alvin Plantinga, ed. James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985)
2. Thomistic Papers IV, ed. Leonard Kennedy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)
3. Parsons, Keith, God and the Burden of Proof (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989)
4. Hoitenga, Dewey, From Plato to Plantinga: an Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)
5. Sennett, James, Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy (New York: P. Lang, 1992)
6. McLeod, Mark S., Rationality and Thesitic Belief: an Essay on Reformed Epistemology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993)
7. Rational Faith, ed. Linda Zagzebski (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993)
8. Claramunt, Enrique R. Moros, Modalidad y esencia: La metaphysica de Alvin Plantinga (Pamplona: University of Navarre Press, 1996)
9. Kvanvig, Jonathan (ed), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge (Savage, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)
10. Ferrer, Francisco S. Conesa, Dios Y el Mal; La Defensa del Teísmo Frente al problema del mal según Alvin Plantinga, (Pamplona: University of Navarre Press, forthcoming)

[Al_U_Card]

sceptic, on May 26 2008, 07:11 PM, said:

Quote

i know without a doubt that there are questions which humans are incapable of answering

I agree, (should you not add, at the moment on the end of your statement?)

here are my four questions

1/. Is there a God?

2/. Can some one prove the existance of God? (please dont ask can I prove he does not exist as I can't prove fairies live at the bottom of my garden, either)

3/. Can some one tell me what happened to Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra (the list may be almost limitless)?

4/. Do Gods stop existing if no one believes in them any more?

can some one write just one post answering just one of these questions

1) Yes, and we are it.

2) Our constant evolution towards the perfection that our innate divinity provides.

3) They were left behind, as our ever-perfecting understanding of our own godliness continues.

4) Belief is only a criterion for creativity. Once created and used up, only memories remain so they (the god images of self that we created as we develop)continue to exist but only as a memory.

[PassedOut]

helene_t, on May 27 2008, 04:24 AM, said:

PassedOut, on May 18 2008, 03:50 PM, said:

In many cases you can plainly see that people act in ways that would be out of the question if they genuinely believed what they profess.

I used to wonder if people who profess to believe in astrology, but never base any important decision on the planetary configurations, genuinely believe.

Then I read some books about contemporary research in human decision making and consciousness (Pinker, Shermer, Dennett, Freedman & Fraser) and now I am not sure if it is at all clear what "genuine belief" means, and I think it could even be argued that inconsistency in behavior indicates genuine belief, rather than faked belief.

Thanks for the response. What I could "plainly see" was not true at all. (That happens to me at the bridge table too.)

Thinking about your post, I recalled a book I read many years ago titled When Prophecy Fails. For the true believers, the failure of the central prophecy of their faith actually strengthened belief.

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on May 27 2008, 05:38 AM, said:

...or are you saying what i said above, that we all take authorities we find palatable and run with them?

also, alvin plantinga's accomplishments speak for themselves, and i find it extremely arrogant that you, with your accomplishments, can call his views "laughable"... for those who care, he is currently the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame... the following is simply meant to show that you have no (pardon the use of this word) warrant for your use of "laughable"

I don't think anyone contends that Plantinga is lazy, just that he is wrong.

As to your belief "that we all take authorities we find palatable and run with them," I say that some people do and some people don't. That's one reason these discussions can go awry.

All religions and political movements have their learned scholars. The people heavily invested in reading and understanding what those scholars have to say are naturally reluctant to admit that they have wasted much time in that pursuit. Never mind that -- had they spent that time studying some other scholars -- they would have believed, equally strongly, the opposite.

I recall one time a school counselor told me that I had not taught my children respect for authority. I told her she was perceptive.