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AARO posted:The hotel argument points out the absurdity of infinite material things. If the hotel has infinite rooms and they are all occupied and then a new customer comes the manger can still except new guests. He has infinite rooms. Everytime a new customer comes and can give them a room and move tenet in room 1 to room 2 an room 2 to room 3 etc. Even though every room is occupied he can always except new customers. And even though new customers are checking in he always has the same number of customers. Infinite. 1000 more check in, still the same number of customers. Even if an infinite amount of new customers can he could still accommodate all of them. and he would still have the same number of customers. Why can't the universe be weird? There's nothing inconsistent here. Looking things up, I found that Craig also uses the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem as an argument for the finiteness of the universe. Which shows he doesn't understand the theorem as it implies no such thing and makes me worry about his understanding of such arguments in general.
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May 21, 2016 13:29
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The Belgian posted:Why can't the universe be weird? There's nothing inconsistent here. Spoiler Alert: Craig's a bit of a moron.
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May 21, 2016 14:58
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Zaradis posted:Before I address your questions, do we agree that solipsism is the necessary logical result of subjective experience? If not, then we're both wasting our breath because that logical conclusion is the basis of all I've been talking about so far. No, I think we can have knowledge of objects outside ourselves. Even though my mental representations only exist in my head, they nonetheless refer (in a Kripkean sense) to the things that cause them. This is the majority position among epistemologists; you are the one with a strange, revisionist epistemology. That I still don't fully understand. You've leaned pretty hard on this insistence that solipsism is the logical conclusion of your position in a few posts now, with the implication that there are other sorts of conclusions that are not logical but are still somehow important to consider. I'm not sure what those are, or, frankly, how you intend for me to interpret 'logical' here. Zaradis posted:For now I will assume we agree so as to answer your questions. Your second guess is correct. But this is not "fallible objective knowledge," it is subjective knowledge. As the guess implies, if objective knowledge exists or is possible it is not so for human beings. It certainly entails solipsism. Subjective knowledge is the only type of knowledge human beings can possibly hold, by the very nature of human experience. No, this is an incoherent position based on a misunderstanding of the relevant terms. Either I have knowledge of objects outside my body or I don't. If I do, then I have objective knowledge; If I don't, then I don't. If this is not what you mean by 'objective,' then A.) you are misusing the term, and B.) you are misusing it in a way that you still haven't made clear. Zaradis posted:For a thing to be objectively real it must exist regardless of whether or not a subjectivity experiences it at a certain point in time. Objective reality is true independent of our subjective observations. Yet, all we can know are our subjective observations. So we cannot know anything objectively, since objective reality is dependent upon being true without subjective experience of it and we cannot know anything without subjectively experiencing it. If you believe that human beings are capable of knowledge without subjectively experiencing it, I would love to hear the insane argument supporting this idea. You're confusing metaphysics and epistemology. I can infer, from my observations of a thing plus background theory, what the thing does when I'm not observing it. I am not forced (logically or otherwise) to conclude that when a puppet goes behind a curtain, it ceases to exist. Anyway, here's an insane argument: You wrote "we cannot know anything without subjectively experiencing it" and "human beings are [not] capable of knowledge without subjectively experiencing it." In both of these sentences, the referent of the pronoun is unclear. One possibility is that 'it' refers to 'knowledge.' But that would either be a category error or would miss the point of our conversation. More plausibly, what you have in mind is "a human being cannot have knowledge of a state of affairs without directly experiencing that state of affairs." But this is clearly false. Here are two examples of ways I can come to know something about the world without direct experience of the fact in question: 1.) Testimony: a trustworthy person can tell me the fact in question. 2.) Inference: I can use my knowledge of a different state of affairs, and some body of established theory, to infer a fact about a state of affairs I haven't myself experienced. Okay, I'm sorry for so many quotes, but I've just got one more because I think it's actually somewhat important: Zaradis posted:It seems to me that a logically sound or valid argument that shows that objective knowledge is not possible would be quite a strong point against moral realism. But we don't seem to agree with or understand each other on any other topic, so why change that dynamic now? Okay: You think we do not have a 'logical' reason to think that there is an external world, but you still think it's 'reasonable' to think that; presumably, because there are other sorts of reasons. I think this is confused (because reasons of all kinds are subject to the rules of logical inference) but more importantly, if you're willing to make this move and be a naive realist in the case of the external world, why aren't you willing to take the same position about moral facts? This is what I've been asking you - You think that external-world skepticism is a knock down argument against moral realism, but you do not think it is a knock down argument against the external world. That's strange! And you haven't given an account of how that's supposed to work! If 'strong intuition' is enough for you to toss out logical conclusions you don't like in one case, why not another? rudatron posted:Well, all historical narratives involved in philosophy are a little fast and loose with the truth. I guess that's my bias showing up, because that's how it's treated in Abrahamic faiths. Greek pagan religion had no problem showing Gods as callous and capricious entities, which I presume you can judge for yourself. In systems with an unquestionable good deity, you need to deploy moral realism at some point, just to save His skin. You absolutely do see it in religious debates In The Wild, as it were. I'm still not sure about this. If moral realism is false, then there is no problem of evil, right? Someone could say "how could God allow all these bad things from happening, instead of good things?" and the obvious reply is "nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." I mean, I guess you need moral realism in order to say that God is perfectly good, but this is what sets up the problem of evil, not what solves it.
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May 21, 2016 15:17
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Who What Now posted:Spoiler Alert: Craig's a bit of a moron. Well, he's certainly not an excellent philosopher, and his published work is super sloppy, conceptually speaking. I've joked with the other grads in my department that he shows that the quality of work required for tenure is significantly lower if you're willing to be a Christian apologist.
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May 21, 2016 16:07
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Juffo-Wup posted:No, I think we can have knowledge of objects outside ourselves. Even though my mental representations only exist in my head, they nonetheless refer (in a Kripkean sense) to the things that cause them. Prove it. You cannot compare your mental representations (i.e. subjective experience) to things in the world, you can only compare them to other mental representations. How are you going to prove that mental representations which only exist in your head refer to anything outside of your head when all you have/know/experience are mental representations in your head? This cannot be done. It's the same type of problem of proving you are not dreaming (i.e. Stroud). It would require a test independent of your mental representations that you could have knowledge of but you cannot have knowledge of anything independent of your mental representations. If you believe that you can know things that are not mental representations I would like to know what those things are. This is the logical conclusion of the nature of our experience that I continue to speak of and you seem to continue to fail to comprehend. Juffo-Wup posted:No, this is an incoherent position based on a misunderstanding of the relevant terms. Either I have knowledge of objects outside my body or I don't. If I do, then I have objective knowledge; If I don't, then I don't. If this is not what you mean by 'objective,' then A.) you are misusing the term, and B.) you are misusing it in a way that you still haven't made clear. If you think metaphysics and epistemology are non-overlapping I would like to hear why you think this. Metaphysics, by its definition, is an aspect of all other schools of philosophy. Anyway, you're confusing a thing that exists independent of subjective experience of it with a thing that exists dependent on subjective experience of it. You're referring to a thing existing dependent on subjective experience of it, which means it would cease to exist if it weren't being subjectively experienced. I'm talking about a thing existing independently of subjective experience, meaning it would exist regardless of whether or not it were being experienced. This would be a thing which exists objectively. And, as I argued above and many times earlier in this thread, the very nature of our experience does not allow for knowledge of this objective thing. We cannot have experience that is not subjective, therefore we cannot know whether or not things exist independent of subjective experience. That does not mean it does not exist, it means whether it exists or not is not something that we are capable of knowing. Juffo-Wup posted:Anyway, here's an insane argument: I believe I addressed this issue above. However, if you think that subjective experience is the same as direct experience then you don't understand what the word subjective means. If you don't believe this, which you shouldn't, then you should not have inserted "direct" in place of "subjective." I have a sneaking suspicion that you're aware of this and this point is a purposeful misrepresentation of my argument, though I hope I'm wrong. Juffo-Wup posted:If you're willing to make this move and be a naive realist in the case of the external world, why aren't you willing to take the same position about moral facts? I am and I do. I never claimed otherwise. Yes, there is a logical path to this conclusion, but it must ignore the fact that solipsism necessarily follows from the nature of subjective experience and solipsism is logically irrefutable. I ignore this fact based on intuitive reasons like every good epistemologist does. But if asked they will all accept the point I'm making and some of them even make the point in their own arguments and articles (Stroud, Moore, Davidson, etc.) Zaradis fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 16:20
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Zaradis posted:Anyway, you're confusing a thing that exists independent of subjective experience of it with a thing that exists dependent on subjective experience of it. You're referring to a thing existing dependent on subjective experience of it, which means it would cease to exist if it weren't being subjectively experienced. I'm talking about a thing existing independently of subjective experience, meaning it would exist regardless of whether or not it were being experienced. This would be a thing which exists objectively. And, as I argued above and many times earlier in this thread, the very nature of our experience does not allow for knowledge of this objective thing. We cannot have experience that is not subjective, therefore we cannot know whether or not things exist independent of subjective experience. That does not mean it does not exist, it means whether it exists or not is not something that we are capable of knowing. 1.) If there is an external world, then there are persisting objects which are generally the causes of my mental representations. 2.) A given mental representation refers to whatever phenomenon generally causes it. 3.) I form beliefs on the basis of inferences performed on my representations. 4.) From 2 and 3, the semantic content of my beliefs is at least partially constituted by reference to whatever causes my mental representations. 5.) From 1 and 4 , if there is an external world, then the semantic content of my beliefs is at least partially constituted by reference to persisting objects. 6.) Let's ignore Gettier for now and gloss 'knowledge' as 'justified true belief.' If you think Gettier cases are relevant, let me know. 7.) From 5, if there is an external world, I have true beliefs about persisting objects. 8.) At least some of those beliefs are justified. 9.) From 6, 7, and 8, if there is an external world, I have knowledge about persisting objects. You might think step (8) is mistake, requiring me to provide a theory of justification. I'm not interested in giving one. It's not relevant though, because if a theory of justification is your sticking point (as it seems to be, given your insistence on proof), then it is clear that what you are talking about is not objectivity after all. All your arguments amount to is the assertion that I have objective beliefs, but not objective knowledge, because my beliefs lack absolute certainty. In fact, the vast majority of theories of justification require something less than certainty, and if any of those is true, (Edit: and, I should say, if there is an external world) then it is additionally true as a matter of fact that I have objective knowledge. If you take Putnam seriously, then I have objective knowledge even in an evil demon scenario, because in that case all my mental representations refer to actions of the evil demon, and then those constitute the referential ground of my beliefs. What you think humans lack is some kind of absolute certainty about their beliefs. But absolute certainty is not a condition of objectivity, nor has it ever been. Objectivity is a question of reference, not justification. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 17:42 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 16:47
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It darn near impossible
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May 21, 2016 19:04
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The view espoused by skepticism will inevitably lead to extreme skepticism which will in turn lead you to the so-called 'logical blackhole' (IE how can one 'prove' the validity of logic and it's mapping onto the universe without using logic and forming contradiction or a tautology) isn't very useful as an argument. Sure, there is no certainty in anything (and that statement is not a contradiction). I'll be the first to admit that. But it's not a useful piece of information because it is outright impossible to act on. Whatever our thought processes are we have to accept them by virtue of thinking in the first place. Therefore we presume logic is consistent and maps onto some form of reality. a neurotic ai fucked around with this message at 19:29 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 19:26
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Juffo-Wup posted:1.) If there is an external world, then there are persisting objects which are generally the causes of my mental representations. First of all, I apologize for the length. Philosophical conversation does not lend itself to brevity. But I will try to keep subsequent replies shorter. If objectivity is merely a question of reference that requires no justification then a man who experiences dancing pink elephants in his living room has objective knowledge of the existence of those dancing pink elephants because in that case those mental representations refer to the chemicals in his brain and those would constitute a referential ground for his beliefs. By your argument it seems all mental representations are objective. All you did was remove the justified from "justified, true belief." I doubt many would see this as a strengthening of an argument for objective knowledge. If objective knowledge is merely what one believes is true, a conclusion your argument would seem to lead to, then objective and subjective are the same thing. It is most definitely a matter of justification. If you're going to claim that your mental representations refer to an external objective reality then you might expect to be asked to justify that claim, which is exactly what you've been attempting to do. If all you needed was a reference point then we wouldn't be having this conversation. That you believe that your belief refers to an object in the external world is still justification, it's just justification ad infinitum. Which I think most would find unsatisfying. You'd have to show that your belief that you believe that your belief refers to an object in the external world is true. And then you'd have to do it again while adding another layer of belief. And so on. Still, if your beliefs refer to the actions of an evil demon who objectively exists that would give your beliefs objective value only if you had objective knowledge of the evil demon and his actions. That it may be true that your beliefs refer to an objective reality does not mean that you know that they do because you still have to discover that they do. Even if you're accidentally right you don't yet know that you're right. And this brings us full circle. Again: 1. Objective things are those which persist in the world. 2. Mental representations are the way in which human beings experience. 3. It is possible that mental representations correspond to objective things, but it is not obvious. 3. From 1, 2, and 3: If mental representations correspond to objective things this would need to be shown. 4. Mental representations can be false positive. 5. From 3 and 4: To show that mental representations correspond to objective things would necessitate a test which is independent of mental representations to prevent false positives. 6. Human beings only experience mental representations, regardless of whether they be of objective things or subjective things. 7. From 5 and 6: A test which is independent of mental representations cannot be experienced by human beings. 8. From 5, 6 and 7: human beings cannot experience the test required to discover a correlation between mental representations and objective things. 9. Therefore, human beings cannot know of the existence of a correlation between mental representations and objective things. While intuitively it seems to exist, agnosticism is the most logically sound position to hold regarding a correlation between mental representations and objective things. We may speculate all we like, but believing that a correlation between mental representations and objective things exists is a matter of faith. In the same way that one cannot know that God exists and to believe that God exists one must have faith. Though believers realize this, it does not prevent them from believing in God. We believe that the external world exists. We do not know that it does. But that belief is a justification for us to live and act as if the external world does exist. If you feel that a test is too much to ask for a claimed correlation to be accepted then all of science might have something to say about that. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 19:28
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Ocrassus posted:The view espoused by skepticism will inevitably lead to extreme skepticism which will in turn lead you to the so-called 'logical blackhole' (IE how can one 'prove' the validity of logic and it's mapping onto the universe without using logic and forming contradiction or a tautology) isn't very useful as an argument. I agree completely. Certainly, it isn't a practically useful argument. However, that says nothing of its truth or how interesting it is. But you are correct.
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May 21, 2016 19:33
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First, you're still confusing metaphysics with epistemology. If my representations are caused by objects outside my body, then this is so independently of any demonstration of this fact. If the moon is made of cheese, then its composition does not depend on whether I can prove that to your satisfaction, or anyone else's. If Julius Caesar had porridge for breakfast on his 14th birthday, then the fact that there is no evidence for this does not make it false. If my representations refer to objects, then they would still refer to objects even if we were rabbits who could not do philosophy. To generalize: the truth or falsity of a proposition is independent of our ability to discover it. It would be very strange to think otherwise. Second, the causal-historical theory of reference is well known, and you should be familiar with it if you're name-dropping Moore and Davidson. It does not entail all my representatives are objective. For example, my belief that I am hungry is subjective because it depends on a representation about the subject of the representation. It does not entail that all representations are veridical: in the dancing pink elephants case, we can see that the cause of that representation is not of a kind with the antecedent causes of similar representations (of other elephants, for example, which are usually caused by the presence of elephants). Finally, and again, no modern epistemologist thinks that a belief must be in-principle unrevisable to count as knowledge. Contextualists don't think so, reliabilists don't think so, epistemic virtue theorists don't think so. That's just not how we think about justification anymore. On any reasonable account of justification, it is in-principle defeasible. I don't know of anyone who thinks it is impossible to have a justified false belief. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 21:24 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 20:53
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Juffo-Wup posted:First, you're still confusing metaphysics with epistemology. Again, by the very nature of metaphysics they are not mutually exclusive. Nothing is mutually exclusive with metaphysics. Juffo-Wup posted:To generalize: the truth or falsity of a proposition is independent of our ability to discover it. It would be very strange to think otherwise. I don't think otherwise, nor have I ever implied it. That is part of the point I'm making. Of course the truth or falsity of a proposition is what it is regardless of our knowing it. Which is why one ought to be an agnostic regarding a correlation between mental representations and objective things. It's truth value is independent of our knowing it. It just so happens that we cannot know it's truth value. That we do not know the truth value of a proposition is neither a good reason to accept it or reject it. It is a good reason to withhold judgement. Juffo-Wup posted:Finally, and again, no modern epistemologist thinks that a belief must be in-principle unrevisable to count as knowledge. Contextualists don't think so, reliabilists don't think so, epistemic virtue theorists don't think so. That's just not how we think about justification anymore. On any reasonable account of justification, it is in-principle defeasible. I don't know of anyone who thinks it is impossible to have a justified false belief. You can have a justified, false belief. I don't doubt that and haven't implied that you can't. However, if knowledge is justified, true belief then that belief would not be knowledge. If we do not know the truth value of a proposition then, again, accepting or rejecting it is a matter of faith; it is a leap outside of knowledge because one of the criteria for knowledge, truth, is indeterminate. If your definition of knowledge ignores a proposition's truth value, please explain what you define as knowledge. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 22:29 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 22:12
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Zaradis posted:
But see, here's the point. Whether a belief is objective is independent of whether it is justified, or whether we know that it is objective, or whether we know that it is justified. So, to return to the conclusion (call it 'C') of my numbered argument: C: If there is an external world, then we have at least some objective knowledge about it. You have not denied this. You have not directly engaged with this, my primary thesis. The only question you're raising is whether we know that there is an external world. Which does bear on the question of whether we know of our bits of knowledge that they are objective. But it has no bearing whatsoever on whether those bits of knowledge are in fact about things outside us, that is, whether they are objective. So I think C is clearly true, and that we can be confident that we know that C is true. The only further question is whether we know that the antecedent (call it 'A') of C is true. A: There is an external world I'll address this, but I want to stress: the outcome of an inquiry as to the truth of A has no bearing on the truth of the conditional C. The truth of C is independent of the truth of A. No argument for external-world skepticism can call into question the truth of C (unless that argument also contained e.g. a revisionist account of justification). Okay, that's out of the way, let's talk about skepticism. First, I have never come across an argument for external-world skepticism that actually denies the truth of A. If there is an evil demon deceiving me, and I am not the evil demon, then there is a world external to me which encompasses, at the very least, the evil demon. If I am a brain in a vat then there is a world external to me which encompasses, at the very least, a vat to put a brain in. Rather, what they propose is that the external world is radically different from what I would expect. So call this proposition A*: A*: There is an external world that does not resemble what we take it to be. I think Putnam addressed this in 1981: Since reference is fixed by causal history, then whatever phenomenon or collection of phenomena out there in the external world that are responsible for my mental representation 'hand' are, as a matter of fact, the referent of that representation. Which makes the utterance 'I have two hands' true even if I am a brain in a vat. Maybe you think this looks like a cop-out. Maybe you think your mental representations have content over and above their causal history, and that whatever electrical impulses cause a BIV to have an experience as of chair do not sufficiently resemble that extra representational content. I think you're wrong about mental content, but okay. So then what you're looking for is a reason to believe that we know A. Which means that you are asking for an epistemic justification for belief in A. We've established that you do not think that justification has to carry with it absolute certainty. So then what would justify a belief that there is an external world? Well, here's an obvious inference: if there's a city in France called Paris, then there is an external world. So what would we normally take as justifying reasons for a belief that there is a city in France called Paris? I suppose we'd look at a map, or ask a Frenchman, or even take a trip there ourselves. Then, satisfied in our new belief about the existence of Paris, we happily infer: 'if Paris exists, then something that isn't me exists. Paris exists, so something that isn't me exists. That's just what an external world is, so QED' or some such thing. Maybe you don't like this either. But why not? Maybe you think that a belief in an external world is a special sort of belief, which has a higher standard of justification than most other 'ordinary' beliefs. First, it's not obvious to me why this would be. It seems like establishing the existence of anything at all that isn't me is a much easier task than establishing the existence of any particular non-me thing. But I'll go along with this. What higher standard of justification does this belief have, as opposed to something like 'Obama is the president of the U.S.A.'? Here's the crux, because I think you want to say something like "what you would need to justify such a belief would be to compare the correspondence of your representations of the world with some further standard that is not a mental representation." There are two possible readings of this requirement. On one, this is just what we do every minute of every day. On another, it is a logical impossibility; just so much gibberish. It's impossible to even imagine what that would look like. First, you've already said that you don't think justification of a proposition should have to strictly entail the truth of that proposition. Secondly, even if you are now prepared to insist otherwise, this is tendentious. You might as well say: In order to justify your belief in the external world, you must prove that 2+2=5. If you set the justificatory standard to something that you yourself regard as involving a logical impossibility, then you may as well just define 'external world' as 'something that we can't know if it exists or not.' Here's a response you could give: "look, any choice of a standard of justification is basically arbitrary. If my choosing an impossible standard is tendentious, so is your choosing a standard that has obviously already been fulfilled." I think this is also mistaken. What I'm trying to do is take paradigmatic cases of knowledge, look to see what is similar about those beliefs and how they are arrived at, and use that to synthesize a theory of justification to apply to all such cases. If you're going to take particular propositions or beliefs and say that they have a special, higher standard of justification, you need to have some independently compelling reason why they should be exempted from the general account. Or maybe you think I'm not even justified in believing that Paris exists - that is, maybe you are prepared to apply the same impossibly high standard of justification for all beliefs (contrary, again, to your profession that you don't think justification entails certainty). And maybe it doesn't bother you that it turns out we don't, and indeed, could not in any possible world, know anything. Well, I guess all I can say is that this is an account of knowledge that just isn't very illuminating. If you still want to insist on using this terminology in a way that literally nobody else does, then let me propose the new words: 'schmawledge,' and 'schmustified.' And I'll use these concepts to distinguish between beliefs that we think were arrived at in a generally truth-sensitive way from those that were not. Then on this account we 'schmow' that there is an external world and we don't 'schmow,' for example, that unicorns exist or that Julius Caesar had porridge for breakfast on his 14th birthday. This just seems like a much more useful distinction than the one you are drawing. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 02:10 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 00:44
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OP: What if there IS a creator but its morality is completely foreign to us and doesn't align with generally accepted ideas like "killing is wrong"? Like, what if there is an all-powerful, eternal creator but it actually doesn't give a gently caress if we all murder and rape each other, but also it definitely doesn't approve of anime or anyone watching it?
Kit Walker fucked around with this message at 04:39 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 04:36
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Kit Walker posted:OP: What if there IS a creator but its morality is completely foreign to us and doesn't align with generally accepted ideas like "killing is wrong"? Like, what if there is an all-powerful, eternal creator but it actually doesn't give a gently caress if we all murder and rape each other, but also it definitely doesn't approve of anime or anyone watching it? He already defined "God' as "good" so that isn't a problem. Not kidding.
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May 22, 2016 08:08
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It's remarkably convenient that the Creator's morality perfectly aligns with the OP's moral intuitions.
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May 22, 2016 09:08
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Ratoslov posted:It's remarkably convenient that the Creator's morality perfectly aligns with the OP's moral intuitions. If you're already committed to thinking that God created humans in His image, it's not really a stretch to think that God would have also provided us with a moral sense that tends toward the truth. The contrary would be strange: to think that God provided us with a set of moral intuitions designed to lead us astray.
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May 22, 2016 14:15
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Kit Walker posted:OP: What if there IS a creator but its morality is completely foreign to us and doesn't align with generally accepted ideas like "killing is wrong"? Like, what if there is an all-powerful, eternal creator but it actually doesn't give a gently caress if we all murder and rape each other, but also it definitely doesn't approve of anime or anyone watching it? I don't believe that to be the case. If that were true then people may as well do whatever they want whenever they want to whomever they want except watch anime I guess. I kind of like that God; could you please sign me up? I believe in an objective moral law but I'm not sure about the arguments which try to prove such a thing philosophically. We're at least dipping our toe in the pool of Theology once you start exploring that subject. However, the phenomenologists would say we can derive an epistemic justification for belief in moral law through eidetic intuition, which actually seems to mean something like our "knowledge from an inward experience". i'm not sure if this is really related to what the phenomonologists teach, but perhaps eidetic intuition about moral laws could be akin to our absolutely reliable knowledge on first principles, like the prin. of identity, which can not be proven but just has to be "seen" as true. I don't know if I buy any of the arguments for objective morality that don't also employ some type of theological teaching. AARO fucked around with this message at 14:52 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 14:42
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The Belgian posted:Why can't the universe be weird? There's nothing inconsistent here. The theorem shows it's most likely that the universe is finite doesn't it? It doesn't state that is definitely finite. Perhaps Craig hasn't pointed out that distinction. But we certainly except scientific probabilities, rather than absolute certainties, quite often.
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May 22, 2016 14:57
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AARO posted:I don't believe that to be the case. If that were true then people may as well do whatever they want whenever they want to whomever they want except watch anime I guess. I kind of like that God; could you please sign me up? I believe in an objective moral law but I'm not sure about the arguments which try to prove such a thing philosophically. We're at least dipping our toe in the pool of Theology once you start exploring that subject. Why don't you believe that God to be true? How do you know anything about God's moral character?
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May 22, 2016 15:24
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Hi, this is a question I asked in another thread, but this one has lots of philosophy people in it so this may be a better place. Have any ethicists addressed the ethics of choosing to spend their time studying and writing papers about ethics, instead of doing something else, such being a nurse or a plumber? What's the ethical justification for writing specialist philosophy papers for other specialists to read and then write about ad infinitum instead of doing something like injecting people with lifesaving insulin or maintaining the sewage systems that enable our society to function?
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May 22, 2016 15:34
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AARO posted:The theorem shows it's most likely that the universe is finite doesn't it? It doesn't state that is definitely finite. Perhaps Craig hasn't pointed out that distinction. No, it shows that it's likely that a description based on our current models breaks down very badly at some point. Bit there are also examples of models where the theorem does not apply (including something I came up with).
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May 22, 2016 15:34
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Sharkie posted:Hi, this is a question I asked in another thread, but this one has lots of philosophy people in it so this may be a better place. Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality isn't quite this but touches on some similar themes. Edit: wait, do you think that the world has serious moral crises that could be solved by a sudden surge in plumbers? Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 15:58 on May 22, 2016 |
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May 22, 2016 15:50
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Juffo-Wup posted:Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality isn't quite this but touches on some similar themes. Well to address your edit first, no, but plumbers are necessary for the modern world to function. Not to mention the gains that could be made by a future increased understanding of sewage and waste water management. And thanks for that link, here's what I saw as the most relevant part: quote:On questions of fact, it is said, philosophers as such have no special expertise, and so it has been possible to engage in philosophy without committing oneself to any position on major public issues. No doubt there are some issues of social policy and foreign policy about which it can truly be said that a really expert assessment of the facts is required before taking sides or acting, but the issue of famine is surely not one of these. The facts about the existence of suffering are beyond dispute. Nor, I think, is it disputed that we can do something about it, either through orthodox methods of famine relief or through population control or both. This is therefore an issue on which philosophers are competent to take a position. The issue is one which faces everyone who has more money than he needs to support himself and his dependents, or who is in a position to take some sort of political action. These categories must include practically every teacher and student of philosophy in the universities of the Western world. If philosophy is to deal with matters that are relevant to both teachers and students, this is an issue that philosophers should discuss. Which seems to suggest that being an ethicist is ethical as long as you have the ability to take action on it by influencing public policy.
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May 22, 2016 16:20
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I see, fair enough. Well, I think this is an important question and I have Opinions about it, but I feel like I've already derailed this thread enough. I'd be happy to discuss it either in its own thread or the philosophy thread on SAL.
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May 22, 2016 16:37
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Juffo-Wup posted:If you're already committed to thinking that God created humans in His image, it's not really a stretch to think that God would have also provided us with a moral sense that tends toward the truth. The contrary would be strange: to think that God provided us with a set of moral intuitions designed to lead us astray. I mean why not? Maybe God's just a dick who set us up specifically to fail his standards and he only values deviants that go against commonly accepted morality. Or maybe he's just a masochist who gets off on getting mad at his creations defying him. Why must there be any sort of coherence when dealing with unfathomable entities? AARO posted:I don't believe that to be the case. If that were true then people may as well do whatever they want whenever they want to whomever they want except watch anime I guess. I kind of like that God; could you please sign me up? I believe in an objective moral law but I'm not sure about the arguments which try to prove such a thing philosophically. We're at least dipping our toe in the pool of Theology once you start exploring that subject. So you're saying that my vision of God is equally valid to your own? I mean, you can't prove that I'm wrong.
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May 22, 2016 19:36
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Juffo-Wup posted:But see, here's the point. Whether a belief is objective is independent of whether it is justified, or whether or know that it is objective, or whether we know that it is justified. This simply makes the same point about objectivity that we've already agreed upon about truth. Yes, if a belief is true and objective then it is true and objective irrelevant of knowledge of it. Regardless, the attributes of true and objective in themselves do not equal knowledge. Juffo-Wup posted:C: If there is an external world, then we have at least some objective knowledge about it. The truth of the antecedent must first be determined before the truth of the consequent can be known, but it is not sufficient to determine the truth of the consequent. More than simply the existence of an external world is necessary to determine that we have objective knowledge of it. Extraterrestrial beings may objectively exist, but the objective fact of their existence provides us with no knowledge whatsoever of or about their existence. Hence the necessity of the justificatory standard for which I'm arguing. Juffo-Wup posted:A: There is an external world This is a mistake. External world skepticism does not make claims about what the external world is, if it in fact exists. The skeptic would not go so far as to agree that there is an external world; nor would he agree that there is no external world. The skeptic position is "I do not know." Though many thought experiments rely on the existence of the external world to make their point, no reasonable understanding of thought experiments would claim that their use constitutes a belief in their content. It would be quite odd to ascribe a belief in mindless zombies or people raised in black and white rooms to philosophers. Further, to say that the external world "does not resemble what we take it to be" is also much more than that to which a skeptic would agree. The most a skeptic would agree to is that if there is an external world, then human beings cannot know whether or not it resembles what we take it to be. An external world skeptic is an agnostic about whether or not an external world exists or what it would/does resemble. So both C, A and A* state too much for the skeptic without a higher level of justification. Juffo-Wup posted:I think Putnam addressed this in 1981: Since reference is fixed by causal history, then whatever phenomenon or collection of phenomena out there in the external world that are responsible for my mental representation 'hand' are, as a matter of fact, the referent of that representation. Which makes the utterance 'I have two hands' true even if I am a brain in a vat. The external world skeptic would not accept that reference is fixed by causal history independent of mental representations. A fixed causal history of reference between mental representations may be accepted by the skeptic, but the proposition that there is an external fixed causal history produces the same problem that the existence of the external world does according to skepticism; and thus, must provide the same sort of justification. Juffo-Wup posted:So then what you're looking for is a reason to believe that we know A. Which means that you are asking for an epistemic justification for belief in A. Correct, just as I've stated multiple times throughout this thread. Juffo-Wup posted:We've established that you do not think that justification has to carry with it absolute certainty. So then what would justify a belief that there is an external world? Well, here's an obvious inference: if there's a city in France called Paris, then there is an external world. So what would we normally take as justifying reasons for a belief that there is a city in France called Paris? I suppose we'd look at a map, or ask a Frenchman, or even take a trip there ourselves. Then, satisfied in our new belief about the existence of Paris, we happily infer: 'if Paris exists, then something that isn't me exists. Paris exists, so something that isn't me exists. That's just what an external world is, so QED' or some such thing. It would be because of the difference between mental representations and objective existence. Every belief mentioned in your example is a mental representation. Mental representations are not objective things, therefore, to determine whether or not they correspond to objective things would necessitate a way to do so that is independent of, or that does not rely upon any, mental representations. Otherwise, the test and its results would just be more mental representations, which we've established are not objective things. Juffo-Wup posted:Here's the crux, because I think you want to say something like "what you would need to justify such a belief would be to compare the correspondence of your representations of the world with some further standard that is not a mental representation." There are two possible readings of this requirement. On one, this is just what we do every minute of every day. This is not a given. You left out the most important clause. What you meant to say is that "this is just what we do every minute of every day, provided that the external world exists and our mental representations correspond with it." Yes, if everything in the second clause is assumed, then the first clause is correct. But the second clause is the entire point of contention. Juffo-Wup posted:On another, it is a logical impossibility; just so much gibberish. It's impossible to even imagine what that would look like. If you set the justificatory standard to something that you yourself regard as involving a logical impossibility, then you may as well just define 'external world' as 'something that we can't know if it exists or not.' The justificatory standard is the logical result of the nature of experience itself. That the standard itself is not logically possible is not "gibberish," it's simply the case. While this conclusion is understandably unsatisfying, that does not mean that it is not a truth of experience. To ignore this and set a different standard of justification is to ignore the very nature of experience itself, all in the service of providing a more satisfying conclusion. Wearing contact lenses that make your eyes appear to be the color blue when they are in fact brown because your favorite color is blue does not change the fact that your eyes are brown. The idea that this justificatory standard is tendentious results from dissatisfaction with the logical conclusion of the nature of experience. Dissatisfaction with a conclusion does not make it tendentious. In fact, I would argue that ignoring the nature of human experience is the tendentious position, though it does provide a more emotionally satisfying conclusion. Juffo-Wup posted:Here's a response you could give: "look, any choice of a standard of justification is basically arbitrary." I simply disagree that a standard of justification which is the logical result of the nature of experience (i.e. all that we have on which to base any justificatory standard, or anything else for that matter) is an arbitrary one. Juffo-Wup posted:What I'm trying to do is take paradigmatic cases of knowledge, look to see what is similar about those beliefs and how they are arrived at, and use that to synthesize a theory of justification to apply to all such cases. If you're going to take particular propositions or beliefs and say that they have a special, higher standard of justification, you need to have some independently compelling reason why they should be exempted from the general account. I believe that I have provided compelling reasons for this higher standard of justification regarding a correspondence between mental representations and objective things. That you find similarities between paradigmatic cases of knowledge does not make those cases of knowledge and their similarities any more than mental representations in your mind. Any justificatory standard ascribed to which is not independent of mental representations cannot provide for the existence of an objective reality. This is not logical gibberish, it is a logical matter of fact. In my opinion, if I'm mistaken about this you still have not provided any argument showing that this is mistaken. It seems to me that what you've been doing is trying to provide reasons for why a standard of justification which produces emotionally satisfying results should be ascribed to over one which is logically sound, yet, emotionally unsatisfying. I understand the philosophical motivation for this, but ignoring the result of the nature of human experience does not mean that it isn't the case. Juffo-Wup posted:Or maybe you think I'm not even justified in believing that Paris exists - that is, maybe you are prepared to apply the same impossibly high standard of justification for all beliefs (contrary, again, to your profession that you don't think justification entails certainty). And maybe it doesn't bother you that it turns out we don't, and indeed, could not in any possible world, know anything. You are justified in believing that Paris exists within the realm of your mental representations. You are not justified in believing that Paris exists in the realm of objectivity. The standard of justification which I have been arguing for is one which would justify knowledge of the existence of an objective reality. The existence of a realm of mental representations is a given; there is thinking occurring. There is an indefinite, if not infinite, number of justified beliefs that human beings may have. It just so happens that the nature of human experience is of such a type that beliefs about objective existence are not the sorts of beliefs that can be sufficiently justified. Sorry for all the quotes, but there were just too many points to address.
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May 22, 2016 22:09
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I want to offer you a sort of olive branch, Juffo-Wup: In the face of all that I've argued, setting different standards and weakening the criteria for what counts as objective is literally the only option we have other than solipsism. And human beings are not comfortable with not knowing, so we tend to take the first option. I can't imagine many philosophers would not agree that solipsism is an irrefutable position that follows from the nature of subjective experience, but, while that is acknowledged it also gets us nowhere so we must provide weaker justificatory standards for objective knowledge if we want to claim objective knowledge exists, which we all do. Acknowledging the fact of solipsism and saying "I do not like it, I'm going to ignore it within my epistemic system" is very different than denying the fact altogether. Just as we all know that someday we will all cease to exist, as will the universe itself, yet, moment to moment we continue to live and act as if existence will continue forward infinitely. Some of us acknowledge the fact, some do not, but we all live and act as if it is not the case because it does not appear, nor is it a satisfying idea, that life is meaningless. In short, a meaningful, satisfying, worthwhile human experience requires some level of cognitive dissonance in our day to day, moment to moment experience. It seems to me that almost all of us, including myself, feel that this is a price well worth paying. Regardless of our disagreements, I appreciate the conversation. There is little that gives me as much pleasure as a good philosophical discussion and I don't get them much anymore. As a good (though possibly mistaken) student of philosophy the passion I feel for philosophical arguments is not a personally hostile or disrespectful passion. I doubt this needed to be said, but I wanted to make it clear in case the loss of cadence and mannerism through text might have conveyed my words otherwise.
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May 22, 2016 22:18
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Zaradis posted:
Importantly, C is the conclusion of my numbered argument from a few posts ago, and the truth claim here is for the truth of the conditional, not the truth of the consequent. If you want to dispute it, you should either dispute one of the premises or one of the inferences from that argument. I hope you don't mind if this is the only part of this post that I respond to; I think we're at the point where I've said just about all I think is necessary to say, and if I haven't convinced you by now then I don't think I will. Zaradis posted:In the face of all that I've argued, setting different standards and weakening the criteria for what counts as objective is literally the only option we have other than solipsism. And human beings are not comfortable with not knowing, so we tend to take the first option. I can't imagine many philosophers would not agree that solipsism is an irrefutable position that follows from the nature of subjective experience, but, while that is acknowledged it also gets us nowhere so we must provide weaker justificatory standards for objective knowledge if we want to claim objective knowledge exists, which we all do. Actually, as a matter of sociological fact, this is not the case. From the PhilPapers survey I linked previously: Bourget and Chalmers 2014 posted:External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? In general, contemporary philosophers only present the skeptical argument in order to refute it, since the particular method they choose for refuting it generally leads to interesting and substantive results elsewhere. Skepticism is a highly unpopular position, and not just for pragmatic reasons; most philosophers think that they have decisive epistemic reasons to think that skeptical hypotheses are false. Zaradis posted:Regardless of our disagreements, I appreciate the conversation. There is little that gives me as much pleasure as a good philosophical discussion and I don't get them much anymore. As a good (though possibly mistaken) student of philosophy the passion I feel for philosophical arguments is not a personally hostile or disrespectful passion. I doubt this needed to be said, but I wanted to make it clear in case the loss of cadence and mannerism through text might have conveyed my words otherwise. I appreciate this, and echo the sentiment. This has been fun.
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May 22, 2016 22:54
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AARO posted:I don't know if I buy any of the arguments for objective morality that don't also employ some type of theological teaching. Hey, can you give an example of such an argument that you've considered and rejected, and explain why you think it falls short?
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May 23, 2016 00:05
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OP, if you're still around, I'd like to ask why there being a system of morality which is (an approximation to) something in the Platonic forms that you're confusingly calling "God" is any help whatsoever. Even if I could show that, why should anyone care about what that system said, other than as a mathematical curiosity? Would you need to show that it was, somehow, a unique limit to some correct(???) form of ethical progress? That something non-trivial (necessary? interesting?) in how human (just human?) brains were built meant that this was what everyone sane would eventually agree on, given enough time and intelligence? Juffo-Wup posted:Well, there's the obvious one: Ok, Craig's an idiot.
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May 24, 2016 01:09
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Zaradis posted:I want to offer you a sort of olive branch, Juffo-Wup: here's another option, besides accepting solipsism or lowering standards. I just thought off it right now: get more comfortable not knowing. 
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May 24, 2016 14:51
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Zodium posted:here's another option, besides accepting solipsism or lowering standards. I just thought off it right now: get more comfortable not knowing. Which was the argument I was making throughout most of this thread.
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May 24, 2016 15:18
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Zaradis posted:Which was the argument I was making throughout most of this thread. Doing so doesn't require any cognitive dissonance, though. That implies a discomfort with holding conflicting positions.
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May 24, 2016 16:09
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Who What Now posted:Doing so doesn't require any cognitive dissonance, though. That implies a discomfort with holding conflicting positions. But to find meaning requires knowledge, neither of which can (in my opinion) be satisfactorily discovered. Yet, we want both meaning and knowledge. So we pretend that we have both.
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May 24, 2016 16:15
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AARO posted:That is not a good representation of his argument. From an Atheist site I got this: The core critique that Craig gets with the Kalam Cosmological Argument is where does he derive point #1 from? As I understand it he claims it's "self-evident" but I don't see how he pulled it out from anywhere other than his rear end to get around the internal contradiction inherent in the traditional First Cause Argument. And what exactly does he mean by "begin to exist"? If I made a sandwich from its constituent materials does this mean the sandwich "began to exist" at that point? If so, how exactly does KCA differ fromt he traditional FCA and all its flaws? Or does "begin to exist" mean "begin to exist ex nihlo?" DID the universe truly begin ex nihlo? And even if so, how can Craig make the generalization that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" based on this one instance? Honestly, the KCA is grossly unconvincing to me on an elementary level. It's only an improvement on the traditional FCA in that it has a couple more hoops to jump through in breaking it down.
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May 24, 2016 20:28
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I still don't see why the universe couldn't just have started existing arbitrarily. Like, we can go back along the timeline and everything that has ever happened happened because of something that came before it, but if we go all the way back to the beginning, maybe that's just it. It's makes it pointless to ask "what came before the universe?" because there wasn't even nothing. Space, matter, and the accompanying timeline are everything.
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May 24, 2016 21:21
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Zaradis posted:But to find meaning requires knowledge, neither of which can (in my opinion) be satisfactorily discovered. Yet, we want both meaning and knowledge. So we pretend that we have both. Being stuck in a meaningless, unknowable void only leaves the observer to espouse "Gee golly, this sucks."
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May 24, 2016 21:36
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ShadowCatboy posted:The core critique that Craig gets with the Kalam Cosmological Argument is where does he derive point #1 from? As I understand it he claims it's "self-evident" but I don't see how he pulled it out from anywhere other than his rear end to get around the internal contradiction inherent in the traditional First Cause Argument. The Hilbert Hotel argument is used to demonstrate the absurdity of an actual infinite. Then, because of the absurdities inherent in an actual infinite, Craig says they cannot exist. I think the argument is just as strong if you say it proves that an actual material infinite cannot exist. If you leave out the material part, people will object because of actual infinites in math. However, the Intuitionalist believe an actual infinite cannot exist in mathematics. The mathematician Gauss also didn't believe in actual infinities. "I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics. Infinity is merely a way of speaking, the true meaning being a limit which certain ratios approach indefinitely close, while others are permitted to increase without restriction" But it appears there is an agreement that an actual material infinite cannot exist, I suppose because of it's absurdities. I'd like to here more arguments for and against this. Do intrinsic absurdities of a thing prove the impossibility of existence of a thing? This is the only part of the Kalam argument I'm not 100% convinced by. Here is a simpler explanation of the hotel argument. AARO fucked around with this message at 22:14 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 21:47
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AARO posted:The Hilbert Hotel argument is used to demonstrate the absurdity of an actual infinite. I'm aware of the Infinite Hotel situation. I'm just not sure how it applies to the Kalam Cosmological Argument here. Are you referring to the issue of "infinite regress" that theologians touting Cosmological Arguments in general have found unpalatable?
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May 24, 2016 22:17
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