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"Agnostic"

watsup said:
Doesn’t make any difference if it is the truth. Certainly better than just constructing a figment of imagination based on philosophical claims like you are doing.
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Lol. You understand the empirical tradition you vouch for does not allow for circular reasoning, yes?

watsup said:
Not familiar with your philosophy terms. What exactly do you mean by “grounding”. I explained that humans construct systems in order to develop items like time and space. How do you think these items are developed?
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Humans invented time and space? That's your position now?
 
Gozaburo said:
You understand the empirical tradition you vouch for does not allow for circular reasoning, yes?
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Nor does the empirical tradition that I vouch for allow for just making up a “God” based on philosophical jobber-jabber that is nothing more than the juxtaposition of words. When you have some evidence beyond that which can be independently verified in some manner, please let us know.


Gozaburo said:
Humans invented time and space? That's your position now?
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Her another strawman. That means that you are getting desperate. Get back to me when you are willing to accurately interpret what I said. Sorry, I do not answer strawman trolls.
 

So you just arbitrarily allow your worldview to be contradicted. I appreciate the honesty if nothing else.

watsup said:
Her another strawman. That means that you are getting desperate. Get back to me when you are willing to accurately interpret what I said. Sorry, I do not answer strawman trolls.
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Short memory it seems. Lets review what you said:

watsup said:
I explained that humans construct systems in order to develop items like time and space. How do you think these items are developed?
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So do human beings 'construct' systems of time and space, or do they 'develop items' like time and space?
 
bongsaway said:
Sit in a chair and then TRY to stand up. That to me is the position agnostics choose to call their own. You can't try to get up, you either do or don't, period, there is no trying. You either believe in gods or you don't, there's no trying.
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I get your point and I agree, but your analogy is spoken like somone who has never had a bad back.

There are times when I try to get up and fail and have to grab onto something and try again
 
Gozaburo said:
So you just arbitrarily allow your worldview to be contradicted. I
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Whatever. I certainly do not accept your figment of philosophical-based imagination. That is the point. And I note that you never answer my questions but expect yours to be answered. Easy to debate when you have a double-standard, I suppose.



Gozaburo said:
So do human beings 'construct' systems of time and space, or do they 'develop items' like time and space?
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Clocks as a system to “tell time”. Measurements (miles, etc) as a system to understand space. What is so hard to understand about this? Humans develop systems to help them navigate the world and universe in which they live. How do you say that time and space are defined? Does it involve your imaginary God?
 
watsup said:
Whatever. I certainly do not accept your figment of philosophical-based imagination. That is the point. And I note that you never answer my questions but expect yours to be answered. Easy to debate when you have a double-standard, I suppose.
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Actually we've just demonstrated in quick order that it is you who has the double standard.

Why should I answer your questions when you're so willing to be dishonest and assert contradictions?
 
A fair argument can be made that the law of identity has never been both strictly and functionally true. The pixels that make up this A are different from the pixels that make up this A, so it's literally not the case that A is identical to A. Even in terms of placeholders or referents, when you and I both think "New York" or anything else, our respective ideas tied to that referent are going to be different, presumably overlapping but definitely not coextensive or identical. And even in terms of physical objects, when you and I both look at a chair we're getting different light in our eyeballs, and different people will have different ideas on whether or not the 'chair' includes the various stains or bacteria or quantum fields within that same volume of space.

We can theorize that if it's defined down to the molecular and quantum field level what exactly the 'chair' consists of then, for at least an infinitesimal instant in time, that chair in itself as distinct from our perceptions and understanding of it is indeed strictly and perfectly identical with that chair... but that is obviously not in any sense a functional use for the law of identity. It can be either strictly and uselessly true, or it can be loosely and functionally 'true,' but very likely cannot be both. That in turn suggests that in our daily and even scientific thinking - which is the point at issue here, whether that thinking is justified, not some bespoke high-minded philosophical abstraction - our identification of chair with chair or earth with earth or Gozaburo with Gozaburo does not reflect any kind of universal or invariant law at all, but rather an adaptable 'principle of identity' by which we individually and collectively recognize those things as themselves as long as they meet enough relevant criteria for our current needs (along the lines of Searle's cluster theory of proper names).

Of course, I'm waiting.

I'm not sure I understand you here. Our adaptable principle of identity is generally reliable as proven by the fact of successful application and accomplishments from it. That's not an assumption, it's a conclusion from a mountain of evidence. Your argument is that we need to justify these supposed 'universals' that we regularly use, but I'd suggest that almost the opposite is true in that the more we successfully use them the more it has already been proven that they are justified by the metric which matters most.

By loose analogy, you could painstakingly explain to me how MacOS supports text-based communication in an online debate forum, and I might be at a total loss justify the manner in which Linux or Windows or Android OS support it... but as long as I am engaging in text-based communication in an online debate forum, unless you can actually rule those other possibilities out you've done absolutely nothing to demonstrate that MacOS needs to be part of my operational process or conceptual model for communication. At most, I might have to include your theory as a possible alternative if and when I choose to speculate on the matter.
 
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NolanVoyd said:
I get your point and I agree, but your analogy is spoken like somone who has never had a bad back.

There are times when I try to get up and fail and have to grab onto something and try again
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I understand some folks do have a problem standing up from a sitting position and I also knew most people would get the point, as you did. Sorry about your bad back.
 
Gozaburo said:
Actually we've just demonstrated in quick order that it is you who has the double standard.

Why should I answer your questions when you're so willing to be dishonest and assert contradictions?
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The drop out. What do I care? I will still make fun of your particular religion, namely philosophy with all of its tenets and dogma as outlined by you, and of your particular made-up “God of Divine Intellect”. It’s as fake as every other God ever imagined by humans.
 
bongsaway said:
I understand some folks do have a problem standing up from a sitting position and I also knew most people would get the point, as you did. Sorry about your bad back.
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Nothing to be sorry about. I lived a very physical, adventurous life in my younger life. I am glad I did. It was worth it. But like all things there is a downside. I broke my back once, and I also worked on a Bering Sea trawler for 5 years, which is brutal on your back, im paying the price a bit these days, but I wouldn't change a thing.
 
Wowser, my respects to you.
 

I'd disagree because I don't think the law of identity is, or ever has been about empirical sameness. It's about the logical coherence that underwrites our ability to even have this conversation.

Take your example of the chair. Sure, the light hitting your eyes differs from mine, and our concepts of "chair" might include different details. But when we both call it "a chair," we’re relying on the assumption that the thing we’re referring to is what it is and not something else. Without that - without A being A at a fundamental level - a cluster theory of recognition falls apart. How could we "recognize" anything as itself, even loosely or functionally, unless identity holds as a universal principle? If "chair" could suddenly be "not-chair" without any consistent basis, our adaptable 'principle of identity' would have no anchor, and neither daily life nor science nor even quantum physics could function.

Further, you suggest the law of identity might be either strictly true but useless, or loosely true and functional. But this split only works if you’ve already assumed a worldview where logic’s foundations can be contingent or negotiable. From my perspective, that’s the problem: if the law of identity could fail tomorrow, or if it’s just a pragmatic convention, what grounds your ability to reason about it failing? To even argue that it’s not universal or invariant, you’re implicitly relying on it being stable enough to make your point intelligible.

So, I’d flip your argument back: if the law of identity isn’t universal or invariant in your worldview, how do you account for the coherence of your own argument? Doesn’t your critique of A=A still depend on A being A in some reliable sense?


I’m not denying that the law of identity - or any principle of reason - works pragmatically. My question is why it works, and why it works universally and reliably. You say its justification comes from repeated success, but that’s a description of what happens, not an account of why it’s trustworthy across all contexts - past, present, and future. You’re essentially saying, ‘It works because it works,’ which is circular.

Text-based communication works across MacOS, Linux, or Windows because those systems are built on underlying principles of logic and computation that are consistent and universal. If those principles weren’t reliable, no OS would function predictably. My argument isn’t that you need to consciously invoke God mid-debate like I need to name ‘MacOS’ to type this, it’s that the very possibility of rational debate, or any coherent system, presupposes a framework where laws like identity aren’t just contingently useful but necessarily true. Without a transcendent grounding - a rational mind sustaining reality - you’re left with no explanation for why these principles aren’t arbitrary or subject to change tomorrow which is obviously problematic for anyone making arguments or truth claims. I’d contend that your pragmatic success borrows from a theistic worldview’s coherence without acknowledging it.
 
Mithrae said:
Of course, I'm waiting.
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I think you get the gist of it given we've had a couple of exchanges already, but my reasoning goes like this:

Kantian Coherentism offers an alternative to foundationalism by viewing knowledge and justification as a holistic "web of beliefs" rather than a hierarchy of basic and derived beliefs. To borrow from atheist philosopher W.V. Quine, in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," he describes this web as a human-made fabric that interacts with experience only at its edges, constantly revised to align with sensory input. Coherentism rejects the foundationalist "dogma of reductionism" - the idea that individual statements can be directly tied to specific sensory events for validation - proposing instead that statements gain meaning and truth collectively within the web. This challenges Natural Theology’s (argued by men like Aquinas) reliance on a foundationalist, evidentialist approach, which assumes theory-independent facts and neutral evidence. Coherentists, along with thinkers like Wilfrid Sellars and the Duhem-Quine thesis, argue that all observations are theory-laden, with no neutral "givens" or basic meanings, and that evidence alone underdetermines theory choice. Sellars’ critique of the "myth of the given" further undermines foundationalism by showing that no empirical datum can serve as an unassailable epistemic foundation.

However, coherentism faces its own issues: it resembles a form of foundationalism where all beliefs are foundational, yet struggles with circularity. If no belief in the web is independently justified, the entire system lacks grounding. This inadequacy points toward transcendental arguments as a potential resolution, shifting focus to the preconditions necessary for justification itself.

I'd bet you're familiar, but my form of a transcendental argument would be as follows:

X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y, such that Y cannot obtain without X. Further, given that X would be a condition for Y, it is said that the claim (Y if then X) is not merely an a posteriori necessary truth established according to the natural laws governing our actual world, but that it is an a priori and metaphysical necessary truth. In other words, the truth of this claim is not discovered through experience by the empirical sciences (e.g. oxygen = O2), but rather this truth holds metaphysically such that X is a condition for Y in every possible world. Therefore, the claim made by the transcendental argument, that X is a condition for Y, amounts to ‘X is a necessary condition for Y,’ and this necessary condition possesses modal strength. Within the transcendental argument, not only is X a necessary condition for human reason or thought, it is a necessary condition for the possibility of human reason. For even if there were no human thought or reason in existence, X would still have to exist, since X is a necessary condition for the logical possibility of human thought at all. Therefore, according to S5 modal logic, we can ascribe modal operators to our premises when formally representing our transcendental argument in the following valid deductive syllogism:

  1. Reason (Y) is possible in some world.
  2. It’s necessarily true that reason is possible (via S5’s axiom 5).
  3. It’s necessarily true that if reason is possible, then X (God) must hold.
  4. From (3) and axiom K, you get that if reason’s possibility is necessary, X’s necessity follows.
  5. Therefore, X is necessarily true in all possible worlds.
This argument is a presuppositional argument that challenges the foundational assumptions of other worldviews, distinct from the God-of-the-gaps argument (which is a falacy). It asserts that everyone operates with presuppositions (e.g., the reliability of logic, reason, and evidence) and rejects the idea of presuppositional neutrality as claimed by Natural Theology or classical foundationalism as we've already concluded that all observations are theory-laden. Reason, logic, and argumentation aren’t proven by experience - they’re the tools used to prove everything else. Yet, justifying their validity poses a problem: relying on reason to validate reason is circular and question-begging. This argument addresses this by seeking the preconditions necessary for reason, logic, and argumentation to function. It follows the form: for X (e.g., rational processes) to be possible, Y (God) must be true as its necessary condition, since X exists, Y must exist. Thus, I argue that God is the precondition for rationality itself.
 
You said it yourself, "stable enough"; being 'reliable' does not entail being universal or invariant... particularly when we know it is not universal or invariant save perhaps in terms of a useless philosophical abstraction, even within our immediate field of experience! We idiomatically describe things as 'certain as the sunrise,' but outside our immediate field of experience the sunrise is not so certain after all. With or without a deity, we have no real basis for asserting that on a black hole or moments after the big bang or in the particles of dark matter "a thing is identical to itself" in any sense that would be useful or meaningful to us even were we able observe them.

No, I'm saying that it works, therefore it's reasonable for us to use it.

You are making the blind unwarranted assumption that there is a universal, invariant, immaterial "law of identity," and then making a god-of-the-gaps argument that if I or others cannot justify your assumption by other means, it must somehow become justified by invoking a deity.

Valid is not the same as sound, and premise #3 is obviously bunk.

Gozaburo said:
It asserts that everyone operates with presuppositions (e.g., the reliability of logic, reason, and evidence)
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An assertion I've shown to be false. Neither our brains & biological nature, nor our society & parents are presuppositional in nature; they're systems which we have every reason to believe were developed over the course of tens of thousands of years in the latter case and hundreds of millions of years in the former. The tools they've provided us with have proven their efficacy billions of times over in billions of people's lives, so undeniably they are reliable (if imperfect) tools.

Gozaburo said:
Thus, I argue that God is the precondition for rationality itself.
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You haven't argued that at all, you've merely asserted it. You haven't even offered any kind of conceptual link between "Suppose a deity exists" and "Therefore rationality is reliable or justified."

Moreover while the limited and imperfect cognitive tools we find ourselves equipped with fits very nicely with an ad-hoc, trial and error process of biological and societal evolution, on face value at least it makes very little sense that cognitive tools 'grounded in' a universal God would be so limited and flawed.
 

You argue that ‘A is A’ might not be useful or observable in a black hole or post-Big Bang chaos, but the moment you reason about that, saying ‘a black hole is a black hole’ or ‘dark matter isn’t like normal matter,’ you’re relying on identity to make your claims intelligible. If identity were truly contingent or could fail ‘outside our immediate field of experience,’ your own argument about its failure would collapse into incoherence. You can’t coherently say ‘identity doesn’t hold there’ unless ‘there’ is consistently ‘there’ and not suddenly ‘not-there.’

You call it a ‘useless philosophical abstraction,’ but it’s far from useless - it’s the bedrock of any meaningful statement, including yours. Even if physics bends in extreme conditions, the logical structure of your reasoning doesn’t (it can’t) because without A being A, there’s no way to distinguish a black hole from a sunrise or dark matter from a chair. The claim isn’t that identity governs every particle’s behavior & quality empirically; it’s that it governs the possibility of rational thought universally.


Your ability to reason - including your claim that ‘it works, therefore it’s reasonable to use it’ - already relies on the law of identity being more than a contingent tool. You say it’s justified by repeated success, but that’s still circular: you’re using reason to validate reason’s tools based on outcomes reason itself interprets. Why trust those outcomes across all contexts, past, present, future, unless the principles underwriting them are reliable beyond mere happenstance?

You call it a ‘blind unwarranted assumption,’ but it’s not blind - it’s what makes our debate possible. When you say ‘it works,’ you’re assuming ‘it’ is consistently ‘it’, not suddenly ‘not-it’, and that your reasoning about its working stays coherent. That’s the law of identity in action, not as a physical law I’m imposing on black holes, but as a logical necessity for any intelligible claim.

As I said, this is obviously distinct from the god-of-the-gaps argument (which I agree is a fallacy). This is a rational, metalogical argument about the assumptions of worldviews. Of course, I could choose to be ad-hoc and arbitrary and claim God 'just works', since by your own standard that is acceptable, but I'd hold that being arbitrary in either sense is incoherent.

Mithrae said:
Valid is not the same as sound, and premise #3 is obviously bunk.
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It’d be bunk if you could show that reason’s possibility doesn’t need a necessary condition or that something besides God could ground it

Mithrae said:
An assertion I've shown to be false.
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I'm afraid not.
 

Believe it or not, I didn't arbitrarily bring up Sellar's myth of the given and the theory laden-ness of all observations in my first reply.

Those ‘successes’ (we're talking about your 'proven efficacy' here) aren’t raw facts justifying logic - they’re interpreted through logic itself. To claim ‘it worked here, so it’ll work there,’ you presuppose identity and coherence, not the other way around. Evolution might explain how we got reason, or maybe it won't, but it doesn’t ground why its principles hold universally. If logic were just a contingent product, as you suggest, you couldn’t trust it to judge those billions of tests... yet you do. There’s no neutral ‘given’ to bootstrap reliability; you’re already leaning on presupposed principles.

Mithrae said:
You haven't argued that at all, you've merely asserted it. You haven't even offered any kind of conceptual link between "Suppose a deity exists" and "Therefore rationality is reliable or justified."
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I have argued it. Perhaps you disagree with the argument or perhaps you can think of a coherent and internally consistent worldview which can also be the case, but the argument was laid out in the syllogism: if reason’s possible (◊Y), it's precondition (X, God) must be. Totally sound and valid.

So we're now having a metalevel debate about the coherence and internal consistency of worldviews. If it can be demonstrated that there exists a possible Godless worldview which can provide a more coherent and consistent epistemic grounding for universals, then the argument is disproven.


I obviously haven't conceded to you that something like the laws of logic are merely ad-hoc biological conventions, you'd have to demonstrate that. Could evolution create a world where A isn't A?

If by 'limited and imperfect cognitive tools' you're merely referring to the finitude of a given human's brain matter, then sure. Of course, I'm not making an argument that if God exists, then we would expect all human beings to have omniscience. The finitude of human reason is a red herring which avoids the deeper question: how do you account for the fact that these 'flawed' tools still manage to grasp universal truths? If cognition is just an evolutionary patchwork, why trust it to reason about reality at all?
 

That’s what I said. I just didn’t use quite so many words.
 
watsup said:
That’s what I said. I just didn’t use quite so many words.
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Not really. The arguments are distinct.

He's appealing to pragmatism for the most part, although I'd consider the biological naturalism piece to be very weak.

You appeal to some objective criterion you can't define and when you do attempt to refine it, we find that it's self refutational and incoherent.

Which is why Humean pragmatism is probably the best argument for atheism. This makes perfect sense when we understand that when all is said and done, intellectuals in the empirical tradition haven't really been able to resolve or move past Hume's arguments 500 years ago.
 

His basic arguments are the same as mine, which is why I posted a “like”. And it is quite hilarious that you criticize philosophical arguments from the past because there has never been one regarding a “God” that has not been effectively refuted by other philosophers, and that includes your God of Ego which still has a congregation of exactly one.
 
watsup said:
His basic arguments are the same as mine
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No they aren't. Like at all.

watsup said:
And it is quite hilarious that you criticize philosophical arguments from the past because there has never been one regarding a “God” that has not been effectively refuted by other philosophers
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I have a hard time believing you're familiar with where the discourse is on the subject when you struggle to grasp 100 level philosophy.
 
Gozaburo said:
No they aren't. Like at all.
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Yes, my arguments and those of Mithras in that particular post are basically the same . If I wanted to, I cohld o back and lift lots of sentences that are equivalent to what I have said in the last, but why waste my time when you appear to have made up your mind.

Gozaburo said:
I have a hard time believing you're familiar with where the discourse is on the subject when you struggle to grasp 100 level philosophy.
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Makes no difference. I can still spot BS a mile away, and I am totally correct when I identify your imaginary entity as a God of Ego. Philosophy has never proven a God, and it is basically just centuries-long circular arguments that never go anywhere and never prove anything. Hide behind it is you wish, but that doesn’t make your particular God any more actual than any other. And Mithrae is at least the third chatter who does indeed know philosophy who has destroyed your claims. Just as I have.
If you really and truly want to test your claims, then you need to find an online chat that is dedicated to philosophy alone or, better yet, call your local university and ask to be able to present your claim in an advanced Philosophy class and see how far you get. Practicing elitism towards those who may not have as much formal training as you in the area proves exactly nothing.
 

They're distinct in important ways.

watsup said:
is at least the third chatter who does indeed know philosophy who has destroyed your claims. Just as I have.
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Lol
 
Gozaburo said:
They're distinct in important ways.
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So you say. I say otherwise. Some details may be different, but the overall theme is the same, which is that your claims fall apart in so many different ways. Just like everyone before you who has ever tried to justify an imaginary entity.



Gozaburo said:
Lol
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So sorry that you don’t like to accept the truth. And you still haven’t answered my question in the other thread where you made yet another woo-woo claim.
 

Philosophically, I suppose that this is true. In the world of science, not so much.
 
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