"Agnostic"

[Mithrae]

Yes, my arguments and those of Mithras in that particular post are basically the same .

That's strange, because my response to Gozaburo is the same as one of my main criticisms of "no onus, no evidence, no belief" atheism in that both you and he advocate an epistemic approach grounded in quasi- or pseudo-rational principles rather than in pragmatic realities.

Your epistemic principle seems to be something along the lines of "reject everything that's not sufficiently justified (applying selective and arbitrary standards for what 'sufficient' justification entails, and glossing over the fact that this epistemic principle itself is not justified even by philosophical let alone its own purely empirical standards)" while Gozaburo's principle, digging a little deeper than that, seems to be more along the lines of "since there is no ultimate epistemic justification, assume there's a deity to magically provide it." Gozaburo's principle deliberately and self-consciously purports to be transcendent and distinct from the messy, imperfect world of the rising ape. In my decades of discussions I've encountered atheists with a variety of views, obviously, but in my experience those I've dubbed NONENB atheists also seem to consistently suppose that their epistemic principle is distinct from our messy world... not deliberately but shallowly, unthinkingly, in that I've never seen it justified, rarely seen its advocates even attempt to justify it in a coherent and consistent manner, and all too often encountered an unawareness that they are applying a particular and dubious epistemic approach at all! They seem to assume that it just is what reason consists of, that it transcends its own demand for justification or 'evidence.'

The very easy approach of insisting that everyone else has the onus of proof....

It's "easy" because it's the only approach that is rational.

It's actually wildly irrational. Human society and human progress is and always has been developed around standing on the shoulders of giants, not on every individual trying to tear it all down and start again from scratch.

Both @Gozaburo and NONENB atheists are adopting a very similar approach of wholesale denying the validity of "where we're at" (wherever that may be for any given society/time period/individual) as the necessary and legitimate starting point or continuation point for enquiry. Thing is that as weird and convoluted as Gozaburo's position apparently is, he does at least make a valid point regarding the inconsistency of atheists who wholesale dismiss the 'starting point' legitimacy of childhood- or culturally-acquired beliefs when it comes to theism, but assume and uphold the legitimacy of all the rest of it with little or no scrutiny.

As I pointed out to ACC in another thread, you believe that Santa doesn't exist. Why? There is a route to rational justification of that belief, but the real reason is because your society and those you respect believe Santa doesn't exist, and you have no reason to challenge it. Pretending that one's attitude towards Santa is just a bland neutral lack-of-belief would be outright dishonest or a shocking level of self-delusion in subservience to the prior dogma/rhetorical approach of NONENB atheism. On the other hand if asked "Is there uranium on Neptune?" you almost certainly wouldn't start with any kind of 'default' view that there is no uranium on Neptune - in that case it probably is a genuine neutral lack-of-belief, and why? Because in that case there is no prior social expectation in place.

Again, human society and human progress is and always has been developed around standing on the shoulders of giants, not on every individual trying to tear it all down and start again from scratch. We must rationally suppose that our starting point or continuation point (whatever it may be) has some level of legitimacy, because that's where the practical realities of our world, our evolution, our society and ourselves have brought us. From that point we should certainly question and critique our views right down to their foundation, but it puts the onus for rejection of currently-held views (arguably in a society, and certainly for individuals) on the one proposing their rejection... and that includes theism.

 

[Mithrae]

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.

You seem to have gone a full circle here from there being a "universal, invariant, immaterial law of identity" to it apparently (though of course not acknowledged as such) being merely a feature of "the logical structure of your reasoning" and "the possibility of rational thought." That it may not be a feature of reality, merely a feature of our brains is precisely the point I initially raised, in post #132:
"Heck, the meaning in words for example definitely is not universal, invariant or arguably even immaterial. As far as I know there's no compelling reason to suppose that the 'laws of logic' are much different, merely representing the patterns within which our primate brains are constrained to think (though I suppose one might argue that they are constrained as such due to the nature of the reality they evolved in)."

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

You haven't even offered (let alone substantiated) any kind of conceptual link between "Suppose a deity exists" and "Therefore rationality is reliable or justified." This is literally god-of-the-gaps reasoning, "if you can't explain it by other means then Goddidit." It's actually a considerably worse case than many others for at least three reasons:
A) Often when GotG is invoked it is a genuine gap in naturalist knowledge, unlike the presence of reason which is essentially a mechanistic process that we've literally broken down into formulaic systems much simpler than most evolved mechanistic systems.
B) Usually GotG-style arguments involve fairly straightforward phenomena requiring only the raw power aspect of divinity to explain, such as miracles or creation, whereas there's no clear link between "God exists" and "reason is reliable" let alone "reason is possible" at all.
C) Other GotG-style arguments almost never have the hubris to pretend that they have reached a conclusion which must hold in all possible worlds, the great-great-grandaddy of extraordinary claims based (in this case) on literally nothing.

By providing a shared reality to shape and stabilize our patterns of thinking I can readily see how the existence of a deity could 'ground' the reliability of reason almost as well as a material reality could - a deity would introduce far greater scope for either our shared reality or our thoughts to become wildly erratic, incomprehensible or contradictory at any arbitrary moment - but if we imagine reason not being possible there's no apparent reason why introducing a deity should magically make it possible... let alone that it should be modally "necessary" to make it so!

 

[Gozaburo]

You seem to have gone a full circle here from there being a "universal, invariant, immaterial law of identity" to it apparently (though of course not acknowledged as such) being merely a feature of "the logical structure of your reasoning" and "the possibility of rational thought." That it may not be a feature of reality, merely a feature of our brains is precisely the point I initially raised, in

You're misunderstanding my position.

I didn't concede that grounding A=A epistemically is only a feature of reasoning - I said it's a necessary precondition for reasoning's possibility at all, which includes reasoning about reality. I don't think you've provided a convincing argument that these preconditions can't be accurately described as universals and I think your presentation of our brains as this pragmatic biological convention isn't just incoherent as laid out in post #163 and #166, but it's also about as epistemically ad-hoc and arbitrary as you can get. I'm interested in demonstrating my argument as well, but there's a fair point to be made that if we're having a metalevel debate about the coherence of worldviews and you allow for ad-hoc and arbitrary explanations, then why can't I? Why not just believe in the necessary X of God?

You haven't even offered (let alone substantiated) any kind of conceptual link between "Suppose a deity exists" and "Therefore rationality is reliable or justified." This is literally god-of-the-gaps reasoning, "if you can't explain it by other means then Goddidit." It's actually a considerably worse case than many others for at least three reasons:

I don't really understand what you're having a hard time tracking. This argument is nothing close to god-of-the-gaps argumentation. I'm not trying to plug holes in naturalistic knowledge, I'm referring to the preconditions for any knowledge whatsoever, including your claim that reason is a "mechanistic process".

I'll reiterate: You're almost projecting the assumptions of your own naturalistic worldview onto my argument and missing the point because of it. I'm not interested (in this case) in demonstrating to you how brains produce reason. I'm giving you a meta-logical argument about the preconditions for reason's possibility (Y) at all. I'm asking: what must be true (X) for reason to even get off the ground? This is a higher-order question, not a causal one.

A) Often when GotG is invoked it is a genuine gap in naturalist knowledge, unlike the presence of reason which is essentially a mechanistic process that we've literally broken down into formulaic systems much simpler than most evolved mechanistic systems.

If you go back and take a look at my syllogism, I start with reasons possibility, not its mechanics. I'm not disputing that brains or systems can instantiate reason; I'm asking why reason is possible at all. You continue to miss this and treat reason’s existence as a given that needs no deeper ground. You're arguing at the level of description, I'm arguing at the level of justification, which is prior to describing quality.

 

[Gozaburo]

B) Usually GotG-style arguments involve fairly straightforward phenomena requiring only the raw power aspect of divinity to explain, such as miracles or creation, whereas there's no clear link between "God exists" and "reason is reliable" let alone "reason is possible" at all.

We're reasoning right now. We're making arguments right now. I suppose you could deny reason is possible, but you'll have to drop the mic immediately and concede the debate since if reason isn't possible, then neither are arguments and debate.

I don’t need to prove reason is reliable to start; I just note it’s happening. As I've said, the question my argument asks is: what must be true (X) for reason to be possible at all? Reliability comes into play later, as part of what X must account for, but it’s not the initial burden. My first premise doesn’t assume reason is reliable - it just assumes it’s possible, which your act of arguing implicitly grants.

Further, the focus on reason’s reliability (e.g., it’s “mechanistic,” justified by pragmatic success) is a red herring. My argument isn’t claiming reason is reliable in some empirical sense (e.g., always producing true beliefs); it’s claiming reason’s possibility requires a necessary condition (X). Reliability enters when I argue that X (like God) ensures logic’s invariance (e.g., A=A), making reason consistent to function. But I don’t need to prove reliability upfront for the reasons I've mentioned.

C) Other GotG-style arguments almost never have the hubris to pretend that they have reached a conclusion which must hold in all possible worlds, the great-great-grandaddy of extraordinary claims based (in this case) on literally nothing.

The S5 modal framework (□◊Y → □X) isn’t about observing reason in our world and extrapolating; it’s about reason’s logical possibility requiring a necessary condition (X) that holds universally. You're continuing to treat my modal claim as an empirical overreach, not a deductive conclusion from the premise that reason’s possibility (◊Y) needs an invariant X. The order of my syllogism moves from possibility to necessity, not from gaps to God.

By providing a shared reality to shape and stabilize our patterns of thinking I can readily see how the existence of a deity could 'ground' the reliability of reason almost as well as a material reality could - a deity would introduce far greater scope for either our shared reality or our thoughts to become wildly erratic, incomprehensible or contradictory at any arbitrary moment - but if we imagine reason not being possible there's no apparent reason why introducing a deity should magically make it possible... let alone that it should be modally "necessary" to make it so!

As for necessity, the argument isn’t that any deity “magically” makes reason possible but that, when we analyze the preconditions for knowledge (universality, invariance, coherence), only a transcendent, rational source like God accounts for them without begging the question.

 

[Mithrae]

I didn't concede that grounding A=A epistemically is only a feature of reasoning - I said it's a necessary precondition for reasoning's possibility at all

Do you recognize the possibility that, in fringe conditions that we have little or no means of probing such as the instant of the big bang or the surface of black holes, "A=A" is not a feature of or does not reflect reality at all?

We have no basis for denying that possibility precisely because we have no means of probing those cases. But if you acknowledge that possibility, then you must concede either that "A=A" might not be universal or invariant, or that "A=A" might be associated only with our reasoning rather than with reality itself. Since the denial would be irrational and you didn't dispute that physics bends in extreme conditions, and you also continued to insist on the universality of identity, your comments seemed to be following the third option. And given that identity is or might be associated only with our reasoning, I can readily agree with your comments that "Even if physics bends in extreme conditions, the logical structure of your reasoning doesn’t (it can’t)" and that a principle of identity is "a necessary precondition for reasoning's possibility at all" without changing my argument in the slightest: Our ancestors surely would have needed a principle of identity to develop any kind of reasoning, and we'd have a very hard time overcoming that wiring now!

What you have not at any point done is demonstrate or justify your A=A over and against A≈A; you haven't shown either that our logical principles are in fact universal and invariant rather than just consistent enough, or even that they have to be universal and invariant for reasoning to be a useful tool. In fact I showed in my second post in our exchange that it doesn't matter whether a chair "is itself" in the sense of strictly the molecules of its wooden structure or whether a chair "is itself" in the sense of everything - the wood and bacteria and quantum fields - occupying that volume of space. Even if it was constantly fluctuating or in a superposition between the two, never reliably or even really identical to one or the other, we'd still talk about it and sit on it just fine, as long as A≈A. But you're stuck on debunking the strawman of A=!A.

I don't think you've provided a convincing argument that these preconditions can't be accurately described as universals and I think your presentation of our brains as this pragmatic biological convention isn't just incoherent as laid out in post #163 and #166, but it's also about as epistemically ad-hoc and arbitrary as you can get.

Whether or not it's 'epistemically' ad hoc, it's based on and compatible with scientific facts. Our ancestors had to respond to sight or sound of 'lion' as if they were in fact sight or sound of 'lion,' because those who responded as if they were sight or sound of rabbits obviously didn't last long; or something along those lines, since it would have been pre-human or maybe pre-vertebrate ancestors when some kind of 'principle of identity' first became wired into the response-choosing machine in our heads.

This is rather like someone watching a 747 fly and insisting that it's philosophically unwarranted that it should do so. Reasoning works more than well enough to be extremely useful, as each person observes again and again on a daily basis. That's neither ad hoc nor arbitrary nor even remotely comparable to a blind claim that God "just is," it's an actual proven fact. Epistemology is about examining how reasoning and learning do in fact work in practice, so we can potentially do them even better; it's not about introducing unreasoned speculation to 'explain' why it ought to work or why it ought to be possible. Having some idea why is nice - and we obviously do have one plausible explanation based on our understanding of evolution - but it's not required in order for us to know that it's useful and reliable.

I'm interested in demonstrating my argument as well, but there's a fair point to be made that if we're having a metalevel debate about the coherence of worldviews and you allow for ad-hoc and arbitrary explanations, then why can't I? Why not just believe in the necessary X of God?

As far as I've seen so far, you do. But unlike the utility and reliability of reasoning, that's obviously not a proven fact. You keep saying that using reason to justify reason is circular, so I guess advocating an unreasoned conclusion is at least consistent, of sorts.

I'm giving you a meta-logical argument about the preconditions for reason's possibility (Y) at all. I'm asking: what must be true (X) for reason to even get off the ground?

You're not asking, you're not even arguing, you're just asserting: "3. It’s necessarily true that if reason is possible, then X (God) must hold."

 

[watsup]

That's strange,

Not strange at all. Here are the areas where we are in basic agreement:

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.

“God of the gaps” is a basic atheist argument for the many facetious claims regarding a god of creation and has been used many many times in here by said atheists.

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.

A paraphrase of a basic argument that I have made to him repeatedly.

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."

That’s what I keep telling him—that his claims were nothing more than philosophical assertions that produced yet another figment of imagination called “God”, just like every other human who has ever done so.

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

Biological and societal evolution—the basis of human “knowledge”, no outside influence or entity needed.

 

[watsup]

That's strange, because my response to Gozaburo is the same as one of my main criticisms of "no onus, no evidence, no belief" atheism in that both you and he advocate an epistemic approach grounded in quasi- or pseudo-rational principles rather than in pragmatic realities.

Not sure what “pragmatic realities” you are talking about. As an atheist, I use the same “pragmatic reality” as does science, which is that evidence is the foundation of that reality. What else could it possibly be?

 

[ataraxia]

Because I loathe intellectual laziness and dishonesty.

The issue is what someone believes to be the case.

As there is no proof one way or the other, this is the only question that's relevant. Someone else in this thread posted that he is "an agnostic atheist." If he is suggesting that absent any definitive proof one way or the other then we're all "agnostic atheists or believers." It's like adding a zero to both sides of an equation. It changes nothing and becomes thoroughly irrelevant.

To me, the concept of God is a little like the concept of parallel universes. I mean, maybe parallel universes, in some sense or other, could exist. Maybe not. It's an interesting thought. I don't think it has any direct impact on my day-to-day functioning. But there is not much significant evidence one way or the other. So is it intellectually dishonest to just shrug at whether it's one way or the other?

 

[watsup]

Your epistemic principle seems to be something along the lines of "reject everything that's not sufficiently justified

As I said above, my claims are based on the same principles as science, which is the need for evidence that can be independently verified, not some 500 year old story that makes zero sense as regards the realities of medical science. Do you have any?

applying selective and arbitrary standards for what 'sufficient' justification entails, and glossing over the fact that this epistemic principle itself is not justified even by philosophical let alone its own purely empirical standards

not deliberately but shallowly, unthinkingly,

I've never seen it justified, rarely seen its advocates even attempt to justify it in a coherent and consistent manne

all too often encountered an unawareness

dubious epistemic approach at all!

The rest is all gaslighting, which makes you not one bit different from every agnostic, theist, and religionist that has ever shown up in this forum. Get back to me when you want to discuss the topic, per se, instead of attempting to demean those of differing claims. Quite frankly, I seriously doubt that you can do so. Like all of the other aforementioned agnostics, theists, and religionists that I mentioned, it is an obsession with you that you simply cannot overcome. That’s a shame.

 

[ataraxia]

Let me ask, do you know of even one good argument for the existence of a god? Can you point to one verifiable bit of physical evidence that point out a god must exist? If you cannot then that is somethig you do know.

I am an agnostic that leans more toward the atheist side of the term. I admit I am no intellectual giant. But someone as sophisticated as the late Stephen Hawking was impressed, for example, by the "fine tuning" argument for the constants of the universe.

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron… The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
-Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Later, he said that such apparent fine tuning could be explained by the multiverse theory and M-theory- but these are currently not very well established scientifically- more like avant-garde scientific hypotheses at this point. So the fine-tuning business of the universe- why there is SOMETHING rather than nothing, and how these things DO fit together like such finely designed pieces of a giant pre-fabricated jigsaw puzzle, are still things which give me some pause before completely rejecting the idea of a creator God.

 

[watsup]

I am an agnostic that leans more toward the atheist side of the term. I admit I am no intellectual giant. But someone as sophisticated as the late Stephen Hawking was impressed, for example, by the "fine tuning" argument for the constants of the universe.

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron… The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
-Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Later, he said that such fine tuning could be explained away by the multiverse theory and M-theory- but then again these are not very well established scientifically- more like avant-garde scientific hypotheses at this point. So the fine-tuning business of the universe- why there is SOMETHING rather than nothing, and how these things DO fit together like such finely designed pieces of a giant pre-fabricated jigsaw puzzle, are still things which give me some pause before completely rejecting the idea of a creator God.

So who fine-tuned God?

 

[ataraxia]

So who fine-tuned God?

IKR? The possibilities are endless. The fact is, we don't really know the answers to any of these questions.

So why be dogmatic about it one way or the other? Rather than dogmatically rejecting any of these hypotheses, I just shrug at them and admit that we don't know. I don't see anything dishonest or lazy about that.

And I don't think I am in poor company. Even an atheist as hardcore as Richard Dawkins would readily admit that we can never really be SURE, one way or the other:



But pragmatically speaking, I don't think whether one is a hardcore atheist or an agnostic makes much difference. I don't think the agnostic position is that all different from the hardcore atheist position when it comes to how to approach everyday personal/public/political decisions. I think we could agree with the atheist that even if such a creator God exists, we can certainly not be too dogmatic or have much conviction about what he wants from us: whether he wants our women to cover their hair with a hijab and pray 5 times a day facing Mecca, or have particular positions on abortion or gay marriage, or just say we believe. I think these questions of culture/social policy are things which are better decided without reference to a god or gods.

 

[Gozaburo]

Do you recognize the possibility that, in fringe conditions that we have little or no means of probing such as the instant of the big bang or the surface of black holes, "A=A" is not a feature of or does not reflect reality at all?

Still missing the point. I didn’t say A=A is only a feature of reasoning - I said it’s a necessary precondition for reasoning’s possibility, including reasoning about reality. Suggesting it might not hold at the Big Bang or black holes doesn’t refute this and is a red herring. A=A isn’t about how physics behaves in extreme conditions; it’s about the logical structure that lets you even talk about those conditions. Without A=A, you couldn’t coherently say “a black hole is a black hole” or “A≈A works.” Your own arguments assume its invariance, yet you claim it’s not universal. That’s incoherent

We have no basis for denying that possibility precisely because we have no means of probing those cases. But if you acknowledge that possibility, then you must concede either that "A=A" might not be universal or invariant, or that "A=A" might be associated only with our reasoning rather than with reality itself. Since the denial would be irrational and you didn't dispute that physics bends in extreme conditions, and you also continued to insist on the universality of identity, your comments seemed to be following the third option.

You continue to treat the law of identity as an empirical quality and it's totally bizarre because I would figure you intelligent enough to understand the difference between a priori knowledge and empirical quality.

Whether or not physics bends in extreme conditions or the surface of black holes changes physical properties or if we'll ever have the means of probing these cases, that doesn't change the point of my argument precisely because the law of identity isn't a scientific hypothesis testable via empirical means.

Indeed, to even argue that A=A might fail in extreme conditions, you have to assume A=A holds in your reasoning (e.g., “Big Bang is Big Bang,” “conditions are conditions”). If A=A were contingent or empirical, your own claims would lose coherence - how could you distinguish “failure” from “non-failure” without it?

Our ancestors surely would have needed a principle of identity to develop any kind of reasoning, and we'd have a very hard time overcoming that wiring now!

Totally irrelevant unless you're trying to make a naturalist claim that the epistemic ground for knowledge is human brain matter.

What you have not at any point done is demonstrate or justify your A=A over and against A≈A; you haven't shown either that our logical principles are in fact universal and invariant rather than just consistent enough, or even that they have to be universal and invariant for reasoning to be a useful tool. In fact I showed in my second post in our exchange that it doesn't matter whether a chair "is itself" in the sense of strictly the molecules of its wooden structure or whether a chair "is itself" in the sense of everything - the wood and bacteria and quantum fields - occupying that volume of space. Even if it was constantly fluctuating or in a superposition between the two, never reliably or even really identical to one or the other, we'd still talk about it and sit on it just fine, as long as A≈A. But you're stuck on debunking the strawman of A=!A.

A≈A still dodges the issue of justification. This insistence that my argument is trying to show that A=A is more pragmatic than A≈A in an empirical sense is, once again, a red herring. We're not talking about empirical utility here, we're having a metalogical conversation about the preconditions for any of these categories to function at all!

I’m not just debunking A≠A; I’m saying A=A is a necessary precondition for reasoning’s possibility, including your A≈A. You keep claiming I haven’t justified A=A over approximate identity, but A≈A doesn’t escape the need for strict invariance. To say a chair is “close enough” to itself - whether wood or wood plus bacteria - you need a stable baseline to define “close.” Without A=A, how do you know A≈A isn’t A≠A? Your own reasoning about approximations assumes A=A’s invariance, or “consistent enough” means nothing. To put it very simply, you literally cannot make an argument without assuming A=A, making your skepticism completely incoherent.

 

[Gozaburo]

Whether or not it's 'epistemically' ad hoc, it's based on and compatible with scientific facts. Our ancestors had to respond to sight or sound of 'lion' as if they were in fact sight or sound of 'lion,' because those who responded as if they were sight or sound of rabbits obviously didn't last long; or something along those lines, since it would have been pre-human or maybe pre-vertebrate ancestors when some kind of 'principle of identity' first became wired into the response-choosing machine in our heads.

You're just storytelling about a state of cognition, not providing an epistemic ground for the claims and assertions you make. In fact, I could agree with the pile of 'whats' you're giving as a pragmatic description of human cognition and my argument wouldn't be challenged or changed in the slightest.

This is rather like someone watching a 747 fly and insisting that it's philosophically unwarranted that it should do so. Reasoning works more than well enough to be extremely useful, as each person observes again and again on a daily basis. Epistemology is about examining how reasoning and learning do in fact work in practice, so we can potentially do them even better; it's not about introducing unreasoned speculation to 'explain' why it ought to work or why it ought to be possible. Having some idea why is nice - and we obviously do have one plausible explanation based on our understanding of evolution - but it's not required in order for us to know that it's useful and reliable.

You're still arguing with a strawman. I'm not denying reasoning's useful. I'm saying that grounding truth in that utility is absurd, ad-hoc, and circular. I'm sure we'd both agree that humans do not always reason truths, so if we're talking about the epistemic value of grounding truth in a contingent (apparently fallible) biological story, how could it possibly serve as an epistemic justification? We both agree the 747 is flying, but you've got no idea why it doesn't crash.

Totally goofy definition of epistemology too - epistemology isn't about tinkering with pragmatic utility; it's about justifying knowledge - why it's possible and reliable. Dismissing 'why' as speculation is just being an intellectual luddite and refusing to deal with the obvious contradictions and question begging that arises from claiming evolution serves as a valid epistemic starting point.

That's neither ad hoc nor arbitrary nor even remotely comparable to a blind claim that God "just is," it's an actual proven fact.

God isn't a blind arbitrary claim. A transcendent God has unique characteristics and attributes (personal, transcendent, intelligent, self-justifying, etc.) which makes God unique and distinct from other possible worldviews argued in natural theology, materialism, naturalism, and so on. The very claim back in my original syllogism was that this God is the only way to provide an account of knowledge without falling into circularity, question begging, and incoherence. It's okay if you disagree with that and would like to claim otherwise, but you're going to have to actually contend with that argument, not totally miss it and continue story telling about the functional utility of human cognition.

 

[Gozaburo]

As far as I've seen so far, you do. But unlike the utility and reliability of reasoning, that's obviously not a proven fact. You keep saying that using reason to justify reason is circular, so I guess advocating an unreasoned conclusion is at least consistent, of sorts.

Your 'fact' isn't proven in your worldview. You're assuming universal categories and making logical leaps to conclude 'facts' without a proper epistemic grounding, which is the entire point of my argument. My worldview has a proper justification and so I can say - with complete intellectual honesty - that human reasoning has utility and reliability because the laws of logic, reason, etc. are grounded in the divine intellect.

You're trying to smuggle in a conclusion through the back door without offering a proper justification for it. Why would I concede to you that you have any 'proven facts' in your worldview? You haven't demonstrated anything of the sort.

You're not asking, you're not even arguing, you're just asserting: "3. It’s necessarily true that if reason is possible, then X (God) must hold."

Or you just don't understand the deductive structure of the argument. 'God' isn't an assertion, it's a justified argument as the only possible ground for the preconditions of knowledge.

(◊Y → □X) is a deductive argument, not a fiat. I'm asking “what must be true (X) for Y?” and concluding God is the only X that fits:

Reason is possible (◊Y) - we're arguing, so it’s true.
It’s necessarily true that reason’s possible (□◊Y, via S5).
If reason’s possible, a precondition X must hold (◊Y → X) - something has to ground universals like A=A and coherence.
Only God as X - a transcendent, self-justifying intellect - fits without circularity or incoherence.
So, X is necessarily true (□X).

Now, if we substitute my X (God) with your X (utility? pragmatism? 747s?) we find ourselves begging the question and engaging in circularity.

 

[soylentgreen]

I am an agnostic that leans more toward the atheist side of the term. I admit I am no intellectual giant. But someone as sophisticated as the late Stephen Hawking was impressed, for example, by the "fine tuning" argument for the constants of the universe.

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron… The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
-Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Later, he said that such apparent fine tuning could be explained by the multiverse theory and M-theory- but these are currently not very well established scientifically- more like avant-garde scientific hypotheses at this point. So the fine-tuning business of the universe- why there is SOMETHING rather than nothing, and how these things DO fit together like such finely designed pieces of a giant pre-fabricated jigsaw puzzle, are still things which give me some pause before completely rejecting the idea of a creator God.

The big problem with the fine tuning argument is that your not asking what is the universe fine tuned for? Certainly not life as out of all the observable universe we can find only one place that has life. The rest is so hostile that we have yet to find any form of life.

 

[ataraxia]

The big problem with the fine tuning argument is that your not asking what is the universe fine tuned for? Certainly not life as out of all the observable universe we can find only one place that has life. The rest is so hostile that we have yet to find any form of life.

Sure. There are lots of problems with everything that we dhave definitive answers for – and even sometimes problems with the stuff we think we do. That’s why sometimes you just have to shrug at stuff we don’t know and just admit we don’t know. It’s OK. There’s no need for a wild speculation or forcing people to make a decision when we really just don’t know.

We can still function not knowing everything. We humans have always been muddling along that way all along anyway. There is no guarantee we will ever arrive at such final definitive answers and ultimate truths, and we probably wouldn’t even know for sure we were there even if we got there. How would we know? How could we be sure even then it’s not some trick or hallucination or some even further truth to the matter?

You just start from what you do know, and then always try to grow from there. You don’t have to know everything from the start. In fact, thinking you do tends to lead to closed mindedness and intolerance.

There is nothing cowardly, nor logically inconsistent about that position. It’s just a position of humility and acknowledgment of our limits as fallible, mortal humans.

“My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have an ambition of transcendence."
-Richard Rorty

I see the claims of hard atheism as such an ambition of transcendence, as much as hard theism. It’s not necessary.

 

[soylentgreen]

Sure. There are lots of problems with everything that we dhave definitive answers for – and even sometimes problems with the stuff we think we do. That’s why sometimes you just have to shrug at stuff we don’t know and just admit we don’t know. It’s OK. There’s no need for a wild speculation or forcing people to make a decision when we really just don’t know.

We can still function not knowing everything. We humans have always been muddling along that way all along anyway. There is no guarantee we will ever arrive at such final definitive answers and ultimate truths, and we probably wouldn’t even know for sure we were there even if we got there. How would we know? How could we be sure even then it’s not some trick or hallucination or some even further truth to the matter?

You just start from what you do know, and then always try to grow from there. You don’t have to know everything from the start. In fact, thinking you do tends to lead to closed mindedness and intolerance.

There is nothing cowardly, nor logically inconsistent about that position. It’s just a position of humility and acknowledgment of our limits as fallible, mortal humans.

“My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have an ambition of transcendence."
-Richard Rorty

I see the claims of hard atheism as such an ambition of transcendence, as much as hard theism. It’s not necessary.

It is not a matter of I do not know therefor keep an open mind. In the argument of a god it is more a case of keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out. You cannot give me even one good reason for a god existing yet there are many really bad reasons to think one might. Most of which have to do with creating fear and the ability to manipulate others.

I have no more reason to keep an open mind about a god as I do about santa or the tooth fairy or harry potter.

 

[ataraxia]

It is not a matter of I do not know therefor keep an open mind. In the argument of a god it is more a case of keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out. You cannot give me even one good reason for a god existing yet there are many really bad reasons to think one might. Most of which have to do with creating fear and the ability to manipulate others.

True- but like I said before- those “fine-tuning” arguments are a little too weird and uncanny, and even Stephen Hawking was never really able to dismiss them all entirely based on established science.

So like I said- I see it more like the idea of parallel universes: something to say “hmmm” to, and just move on- and make sure it’s not exploited for nefarious purposes. I too get concerned when things go down that road.

I have no more reason to keep an open mind about a god as I do about santa or the tooth fairy or harry potter.

Haha- I keep an open mind to those things as well!

Hey if I was ever in some small lonely propeller plane flying over the North Pole one day and saw a small house with candy cane-colored light poles outside, I would circle around and take a closer look- wouldn’t you?

 

[soylentgreen]

True- but like I said before- those “fine-tuning” arguments are a little too weird and uncanny, and even Stephen Hawking was never really able to dismiss them all entirely based on established science.

So like I said- I see it more like the idea of parallel universes: something to say “hmmm” to, and just move on- and make sure it’s not exploited for nefarious purposes. I too get concerned when things go down that road.

Haha- I keep an open mind to those things as well!

Hey if I was ever in some small lonely propeller plane flying over the North Pole one day and saw a small house with candy cane-colored light poles outside, I would circle around and take a closer look- wouldn’t you?

Weird an uncanny in the same way we anthropomorphise any object. It is just human nature to see human nature in things. Hawkings is wrong to apply science to explain everything when psychology can also explain things.
Parallel universe is a fun idea with nothing to back it.
Again, keep an open mind but not to the point where your brain falls out.
And if you saw a what you thought was a tooth fairy would you knock all your teeth out and put them under your pillow.

 

[Mithrae]

Or you just don't understand the deductive structure of the argument.

It's certainly been explained quite poorly.

Reason is possible (◊Y) - we're arguing, so it’s true.

Obviously.

It’s necessarily true that reason’s possible (□◊Y, via S5).

Granted for the sake of argument.

If reason’s possible, a precondition X must hold (◊Y → X) - something has to ground universals like A=A and coherence.

Still bollocks, and easily demonstrated as such:
- God is possible
- It's necessarily true that God is possible
- If God is possible, there must be a precondition distinct from God (Z)

- Z is possible
- It's necessarily true that Z is possible
- If Z is possible, there must be a precondition distinct from Z (Z1)

Framing X as a precondition (rather than as a bald theistic assertion as in #164) really helps highlight the failure of this argument: If Y is 'contingently possible' then sure, we might infer a (potentially contingent) precondition for its possibility, but if Y is 'necessarily possible' there can be no precondition X for its possibility because that would make its possibility contingent on X. There may be preconditions for its actuality (eg. biological evolution), but not for its possibility.

Only God as X - a transcendent, self-justifying intellect - fits without circularity or incoherence.

Even if we opted to ignore the self-contradictory premise 3, for this claim (which you included in #3 earlier) you've provided no basis for supposing either that A) a deity can "ground universals" at all (it's not even clear after all this time what you mean by that phrase), or that B) simple existence cannot "ground universals" equally well, or that C) your description of God is even a coherent concept at all. Transcendent from what, reality? Incoherent. "Self-justifying" seems like a euphemism for the circularity of your claim, that we can conclude god grounds 'universals' by supposing god is a universal-grounding being.

And all of that is ignoring the fact that your claim of invariant universals is highly suspect to begin with!

So, X is necessarily true (□X).

Now, if we substitute my X (God) with your X (utility? pragmatism? 747s?) we find ourselves begging the question and engaging in circularity.

If reason is necessarily possible I don't need a precondition X and nor do you You're arguing from self-contradiction.

 

[Gozaburo]

Still bollocks, and easily demonstrated as such:
- God is possible
- It's necessarily true that God is possible
- If God is possible, there must be a precondition distinct from God (Z)

- Z is possible
- It's necessarily true that Z is possible
- If Z is possible, there must be a precondition distinct from Z (Z1)

Framing X as a precondition (rather than as a bald theistic assertion as in #164) really helps highlight the failure of this argument: If Y is 'contingently possible' then sure, we might infer a (potentially contingent) precondition for its possibility, but if Y is 'necessarily possible' there can be no precondition X for its possibility because that would make its possibility contingent on X. There may be preconditions for its actuality (eg. biological evolution), but not for its possibility.

Your demonstration is making a modal error. X is proposed as self-justifying and necessary, where Z and Z1 lack this property - they're just placeholders without explanatory power.

God, as a necessary being, is qualitatively different from contingent or arbitrary preconditions. A transcendent intellect grounding universals like identity (A=A) or coherence doesn’t need a further precondition because it’s self-existent by definition. Regress only happens if I allow X to be contingent, which I don’t.

Now, your stronger point is that if reason's possibility is necessary (□◊Y), it can't depend on a precondition X without becoming contingent. You're right necessary possibilities don’t typically require preconditions - necessity implies independence. However, my argument isn’t claiming X makes ◊Y possible in a contingent sense; it’s that X grounds the framework where reason is coherent at all. You're conflating preconditions for actuality (e.g., brains for reasoning) with preconditions for intelligibility (e.g., why reason’s principles hold universally).

X isn’t just any precondition but the only coherent one. You'd need to show Z grounds reason as well as or better than God does. Also, your claim that necessary possibility rules out preconditions ignores that even necessary truths (like logical laws) can have a metaphysical ground without being contingent - e.g., God’s nature as the basis for logic’s universality.

 

[Gozaburo]

A) a deity can "ground universals" at all (it's not even clear after all this time what you mean by that phrase)

By "universals" I mean principles like the law of identity, non-contradiction, numbers, etc. which apply everywhere, always. My argument is that these require a metaphysical basis for proper epistemic justification, not just observed patterns or brain matter which are insufficient.

B) simple existence cannot "ground universals" equally well

"Simple existence" lacks explanatory power. If existence is just what happens to be - like the universe - it’s contingent and can’t explain why A=A holds in all possible worlds. If you mean a necessary existence, what is it? A brute fact? That doesn’t explain why logic is rational or universal.

C) your description of God is even a coherent concept at all. Transcendent from what, reality? Incoherent. "Self-justifying" seems like a euphemism for the circularity of your claim, that we can conclude god grounds 'universals' by supposing god is a universal-grounding being.

"Transcendent" doesn't mean detached from reality, but existing beyond or independent of contingent reality. There's nothing incoherent about this.

On circularity: every worldview starts with axioms. They're circular in a narrow sense that you can't prove them without using them, but it isn't vicious circularity where we're assuming the conclusion outright. At the metalevel of discussing paradigms, this is an unavoidable reality for all worldviews.

I'm inferring God as the only coherent X for reason’s possibility (◊Y), based on necessity and explanatory power.

And all of that is ignoring the fact that your claim of invariant universals is highly suspect to begin with!

This has not been demonstrated.

If reason is necessarily possible I don't need a precondition X and nor do you You're arguing from self-contradiction.

We're still conflating contingent cause with metaphysical necessity. I'd join you hand-in-hand in refuting any theist positing God as a contingent cause, as I have done in multiple other threads.

I’m not saying God makes reason possible like a cause; God grounds why universals - like A=A or non-contradiction - are absolute and coherent, letting reason work in all worlds. There’s no contradiction. □◊Y and □X both hold. Denying X leaves you with no explanation for why logic is universal.

 

[watsup]

By "universals" I mean principles like the law of identity, non-contradiction, numbers, etc. which apply everywhere, always. My argument is that these require a metaphysical basis for proper epistemic justification, not just observed patterns or brain matter which are insufficient.



"Simple existence" lacks explanatory power. If existence is just what happens to be - like the universe - it’s contingent and can’t explain why A=A holds in all possible worlds. If you mean a necessary existence, what is it? A brute fact? That doesn’t explain why logic is rational or universal.



"Transcendent" doesn't mean detached from reality, but existing beyond or independent of contingent reality. There's nothing incoherent about this.

On circularity: every worldview starts with axioms. They're circular in a narrow sense that you can't prove them without using them, but it isn't vicious circularity where we're assuming the conclusion outright. At the metalevel of discussing paradigms, this is an unavoidable reality for all worldviews.

I'm inferring God as the only coherent X for reason’s possibility (◊Y), based on necessity and explanatory power.



This has not been demonstrated.



We're still conflating contingent cause with metaphysical necessity. I'd join you hand-in-hand in refuting any theist positing God as a contingent cause, as I have done in multiple other threads.

I’m not saying God makes reason possible like a cause; God grounds why universals - like A=A or non-contradiction - are absolute and coherent, letting reason work in all worlds. There’s no contradiction. □◊Y and □X both hold. Denying X leaves you with no explanation for why logic is universal.

Words don’t make a God.

 

[Mithrae]

So who fine-tuned God?

It's clear that our universe is a highly complex system. As I've highlighted a number of times before, there are only two observed mechanisms which explain the development of highly complex systems from simple antecedents: Biological evolution based on enduring selection from genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection from 'memetic' variation. So while the highly complex and unchanging omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality, extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face; it opens up the possibility of an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole, ironically essentially mirroring parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric.