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Member (Idle past 4750 days) Posts: 176 From: Atlanta, GA, United States Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Underlying Philosophy | |||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
As far as I can tell, there is no fundamental starting point for atheists - unless you want to say that being born is a fundamental starting point.
what is an atheists fundamental starting point
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
Nobody is claiming that science is the absolute authority in determining truth.
However, I do believe that it should not be set up as the absolute authority in determining truth.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
I expect that those who are platonist mathematicians might disagree with that.
But most atheists here would probably be united in opposing the assumption that there exists a non-empirical but potentially objective realm of reality.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Straggler writes:
I'm not sure, but that might apply to deism.
Well if anyone wants to say that their god exists in much the same way that a perfect circle exists I for one won't stand in their way.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
tesla writes:
All you need is a persistent curiosity.
You do however have to have a question before you can apply the scientific method.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
I'm not sure what you think that proves.First, have you ever observed the laws of logic, or an effect of the laws of logic? You absolutely cannot account for the origin of the laws of logic without invoking the use of the same, because to use the powers of your mind (and thus think logically) to observe something (e.g., the laws of logic), is to use the laws of logic, and thus assume the existence of that which you are trying to prove exists! The worst consequence of this is that you have no way of proving where the laws of logic came from, and also that you can't prove the laws of logic exist. The laws of logic are a human construct. Where's the problem?
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
I cannot tell what is newly added and what was there before. I think that refutes your claims about the reliability of memory (as in Message 360), since obviously my memory is not reliable enough to tell me what I read before your additions.I added more to my message #349. In any case, your additions don't help. Logic is still a human construct. You seem to think that logic is some sort of miraculous magic that was handed down. It isn't. When we say that logic is a human construct, we are not saying that humans invented such a miraculous magic. Rather, we are saying that natural language is a human construct, and logic works because of the ways that people organize their natural language naming conventions and their describing conventions. Oh, and logic doesn't actually work all that well anyway. See for example, the Sorites paradoxes as described in Wikipedia or in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Logic works particularly well in mathematics, because mathematics uses its own specialized language that is structured so that logic will work reliably.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
This is an excellent example of why people criticize religion. It provides easy answers (as in "God did it") that turn out to be of no practical use.
God most certainly does provide an explanation for the reliability of memory, and a very simple one at that sac51495 writes:
It is well known that human memory is unreliable.
Now of course we all have to assume that our memory is reliable; this is obvious. Reliability of self-report data. Human Memory is Unreliable and so is Eyewitness Testimony. New study shows false memories affect behavior.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
We tend to organize the world into an hierarchical tree structure, and logic is the natural way of systematically searching or traversing a tree.
we are saying that natural language is a human construct, and logic works because of the ways that people organize their natural language naming conventions and their describing conventions Please elaborate a little a bit more on this argument. sac51495 writes:
That can only be applied to nature if we first apply the name "a" to something in nature. How we connect our symbols to reality is part of language.
When I talk about logic, I'm not just talking about the laws of logic that apply to language, but very, very simple laws of logic, such as "a=a", which can be applied to nature. sac51495 writes:
That's an example of what I mean by organizing into a hierarchical tree. It is a formal way of saying that "if I put 'q' on the 'p' branch of the tree, then if I go down the 'p' branch of the tree I should find 'q'.
Another example is the law "if p then q, p is true, so q is true".
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
Meaning is complex, and "self-aware" and "love" are particularly difficult examples. What people are expressing, when they use those terms, depends on contextual considerations. No easy definition is possible, as far as I can tell.
Then what does it mean to be self-aware, and to love? sac51495 writes:
I am not my brain. Yes, some people talk that way, though I think it a confusing way of talking.
If you are your brain, then why do we refer to your brain as "your brain"? sac51495 writes:
I'd be cautious about that "abstract entity" idea. Your soul is an abstract entity, but you are not.
So really, I shouldn't even say that "I am my soul". "I" am an abstract entity. sac51495 writes:
That does not seem to make a lot of sense.Myself, or my being is abstract, because we constantly refer to "your brain", or, "your heart", or "your body". People at evcforum might reasonably see you as an abstract entity, because they only know of you from forum posts. People who know you as flesh and blood would not think of you as abstract.
sac51495 writes:
You control you.
So who controls "me"?
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
Let us know when you begin So what I'm going to do is present several topics of discussion, which will all center around the inability of any worldview without God in it to account for certain things. Not only this, but I will show that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that can account for, ultimately, anything. I will also show how the Christian worldview accounts for these things. I hope that you were not saying that the post to which I am replying did those things, for I failed to see them there.
sac51495 writes:
If you are able to show that there is some evidentiary basis for metaphysics, I will look forward to that exposition.
..., and refer to metaphysics as "mumbo jumbo" ... sac51495 writes:
What does "neutral" mean here?
First, epistemological method (such as the scientific method) is not, nor can it be, neutral. sac51495 writes:
I don't have a theory of being. Yet I seem to be able to know things. So there must be something wrong with that claim.
Second, metaphysics is necessary to epistemology. To quote Van Til, "Our theory of knowledge is what it is because our theory of being is what it is.... sac51495 writes:
In my way of looking at things, objects and data are epistemic issues.
Note that the scientific method involves "observations about objects" and the "gathering of data", which are metaphysical issues. sac51495 writes:
As a mathematician, I am inclined to think of mathematics as a system of thought. And, indeed, mathematics does have a foundation. However, the foundations of mathematics are only a little over 100 years old, whereas mathematics itself is thousands of years old. So it seemed to manage without foundations, and was rather successful at that.Every system of thought absolutely must have a foundation, or it would easily be carried away with a whirlwind. Consider me skeptical of your claimed need for foundations.
sac51495 writes:
That's a strange request, given that neither philosophy nor theology can come up with a standard of truth.Well suppose you give me a standard for determining truth, such as the scientific method. I then ask "how do you know that that is the right standard". Science is not a truth seeking enterprise. It is a pragmatic enterprise. It does come up with its own standards of truth (measuring standards, for example), but this is mostly a matter of adopting the term "truth" as a name for its own standards.
sac51495 writes:
I don't assume that. As far as I can tell, the evidence is against it. The surface of the moon is very different from the surface of the earth. And it is probably a lot hotter in the sun than anywhere on earth. It seems to me that nature is lumpy, not uniform.
We would all agree I assume that science and the scientific method depend on the uniformity of our universe.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Dr Adequate writes:
Thanks for that. I have never been able to see any point to ontology, except perhaps as a basis for ridiculous arguments for the existence of God. It's refreshing to see something other than the usual references to ontology.
This is why I regard ontology as such a non-subject. Not only can we find out nothing at all about it, but also it wouldn't matter if we did.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
PaulK writes:
It only assumes that the verb "to show" has to do with the use of our senses.
To say that you can show me assumes that our senses give us information about external reality.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Please try to follow the simple logic here: how can you devise a system of how to know, without first knowing at least something?
Dogs, cats and other creatures seem to be able to learn with first knowing anything. If "knowing something" means being able to express assertions in language, the dogs and cats can do quite well without ever knowing anything (in that linguistic sense). Their knowledge is in the form of abilities. By the time a child begins to acquire knowledge, he already has acquired a lot of abilities to deal with his world. Those abilities, rather than any metaphysical suppositions, are the starting point as he begins to acquire knowledge that can be expressed linguistically.
To say, "the best means of gaining knowledge is through the use of our five senses", is to assume a number of obvious things, such as: we do have five senses, we can use our five senses, etc.
The child implicitly knows how to use his senses, long before he knows how to express a statement such as "we have five senses." Again, the abilities are there, without metaphysical presumptions.
So once again, the wager that I have made, and will now make again, is that you can make absolutely no epistemological claim that is entirely neutral. It must refer back to another standard, and that standard must in turn refer back to another standard, which will refer back to another standard, etc. I can't comment on the "neutral" part, because I have no idea what you mean by that. If you have ever tried to chase word definitions in a dictionary, you would have found that they don't really refer back at all. The dictionary definitions turn out to be circular. What they really depend on, is a reservoir of shared knowledge, a good part of which was acquired by a child before he had a language. In other words, there's a core of our knowledge that is in the form of abilities, rather than expressible as statements. And to the extent that we refer back, we end up referring back to those abilities. I'm in agreement with Dr Adequate. I don't see that we need any metaphysical knowledge, and I don't see that it is possible to have any metaphysical knowledge other than by making stuff up.
But take the Law of Identity for example: supposing this "law" changed, and suddenly, no object was necessarily the same as itself...could this ever happen?
Who would change it? And if somebody tried to change it, who would take him seriously?
So if the Laws of Logic are merely product of human thoughts, then why do they not change?
Because we find them very useful as they are. So why would we change something that we find very useful, unless we could change them to something even more useful?
But the real monster that you did not deal with is numbers...
They are human inventions.
What makes "two shoes" fall within the class of "twoness"?
I don't know. As a mathematician, I can't say that I have ever found a use for such a thing as 'the class of "twoness"'. I would be a bit concerned that reliance on such a class might lead to the Russell paradox.
Numbers are abstract. But if they are merely products of human thought, then are they not subject to change?
It's the same as with logic. There's no reason to change something useful, unless you can change it to something even more useful. If you look at the history of numbers, you will find that they have changed, and each time for the better. We went from natural numbers to fractions, to integers (negative and positive), to real numbers, to complex numbers. Perhaps we should toss in quaternions for good measure. And then there are the p-adic numbers, the modular numbers. If change is evidence of human invention, then there is a whole lot of such evidence.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
sac51495 writes:
There is no such thing as ultimate truth.
Relying on empiricism (or man and his senses) is inherently anti-God, because it denies God as being the final arbiter of (ultimate) truth. sac51495 writes:
If there is no such thing as ultimate truth, then nothing is being denied.
Relying on empiricism (or man and his senses) is inherently anti-God, because it denies God as being the final arbiter of (ultimate) truth.
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