…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
KN,
We’ve answered him again and again. Knowledge — justified true belief — is possible without invoking the Christian God because belief, truth, and justification are all possible without invoking him. Those three concepts remain coherent even if the Christian God does not exist.
Fifth keeps repeating his question mindlessly, ad nauseam, without making any attempt to understand, or confront, what we are saying.
He might as well be asking us how we could know anything if Samantha the Supernatural Sparrow hadn’t laid the Egg of Knowledge.
I think fifth’s participation here is valuable — for showing how the religious impulse can turn minds to mush.
Kantian Naturalist,
I think his refusal to accept that those of us who explain that we lack beliefs in a god or gods are posting in good faith, honestly, and are not deluded is technically against the site rules. I’m not going to Guano any of his comments that accuse me of lying, but if someone else raises it in Moderation Issues we’ll have to hash it out.
Since this is Noyau I can honestly say that it looks to me like he’s trying to construct a system that insulates his beliefs from scrutiny, criticism, and possible disconfirmation. It has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with not being able to support his claims about reality.
You’ve bought into his shifting of the burden of proof. He’s the one claiming that a god is necessary for knowledge so he’s the one responsible for supporting that claim. Everyone else is just asking him to do so.
Again, a low bar to clear.
Didn’t he bring up the claim? Needless to say, I’m not sure of when he first made his nonsense claims, but I doubt that it took long for him to start making empty claims. It’s not a tu quoque, because all accept empiricism, at least until it no longer suits their beliefs. Indeed, it is the starting point for proper discussion by adults, and it’s the addition of “God” that is neither a proven method of achieving knowledge nor a shared point of view.
Why don’t you meet that “challenge,” if you think it’s a reasonable point? We don’t, because it already privileges “God,” as if there were any reason to think that “God” has anything to do with knowledge in the first place–his claim that he never supports adequately. We also don’t because there is a great deal involved in epistemics/epistemology, which a forum like this one is inadequate to address, plus we know that he’d dismiss any answer because it doesn’t “found knowledge” in his presupposed, absolutist manner. He’s gotten partial responses, which he dismisses out of hand with his arrogant bullshit.
But feel free to go through the effort of responding to his demands, if you’re really fine with the fact that he doesn’t care about anything that he doesn’t already presuppose. He’s been answered properly, he’s just too insulated against anything that could possibly call his presuppositions into question that repeating sterile twaddle is all that he can do.
Glen Davidson
I’ve repeatedly stated my presupposition that that provisional knowledge – the same sort of knowledge that placed Curiosity on Mars – is possible through observing, reasoning, hypothesizing, predicting, testing, replicating, sharing, challenging, revising, modeling, and onward. FMM’s bot-like further challenges don’t deserve more detail than that.
Leaving FMM aside, and just focusing on a purely naturalistic epistemology: I’d like to explore further this approach by asking some related questions. Do any animals know anything? If so, how would we know that they know? What are some relevant differences between animal knowledge and human knowledge?
Animals have a lot of knowhow. That is, they have knowledge in the form of abilities to negotiate their world.
Because, as far as we know, they do not have a language, we are unable to convincingly create an intellectualist superstructure of abstractions (such as propositions, facts, truths, beliefs etc) around this knowhow.
We can know what they know, at least to some extent, by observing their behavior.
In principle, not much. We have more knowledge (more knowhow), because negotiating our social structures requires more knowledge.
For sure, it is easier for us to build a superstructure of intellectualist abstractions. But I’ll be consistent in my fictionalism. These abstractions are useful fictions, and no more than that. A consideration of animal knowledge should help us understand that they are fictions. Or, as Shakespeare put it, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”
My ability to effortlessly navigate to the fridge and my cat’s ability to navigate to his food dish are very much the same phenomenon (it’s the hippocampus, and all). So if you are willing to call my nonverbal recall of the path to the fridge “knowledge” then I would say my cat has similar knowledge – we both employ mapping of physical environs to guide motor behavior.
OTOH, my cat has no capacity to utilize declarative information (“Columbus is the capital of the state of Ohio”) because propositional/declarative content requires language, and my cat has none. If you confine your definition of knowledge to declarative knowledge, then I would say he has none.
Lots of overlap, of course, as the human ability to deploy declarative knowledge reflects recently evolved neural and cultural superstructures built atop evolutionarily older neural equipment shared by all mammals. So, for example, hippocampal function has been evolutionarily exapted to enable cognitive abilities that are unique to human beings.
ETA: Great minds think alike!
And as a result of thinking that, he has specifically called us things like deluded and self-deceived, which are against the rules.
He’s gotten away with it every time, perhaps because there haven’t been any moderators looking, or perhaps moderators wish to show favoritism to theist comments when possible.
As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t get a free pass for expressing his thoughts when they amount to the same thing as telling me I am lying, just expressed under the cover of his religious-presuppositional phrases — no matter how sincere and fundamental to his whole identity those presuppositions of his are. He’s free to sincerely think that I’m lying or deluded or self-deceiving – probably lots of people do – but he needs to shut up about it in public.
Religious people like fifthmonarchyman should never talk about religion in public because they are never capable (or maybe never willing) to do it without ending up insulting the non-religious citizens. When their entire identities are so caught up in their extreme religious presuppositions that they can’t even open their mouths without spilling false charges, then they should shut themselves up in their little closets somewhere.
Given that fifthmonarchyman is, at least, relatively polite and non-threatening compared to our resident creep Gregory, I suppose you could say I should be happy for small blessings. Okay, I admit polite is better than the alternative. But again, it’s not all that goddamned polite for him to keep saying that, basically, I’m a liar.
But they’re pragmatic!
Seems like a good place for this experiment…
+1
In my case, I haven’t bothered to even attempt to respond to FMM on this point for a couple of reasons.
Reason #1: It’s presuppositions all the way down. I have always regarded presuppositional argumentation as boiling down to I’ll be glad to discuss with you the validity of my premises—just as soon as you concede that my premises are valid, and boy howdy, that’s FMM in spades. He goes straight from If my “God is what allows me to know anything in the first place” presup is wrong… directly to …why, then, I couldn’t know anything!, rather than the alternative conclusion equally sensible on its face, …why, then, there must be some other reason why I can know anything! That is, FMM bolsters his God-is-why-I-can-know-stuff presupposition with an independent, unspoken, presupposition that God-is-the-only-possible-or-conceivable-reason-I-can-know-stuff.
Reason #2: Burden of proof. When FMM makes noise about tell-me-how-else-you-can-know-something-if-it-ain’t-God, he’s executing a classic textbook example of Shifting The Burden Of Proof. Fuck that noise, says I.
Reason #3: I don’t know anywhere near enough about the gritty details of acquisition of knowledge to offer up a sensible answer to FMM’s presupposition-based pseudochallenge. Of course, even if I did possess such knowledge and could offer up a sensible answer to FMM’s pseudochallenge, I have no confidence that FMM would respond to that answer with anything more than (a) mindless regurgitation of the presupposition he’s already regurgitated mindlessly, and/or (b) some bullshit verbiage derived from one more implicit presupposition he’s never bothered to make explicit.
What “challenge”? FMM hasn’t issued any challenge; rather, he’s just expressed his by-now-boringly-standard presupposition in a form which emulates the superficial characteristics of a genuine challenge. Thus, my use of the term “pseudochallenge” above.
I’m beginning to suspect that Mung IS Meyer.
petrushka,
That is not prima facie unreasonable. Just don’t out him here.
I am everyman! (And some women.)
I have actually responded to FMM in considerable detail. He just posts the same stuff anyhow.
Which is, of course, one reason for that lack of confidence I mentioned in my Reason #3.
Has anyone heard from OMagain? He has sort of disappeared.
I’m hoping for a Christmas present from him and I’m beginning to think it might not be coming
peace
Observing that science works today in this place at this instant in no way means that it will work tomorrow or across the street
peace
If you have a different alternative present it and we can compare to see if your deity measures up.
peace
wait a minute.
The Christian God is truth and the only possible source of justification by definition.
If you’ve explained how you can have those things with out him I’ve certainly missed it. care to repost the highlights?
peace
exactly God is privileged because he is God and you are not. That is the point
peace
actually I don’t think you have adequately responded. I would love to explore it with you at some point but TSZ is apparently not an appropriate venue for those sorts of discussions.
If we wanted to talk about how Christians are poopy heads or how God does not exist but is mean then we are at the right place
😉
In the mean time you will notice that I don’t ask you how you know stuff
peace
But how do you know that? Could you be mistaken? 😉
peace
I suggest you spend some time and get to know the “gritty details” if you want to proceed from the assumption that knowledge is possible sans God to the conclusion that God does not exist.
To not do so would be to continue to operate from a position of blind irrational faith
peace
I’m pretty sure that science, as a method, will still work tomorrow or across the street. But I’ll grant the possibility that the world could change in ways that would require a change in the scientific theories to be used.
The Christian God is a human construct. Also truth is a human construct. So I guess that doesn’t contradict your claim.
See? You just CAN’T give it a rest.
RB, I’d just like to say thank you for consistently being one of the more personable folks on the site. Merry Christmas.
Are you willing to grant the possibility that the world could change in ways that would make the construction of scientific theories impossible?
Yes. But that would also make human life impossible. So we aren’t going to see such a world.
If wishes were horses…
Then your certainty “that science, as a method, will still work tomorrow or across the street” is based on what? Wishful thinking? Faith?
Hey, thanks Mung. It’s my atheism 😉
Merry Christmas to you, too.
I’m going to say this here, and I’m not going to hold back.
The substitution of emoji for emoticons is STUPID. The whole point of emoticons was their often very clever exploitation of the ascii character set. The insertion of little smiley pictures in their stead is MORONIC and the surest sign that our civilization’s days are numbered. Plus it is somewhat annoying.
Are you with me?! Yeeeah!
(I hope this wasn’t too harsh.)
Finally, I have a reason to thank God for atheism. 😉
RB, want to join with me in developing the emoji-not? Emoji figures constructed from knot shapes. A subtle indictment and undermining of the emoji culture.
Hey RB, if you start an non-profit on the emoticon biz, I’ll throw you a few buck. I’m pretty sure everyone here would. Not many things more important than unnumbering our civilization’s days!! X>{
fifthmonarchyman,
Cubist has already pointed out your predilection for shifting the burden of proof:
newton was pointing out that you are only talking about a concept from your own head. You have provided no support for your claim that a god or gods exist. Until you do so, your assertions about such entities are as vacuous as discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or how many faeries are living at the bottom of the garden.
fifthmonarchyman,
Yet another transparent attempt to avoid your burden of proof. You’ve made these kinds of claims about your god critter before, but never substantiated them. It’s just noise until you do.
fifthmonarchyman,
Provide some support for your claim that this god thing actually exists and then it might be possible to have a discussion about it.
fifthmonarchyman,
I don’t see anyone here drawing that conclusion. Thus far there has been no evidence provided to support the claim that a god or gods exist so there is no reason to take the claim seriously.
Yet you have absolutely no grounds given your worldview to expect this to be the case you simply accept on pure blind faith
It’s not just that it could change but that you have absolutely no justification for believing that it won’t change given your worldview. Because something worked in the past is no reason assume it will always be so.
Everything is the same until it changes and the only constant is chance and all that
peace
Here you go again making claims and assertions with out ever bothering to explain how you could possibly know any of this.
peace
You brought it up. once again
peace
How could you possibly know that? What you know about “human life” is based on something that you have already granted might change.
Maybe human life can change right along with induction. How can you say that it couldn’t?
peace
It’s not a burden shift. I simply don’t know what you specifically worship as god unless you tell me.
How exactly do you know this? and what specific criteria did you use to make this determination?
Until you provide objective basis for your actions your assertions are as vacuous as discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or how many faeries are living at the bottom of the garden
peace
provide some support for your claim that you can know stuff with out God and and then it might be possible to have a discussion about his existence.
peace
Wrong. That quote comes from 12/19, the day before I suggested (on another thread) that we “give it a rest.”
So you don’t believe that God does not exist? Interesting and here I thought you were an atheist
So you you want to proceed from the assumption that knowledge is possible sans God to the conclusion that you are qualified to judge what is sufficient reason to take a claim seriously.
It’s still a totally unsupported conclusion based on blind irrational faith.
peace