Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
You have got to be kidding me. Do you not see the obvious contradiction in a statement like
“The really important move is to not have a “worldview” but rather to [have worldview X]”
peace
Yes, you’ve said it countless times, and it’s been completely false every single time. You can claim to know stuff–like that it’s raining–even if you don’t know what possibility is (kind of like you, actually).
Again, wrong. I don’t need to demonstrate anything. Certain conditions must be in place. That’s all. I don’t need to know what they are.
I really wish you could grasp this already. It’s reminding me of trying to teach one of my kids how to tie her shoes. Sooo frustrating.
You don’t have to know what possibility is to have reason to be justified in believing knowledge is possible.
But you do have to have reason to believe that knowledge is possible in order to be justified in claiming to know.
peace
Again, wrong. You DO have to know what possibility is to have reason to be justified in believing knowledge is possible. And you DON’T have to have reason to believe that knowledge is possible in order to know things. My kids knew when I was mad at them without having reason to believe that anything is possible. As indicated, they may well not have had the concept of possibility.
This is so silly, FMM. You’re not going to give in on this, because your entire religious outlook depends on it. It’s wrong, but you’ll never care that it’s wrong. It’s too important to you to give up.
Maybe one day somebody will explain what “has a worldview” means.
Nah, that’s probably expecting too much.
You are still confusing
(Knowing X )
with
(Being justified in claiming to know X)
You can know X and still not be justified in claiming that you know X.
Just as you can know X with out knowing how you know X.
This is not about justifying a specific peice knowledge it’s about justifying knowledge in general
peace
That doesn’t work.
To say that knowledge completely depends on your God, is to say that your God has knowledge. But that says nothing about mere people having knowledge.
Yes exactly and your kids knew that it was possible for you to communicate your anger to them even if they could not articulate how you did that or why it was possible or even what possibility was.
peace
I was a Christian long long before I was a presuppositionalist. I trusted God long before I even heard of epistemology.
My religious outlook does not depend on the fact that you have no justification for knowledge. For a long time I never even thought about stuff like that
In fact I would not even know for sure that you had no justification for knowledge unless you told me that was the case.
The only thing that is dependent on this is the status of you claims to know stuff given your worldview.
peace
No. They didn’t know that anything is possible. Didn’t have the requiste concepts to know that, but didn’t need them to know I was mad. To know something is possible or impossible, you need to have some idea about the truth conditions for the statement of that possibility or impossibility.
This suggestion of yours, like the cooking one, is particularly silly and obviously false. If you could learn to care a little less about your God stuff you might see that. But alas….
If I tell you it’s raining outside but I’ve been n a locked windowless room for two days with no access to anything or anybody outside it, then my claim is not justified.
In neither case does it have anything to do with knowing what is or is not possible.
Some of the Calvists among us don’t know the stuff they think they know too.
Maybe if you repeated this falsehood several hundred more times it would start to get traction. Was it Peter for whom that strategy worked so well?
If you don’t know it is possible, the hot food being the result of cooking is tentative since that determination depends whether cooking is possible.
If knowledge is not possible ,I would have no knowledge of any of those things. If I do know what a room ,a lock ,and stoves are ,then knowledge exists.
peace
I think you should go back to that fewer-fallacies zone. Your faith shouldn’t require “proofs”–particularly bad ones.
Right. The possibility follows from the actuality, and the latter may require conditions of which we’re entirely ignorant. Just as cooking requires heat.
Of course. From x we may infer possibly X. Just an axiom of modal logic from which FMM cannot get what he needs.
Let me try again suppose your childern claimed to know
1) That right now you are angry with them at this very moment
and at the very same time claimed
2) that you had died 4 years ago.
Would they be justified in making claim 1 while also making claim 2?
They might be justified in their belief that you are angry with them right now but they would not be justified in claiming to know you are angry right now while also claiming that you died 4 years ago.
That is what this is about. Do you get it now???
peace
Cooking is possible if you have a stove and food.
The hot food being the result cooking is tentative if I did not actually see you cook.
The question is do you actually know those things or do you just think that you do?
If knowledge is not possible then it’s the latter rather than the former.
peace
My faith does not require proofs. My faith is a gift from God.
My faith is not the issue here whether you have justification for the claims you make is.
You would like to make this about my faith because that would allow you to avoid the question for a while longer.
peace
No. I don’t get that either. It’s also confused.
My kids could be justified in believing
(1)
and even also be justified in believing
(2).
They could not believe
(1) and (2)
without contradiction, and would likely not do so if they understood conjunction. What examples like that show is that justification is not closed with respect to conjunction. It does not make your presupposition argument work.
I have more or less justification for claims I make. If I look outside and seem to see that it’s raining, I have justification for believing that its raining. If it IS actually raining, then I know its raining. (My justification might be defeasible though–or even defeated. There might be a hologram or something screwing up my justification claim.) But I don’t even need to have a theory about the possibility of knowledge, much less actual knowledge regarding what makes knowledge possible.
KN’s cooking analogy was quite apt.
People knowing stuff is all that’s necessary for it to be possible that people know stuff. Now, of course, maybe nobody DOES know anything. Maybe everything that’s reasonable is false. That’s possible too. But my own view is that we know things like that it’s raining. And it’s completely clear that to know that one need not know anything about what is or isn’t possible to know that it’s raining. And this is true whether or not I actually know that it’s raining. And it’s also true in spite of the fact that if I know it’s raining then it’s possible that I know it’s raining.
KN’s cooking analogy was quite apt. You should think about it more carefully.
hallelujah, Perhaps a light bulb flickered.
It’s not an argument. It’s a question
I want to know if there is anything in your worldview that makes knowledge possible.
Just as I might want to know if your children believed that you are actually alive right now before I took their claim to know you are angry at face value
peace
I’m sorry, this post makes no sense at all. The flickering is not going on on your end, obviously.
Not if you also believe that there is no such thing as rain.
Once a flipping gen.
It’s not about having a theory of knowledge it’s about claiming to know with out having any reason to believe it’s possible to know.
Think about the kid example.
Your kids don’t need to understand possibility to be justified in believing you are angry right now but they must believe that you are alive.
peace
slow down, read it again. You are close don’t give up.
Ask clarifying questions if need be.
peace
Sellars > Rorty
IMHO, that’s not such a big deal, though. I mean, I might even go so far as to say
FMM > Rorty
(Well, maybe not quite that far…..) 👼
FMM, I’ll write this one more time and leave you again to your reveling.
I don’t like giving up on people, but it’s pretty clear you have no interest in getting past your confusions on these matters. They make you comfortable–and you really shouldn’t be pressed. For you, Camus’ “Truth is better than illusion” doesn’t seem to hold.
So I guess it makes sense for the rest of us to follow KN’s lead and hang it up/write you off–on these matters anyhow. (I suppose the good side of this resolution is that it’ll likely make phoodoo happier with me: he won’t be able to complain that I’m “picking on you” anymore.)
Gotta know when to fold ’em.
Do you consider yourself a reliabilist? Where you stand on the externalism vs internalism about justification debate?
Your arrogance is so laughable. Here’s a question for you. How can you possibly be that stupid?
Wait a minute,
You are the one who just said you were confused by my “kids” example.
Perhaps it’s you who have no interest in getting past your confusion.
If that was not the case I don’t think you would pick this particular time to throw in the towel.
Come on hang in for just a little while till you understand what is being said. It’s seems such a small price to pay given all you the effort you have extended trying to dissuade me of an idea I do not hold and never claimed to hold.
peace
It’s not arrogance it’s confidence.
walto is a smart guy. He just has a blind spot here he needs to get past.
We all have blind spots it’s part of being human. It’s especially difficult when the blind spot is close to home
That is one of the reasons why it’s so important to place the onerous for knowledge outside ourselves
peace
My sympathies are variable. Externalist 4 days a week.I really do find most heavyweight philosophical questions extremely difficult. That’s why they stick around.
I got yer onerous placed right here.
why I oughta 😉
peace
They are difficult for finite puny humans like us.
For the almighty Creator and Lord of the universe not so much……. I’m with him 😉
peace
Plus, there’s nice pastries sometimes, I understand.
walto:
fifth:
It’s so cute when fifth tries to condescend.
fifth approvingly quotes the Christian apologist Michael Kruger:
What’s especially amusing about this is that fifth himself falls into the infinite regress trap when trying to establish the authenticity of any purported revelation from God. As he puts it, “it’s revelation all the way down”.
Oops.
If experience is any indication, fifth will try to claim that his regress does terminate — in revelation.
But that’s as silly as arguing that the famous “turtles all the way down” regress terminates — in turtles.
Neither regress works, because neither regress terminates. They’re infinite.
It’s a while since I looked but, mainly prompted by you I think, I checked Mirror of Nature for Sellars references. My impression was Rorty was developing Sellars’ ideas rather than criticising.
Susan Haack took Rorty to be attacking
QuinePeirce when he was building on his ideas and developing them. I think she was being over-defensive ofQuinePeirce. BWDIK. 😏ETA “shoulders of giants”
ETA2 Oops, Peirce not Quine
You read the response, but you did not really read it did you?
Revelation does terminate precisely because revelation is self-authenticating.
Just as the ultimate meter stick is truly a meter by definition
Divine revelation is truly the word of God By definition.
In either case no more regress is necessary or possible.
Perhaps your newly found faith is making it hard to understand logic. I can’t help you with that because you refuse to tell us what the tenets are.
So I’ll leave you to work it out on you own.
Peace
fifth:
The regress doesn’t terminate, which is why you’ve said — more than once — that “it’s revelation all the way down.”
Whether it’s “turtles all the way down” or “revelation all the way down”, you’ve got a problem, as Kruger points out. You quoted him without realizing that you were torpedoing your own position.
LOL
Apparently not only does Keith’s have a problem with logic he does not understand what self-authenticating means
This new faith of his must have really done a number on his ability to reason
peace
Meter: “ the fundamental unit of length in the metric system, equal to 100 centimeters or approximately 39.37 inches.“
Length: “ the measurement or extent of something from end to end“
Measurement: “the size, length, or amount of something, as established by measuring.
Divine Revelation is truly the Word of God per definition.
Definition:”the act of defining, or of making something definite, distinct, or clear”
Divine Revelation is truly the Word Of God by the act of defining,or of making something definite.
Definite:clearly true or real; unambiguous.
Divine Revelation is truly the Word of God by the act of making something true.
How do you know what is true?
Revelation
Divine Revelation is Truly the Word of God by the act of revelation.
What is Revelation ?
The Word of God
The Word of God is truly the Word Of God by definition.
Truly.
If you define it that way,
fifth,
If these supposed revelations were actually self-authenticating, you’d be able to stop at the first one.
You can’t, because as you’ve admitted, it’s possible for you to be mistaken about a supposed revelation. That is, it’s possible for you to think that something is a revelation from God when in fact it isn’t. Thus, you need something more than the supposed revelation itself if you want to validate it. It isn’t self-authenticating.
Hence your resort to an infinite regress: “It’s revelation all the way down.”
The problem here is that definitions are not knowledge of reality, they are conventions. Unicorns are defined, yet they don’t exist. Plus, ‘self-authentication’ is nonsense.
To be fair I don’t think your position is one of ‘turtles all the way down’. Rather, it stops, or starts, with your presupposition that the Christian God exists. That is your axiom and everything else follows from there (for you). The presupposition doesn’t need justification or explanation, because it is the founding axiom. Do I get that right?
The thing with axioms though is that they are not unique. There are in fact an infinite amount of them (almost like the number of gods that have cropped up in human thought…). So, you have yours and I have mine. That doesn’t make yours better than mine, just different.
Mine goes a bit like this: I presuppose that reality has regularities and logical relations that I can know through my senses and reasoning. Everything else follows from there (for me). Therefore, I don’t have to justify why knowledge is possible because it is part of my foundational axiom.
Happy now?
faded_Glory, to fifth:
Right. For fifth, it’s revelation all the way down, and his attempts at authenticating purported divine revelations fail for that reason.
I think I’ll post an OP on this later today.
Yes, that’s crucial to understanding any of these issues. The belief in “self-authentication” has been a snare and delusion for a few hundred years of philosophy — at least since Descartes bet the house on “clear and distinct ideas”.
Rorty was developing some of Sellars’s ideas and criticizing others. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature he is mostly appealing to Sellars as a forerunner. He’s critical of Sellars in other things he wrote before and after PMN. Without getting too deep into these weeds, the question could be put as: “should we think of scientific progress in terms of building better models of underlying real patterns?” Sellars would say “yes”; Rorty would say “no”.
Haack is a superb Peirce scholar but I find her writings on Rorty to be unreliable. She simply disliked him at a personal level. (I know this because she and I once talked about it.) I don’t know why. He just rubbed her the wrong way and she couldn’t be charitable in her articles about him.