Questions about truth, free will, logic have been raised in another thread. To help clarify the discussion, let’s separate those from the “necessary premise” discussion.
Here’s an example of the argument being raised:
True statements can only be expected to exist, and we can only expect to be able to deliberately discern them, if we assume the universe is governed by logic (necssarily rationally ordered) and if we assume for ourselves the libertarian free will causative capacity to discern them.
This seems a rather strange claim, given then many people believe that our best and most reliable true statements are those coming from science, and based on describing our world in terms physical causation. Moreover, science is often considered to provide our best examples rationality and logical reasoning.
The argument presented continues with:
The alternative assumptions that logic may not or does not truthfully describe phenomena, and that deliberacy may not be or is not a sufficient cause in and of itself, is simply not enough grounds to warrant the daily, ongoing, universal expectation we operate from,, that true statements exist, and that we can independently, deliberately discern them.
But why is that considered the alternative? Why not say that world is governed by physical causation, and that logic is a human tool that we use to structure and organize our descriptions of the world?
Personally, I happen to believe that we have free will (for some suitable meaning of “free will”). However, it still seems to me that the world is governed by physical causes, not by logic. And it also seems to me that if all agents with free will were to disappear, the physical world would continue without those agents and their logic.
Now here’s the question that could shed light on the theist’s world-view.
If mankind disappeared tomorrow, would the universe continue without us?
So, here we inspect Mr Murray’s argument about the governance of the Universe by logic:
Another question is: why should we believe that true statements can be made about ourselves and the world? Why should human reason correspond to anything factual? Why should the world even be describable in logical terms?
Why not? Most persons who have lived into adulthood have experienced a fair amount of success in dealing with their environment. Experience teaches. At least that’s been my observation.
If logic is not accepted as an intrinsically valid method of correlating thought to reality, then we have no reason to expect to be able to deliberately discern true statements about anything.
I see logic as a set of language rules that assure coherent discourse. Nothing more. No requirement for “intrinsic validity.” The laws of logic are definitions.
Logic cannot be accepted as merely a contingent descriptor, but rather as a intrinsic, necessary feature of how phenomena are organized and interact.
This is a bald assertion about an empirical matter – the features of how phenomena are organized and interact – that can only be tested by observation. Logic only assures that our propositions about those observations are linguistically consistent.
If logic was merely a contingent descriptor of such relationships, then it may or may not be true, and we can simply suspend our logic at any point and make groundless and irrational assertions and reach irrational conclusions and simply claim that logic is not a valid descriptor or this particular item.
We DEFINE logical rules. They are necessarily true by definition.
No, we do not expect logic to be a contingent descriptor; we expect it to be an intrinsic arbiter of what is true and what is not. This expectation must rely on the assumption that logic is an intrinsic, governing aspect of existence.
On the contrary, logical rules are definitions. We rely on those definitions to keep from making fools of ourselves. Is not acting foolishly a “governing aspect of existence”?
Why should the universe be governed by logic?
That human discourse is governed by logic is a given. That the universe is so governed is an empirical hypothesis that I haven’t seen any evidence to support.
If it was generated by chance, or some non-sentient source, what possible grounds can there be for the expectation that it is governed by logic?
None. The universe may instead be governed by the properties of matter, space and time. Further investigation into those properties is ongoing.
Why is the universe and existence ordered in a coherent, logically explicable manner?
Sometimes it looks that way, and sometimes it surprises us.
Why don’t things just fluctuate in and out of existence in utter chaos?
Why should they? I don’t know about you, but in my experience they haven’t fluctuated alarmingly, so I’m betting that they won’t do so very often in the future. But who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Theism offers a sufficient grounding (a rational creator) for the expectation that the universe is governed by logic (so that we can expect there to be true statements about it available in the first place and not non-rational chaos where true statements could not be reasoned), and for the expectation that we have the necessary free will to deliberately discern such true statements.
Inasmuch as you haven’t shown that the universe is governed by logic, theism will require a different defense.
These arguments do not attempt to reveal facts about the universe, but rather only what premises are necessary to maintain rationally consistent worldviews. Theism is not being argued to be a fact of reality, but rather only a necessary premise for a rationally coherent worldview.
How can a premise that is **not** based on a “fact of reality”, be necessary for a rationally coherent worldview **of** reality?
Murray: These arguments do not attempt to reveal facts about the universe, but rather only what premises are necessary to maintain rationally consistent worldviews. Theism is not being argued to be a fact of reality, but rather only a necessary premise for a rationally coherent worldview.
Toronto: How can a premise that is **not** based on a “fact of reality”, be necessary for a rationally coherent worldview **of** reality?
That is quite a clarifying admission by Mr Murray. It explains why he and his interlocutors have been largely talking past each other.
We’ve assumed that he was talking about reality while he’s been talking about an invention called “a rationally coherent worldview.” A “worldview” that has nothing to say about the “world!”
I don’t know why it should surprise anyone, since I explained this from the start and have maintained and reiterated it throughout the various debates.
A “rationally coherent worldview” is not “an invention”, it simply means whether or not one can justify the various aspects of their worldview both in accordance with how they actually behave (as in, necessary expectations) and with whatever premises they use as a basis for that worldview.
That doesn’t make such a view empirically discoverable as a fact, it just means one is being rationally consistent.
Logical axioms are not facts of reality; theism is not a fact of reality; materialism is not a fact of reality; determinism is not a fact of reality; subjectivism is not a fact of reality; solipsism is not a fact of reality; that a world exterior to our mind exists is not a fact of reality; that free will exists is not a fact of reality, etc.
What one posits that “self” and “reality” is (ontology) cannot be a “fact of reality”; it is a premise. How one goes about discovering facts of reality is not itself a fact of reality; it is another set of premises (epistemological) that works in conjunction with the first premise (what reality “is”) to gather knowledge based on those premises.
No worldview is ultimately based on “facts”; it is based upon the ontological/epistemological assumptions that form a heuristic one utilizes to identify, gather, sort, categorize, and correlate facts into theories about what those facts mean.
No view of reality (worldview) is based on “facts” of reality because to establish and utilize such “facts” requires an organized view of reality in the first place.
By “justify”, I mean logically justify, of course.
In other words, a logically consistent imaginary universe.
It’s called fiction.
Again, the point is that we actually behave as if humans can deliberately discern true statements. One simply must admit this to be true, or else all of their arguments are hypocritical. If one admits that we **must** behave **as if** we can discern true statements, then the belief that we cannot discern true statements is contradictory to their behavior, and thus their worldview is non-rational because their beliefs cannot justify their actual behavior and expectations.
Furthermore, if we admit that we must behave as if we can discern true statements, then the question is: how can true statements exist? How can I expect to be able to deliberately discern them? Saying “they just do and I just can” is fine, as long as one isn’t trying to rationally justify such a situation. But then, if “they just do and I just can” are sufficient grounding for one’s behavior, then one can use that reasoning to justify any behavior or claims. “The bible is just true and we are just supposed to live by it”, or “You are all my prey and I can kill and take advantage of you however I want”.
Sure, it’s convenient for doing and thinking whatever we want, justifying it however we say “things just are” or “I just can”, but it’s not demonstrated to be a rationally coherent worldview.
When one investigates “how can I expect true statements to exist, and how can I expect to be able to deliberatelly discern them” with a rational examination of whether or not various ontological, existential and epistemological premises work to produce such an expectation, in order to discover what set of premises justify such an expectation, and which ones do not, it is my argument that there are a limited number of premises that comport with that expectation.
That doesn’t mean that such premises are true; it just means they are necessary to justify the expectation that true statements exist and we can deliberately discern them.
At the end of the day, all worldviews are imaginary. What matters if they are rationally consistent and logically justify how one interprets what they actually experience.
Murray:
No worldview is ultimately based on “facts”; it is based upon the ontological/epistemological assumptions that form a heuristic one utilizes to identify, gather, sort, categorize, and correlate facts into theories about what those facts mean.
When historians of science talk about the Aristotelian worldview and compare it with the Newtonian worldview, they are talking about changes in how humans perceived the world. Those changes were driven largely by new facts about the world and new interpretations of those facts. Now we are in the era of an Einsteinian worldview, driven by the same forces.
Does the William J Murray worldview have a history? What facts, if any, did it depend upon at its inception – or was it a product of pure reason? Has it changed with time or is it immutable?
Murray:
At the end of the day, all worldviews are imaginary. What matters if they are rationally consistent and logically justify how one interprets what they actually experience.
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Furthermore, if we admit that we must behave as if we can discern true statements, then the question is: how can true statements exist? How can I expect to be able to deliberately discern them? Saying “they just do and I just can” is fine, as long as one isn’t trying to rationally justify such a situation. But then, if “they just do and I just can” are sufficient grounding for one’s behavior, then one can use that reasoning to justify any behavior or claims.
Do you think that Joe Stalin or Pol Pot or Osama Bin Laden didn’t have logically consistent worldviews?
But that doen’t hold in the “real” world.
In a game of Scrabble, you create words from a group of seven tiles with a single letter on each.
The “facts of reality” in this case are the tiles themselves. The “organization” of the tiles results in another “fact of reality”.
Show me a list of words you can make, ( “organize” ), out of those seven tiles, before you reach into the bag and pull out the tiles, ( “facts” ).
Your world-view fails empirically and we haven’t even stressed it with a complex problem.
Your world-view **must** be based on facts if it’s going to be of any use in the **real** world.
If you instead are trying to come up with a world-view that works in a place called heaven or a fictional book about a race of creatures on another planet, that world-view can be adjusted as can the premises since this is an unlimited **reality** of your own making.
In effect, you play the role of your one-god-of-everything.
**IF**, your god actually exists, you had better bow and accept **his** reality and work within it.
Once again, existential, ontological and epistemological worldviews cannot depend on “facts”; they are what determines
how one defines, identifies, interprets and correlates facts.
I have no idea.
You must have an existential, ontological, and epistemological worldview before you can say what does or does not hold in any putative “real” world.
You guys argue as if one can say what a “real world” is, and what “facts” are, independent of any existential, ontological or epistemological assumptions. It can’t be done.
Name me a fact about reality that doesn’t depend upon assumptions about (1) what reality is, and (2) how facts can be identified.
In order to **describe** and historically record reality, I think you are absolutely right, but that’s not what I, and I believe the others here, are talking about when we say “facts” or “reality”.
Behaviour is a function of your world-view and **empical** reality.
The reality you describe is descriptive and academic in nature, and useless as input to the function that generates our behaviour.
Empirical reality doesn’t need labels, as feelings of pain, hunger and love are good enough for starters.
Once again, you can base your views on whatever you want – including whatever you happen to feel – and probably live a successful, enjoyable life.
My argment is about what is rationally justifiable. In order to rationally justify statements and claims of fact about reality, one must first begin with their premise about what reality is and how they define, identify, and interpret stuff as “facts” within that set of premises.
” In order to rationally justify statements and claims of fact about reality”, you have to start **sampling** reality at the outset. You can then start to home in on what reality may be and eventually come up with something close enough to work with for any world-view you might want to accept for yourself, but the logic and sampling must be done in parallel.
Your claim is that a rational world-view can be arrived at without including actual empirical **facts** as premises, but instead relying on theism as your premise.
That is not rational.
Whether you are a theist or atheist, you cannot escape reality, regardless of any labels you apply.
My take on your argument is that you are looking for something “logically justifiable”, and that is not the same thing as “rationally justifiable”.
So questions for consideration:
1. What is free will?
2. What is reality?
3. What is truth?
Facts of reality cannot be used as premises for a system that defines what a fact of reality is. That’s like saying a peach can be used to determine what a peach is – if you don’t know what a peach is, you can’t use one to determine what one is.
BTW, an empiricial fact is a fact defined and identified via the philosophy of empiricism, which is part of one’s worldview set of premises.
Murray:
Facts of reality cannot be used as premises for a system that defines what a fact of reality is.
Who needs a system? If you stub your toe, is that a fact of reality?
William J Murray,
It would help if we had a clearer idea of what you understand by ‘truth’, ‘reality’ and ‘fact’. None of these concepts are as simple as they first appear.
Actually, people can get along quite well without logic and rationality.. Animals dot it, plants do it.
Formal logic is a rather recent invention. Not more than a couple thousand years old.
Learning from experience is what’s required, and brains do this in a Bayesian way, without formalisms.
I’ve flatly stated repeatedly that no such system is needed unless one wishes to develop or maintain a rationally coherent worldview.
For the purposes of my debate here, a true statement is one that is logically sound according to one’s premises, and doesn’t contradict experience.
I don’t know what “reality” is, other than as a worldview. Other people have been trying to making claims about what is real or what reality “is”; or arguing from what they think reality “is” (as in: empirical facts represent reality). I’m not making a case about what “reality” is. My argument is about rationally coherent and rationally justified worldviews, whether or not they represent any supposed “reality”.
(In my personal view, which isn’t really germane to the argument, “reality” can be defined as personal experience arbited by logic from necessary premises.)
A fact is a true statement about one’s experience. All facts are true statements; not all true statements are facts.
For Alan Fox above: Free Will (intention, deliberacy) is the acausal capacity to will or intend an action, including a thought, evaluation, imagery, physical action, a plan, etc. Acausal means that it is a sufficient agency in and of itself and is not caused to will or intend anything.
Acausal intentions can set other effects in motion, but are not themselves “set in motion” by preceding causes.
I experience the earth as flat. Is it a fact that the earth is flat?
Pedant,
It’s a good first approximation. Good enough until experience requires a better approximation.
Is the earth a sphere?
What true statement can a rationalist make about the shape of the earth?
Try understanding the full meaning of my definitions as they are interdependent. Facts are true statements about experience. “I experience a flat earth” is a true statement about your experience, not about what the earth actually is outside of that experience.
“I am experiencing ants crawling all over my body” is true whether it is actually occurring outside of my mind, or whether I am having some sort of delusion. In order to make a true statement about what is actually going on “in reality”; one would have to take their experience and examine it logically in light of their worldview premises that define what “reality” is and how experiences should be interpreted.
Actually, people sense “self” and “reality.” As these are subjective extperiences, we might then mutually agree to them as granted for further discussion, that is, as axioms. Given that what people see represents something outside themselves, then they can discuss the properties of mountains and mountains on the Moon without having to answer the “brain in a vat” question in every sentence. On the other hand, you can just as easily presume “brain in a vat,” in order to tease out its philosophical implications.
Try understanding the full meaning of my definitions as they are interdependent. Facts are true statements about experience.
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In order to make a true statement about what is actually going on “in reality”; one would have to take their experience and examine it logically in light of their worldview premises that define what “reality” is and how experiences should be interpreted.
Is it a fact or a truth that the earth is not flat? Or both, or neither? In reality, as defined by your worldview premises.
For me, it’s not a fact or a truth. It’s a conditional belief.
Given that your belief in the shape of the world is conditional, does that mean your belief in an “absolute good” is also conditional?
How would you compare your use of the term “conditional” here?
Is it the same as “provisional”?
All of my beliefs are conditional.
So when I say all “my” beliefs are **provisional**, is that the same thing you mean when you say all “your” beliefs are **conditional**?
Are you and I in agreement with this statement; “Neither of us have an **absolute** belief in anything”?
I’ll take a stab at paraphrasing the rationalist position. It has a parallel to the empiricist position.
An empiricist makes an hypothesis about the world and tests it by observation and experiment. Thus one is limited to those conjectures that can be empirically tested.
A rationalist makes an hypothesis and tests it for logical consistency. Thus one can assert the existence of pure forms and essential attributes.
Sort of like building a video game world. Everything fits together.
I think most empiricists look at the world and see a messy place where categories grade into each other. I once had a long debate with a creationist about the color green, and whether there was an essential quality to green, or whether it graded continuously. It seems to make no difference to an essentialist that one can demonstrate a gradient, and that there is no point at which one can point to a dividing line.
Here’s the way I see the set of logically consistent world views:
{{Fantasy}{Rationalism{Logical Consistency}}Empiricism{Delusion}}
where fantasy is the willful belief in things not seen, and delusion is the personal experience of things inconsistent with the experience of others.
I don’t know if I placed the brackets to support my intended meaning.
Empiricism and Rationalism share Logical Consistency.
Rationalism can construct logically consistent worlds that cannot be validated empirically.
Empiricism can construct private experiential worlds that are logically consistent, but which can only be validated in private experience.
There’s an overlap of logically consistent worlds that can be validated by logic and by experience.
I see a lot of people pay this idea lip service but in practice the lips rarely follow. For example, is matter real? Does Math exist independent of mind? Do you think these questions can be addressed by reason? You may discover some tightly held truths in there that are harder to let go of than experience and wisdom would suggest.
Conditional beliefs, (or contingent beliefs is probably more appropriate) sure generate some strong emotions for reasonable allowance of contingency actually tagging along with, say, political opinions, moral views, and the values associated with a whole host of behaviors, outcomes and states of affairs.
This is really just a general observation I carry around with me and check against experience with pretty much everyone I encounter, but is in no way an accusation that you are more attached to your truths than you believe- just that my experience so far leads me to conclude that all humans hold some truths so tightly that they cannot sense contradictory information. at all. There is a lot of subtlety to that which I can’t manage right now so feel free to weaken the statement a little. But now we’re into statistics so I will have to wait till tomorrow to see if I made any sense here.
Good night. :).
I don’t have an absolute belief in anything. All of my beliefs are provisional/conditional.
Arguments are tendered with the expectation that humans can deliberately discern true statements via application of logic. Not that they **do**, but that they **can**.
If one is going to claim that they have a rationally (logically) consistent worldview, then they are required to explain what it is about their worldview that provides the basis for such an expectation.
It is my overall argument that materialists/determinists and atheists cannot (or, at least so far have not) provide such a basis/explanation. Rational theism provides such a basis/explanation.
It would seem to be rationally consistent to have an atheistic world-view if our experience of the world does not show evidence of a god.
Why would I imagine an entity I don’t experience?
As I have already pointed out, one cannot get to “evidence” until one has a worldview. I think that what you mean is that you are unaware of any evidence of god that is verified as evidence by your already-in-place worldview (which decides what facts are, how to gather them, how to categorize them and how to interpret them into “evidence”).
Your references to “empirical” facts or evidence shows that you already have a worldview in place where the philosophy of empiricism decides what is and is not a fact, and how such facts are sorted into evidence; but empiricism by itself does not justify how you come by the expectation that you can rationally, deliberately discern true statements about such facts and evidence.
Which takes us back to your a prioris; if you have no expectation to be able to rationally, deliberately discern true statements about such phenomena, then your “empiricism” is unfounded.
Premises of rational wordviews define and decide “what is evidence”; you keep asking for the cart before the horse and inserting your de facto worldview as the arbiter of “what is evidence”.
One must first supply their rational worldview before they get around to sorting what what is and is not “evidence”. If one’s worldview cannot even support the expectation that one can logically, deliberately discern true statements, then others can hardly be expected to lend credence to any claim of theirs about what is, and is not, “evidence”.
Logical consistency is self-affirming by the rules of logic. It is the truth of axioms and premises that requires some basis.
Try making an axiomatic statement that could form the basis of theism and see if anyone agrees.
For example, the claim “there is no evidence for god” is easily debunked; there is a wealth of testimonial and anecdotal evidence that a god of some sort exists. There is empirical evidence that supports the claim that god exists in the form of the scientific evidence involved in both the fine-tuning and the design arguments for god; there is rational evidence found in the first/sufficient cause and the moral arguments for god.
However these various evidences for god are viewed, sorted, categorized and evaluated refer back to one’s worldview and thus their a prioris, which makes it important to make sure one’s worldview is logically coherent and thus how they are framing and sorting such evidence is consistent and appropriate to their actual behavior and expectations in other areas. If one’s worldview can’t even support the necessary contention that humans can rationally, deliberately discern true statements, tendering any argument about anything is a rather meaningless exercise.
What do babies do?
Here then is where we disagree. The process of determining what is empirical “reality” is a dynamic process, not a static one.
Consider this statement from BWE;
Babies become toddlers, then children, then teens and finally adults.
At each step, they learn more about the world and its make-up, always refining their sense of what is real and what isn’t.
You pretend to pull a quarter from behind a four-year old’s ear and they’re shocked, but when they’re eight, they check your sleeves.
Despite all of this, they still don’t have a formal world-view nor the ability to describe it.
I think that is the difference between you and some of us here, and that is that you equate the ability to “describe” a world-view with the generation and “adoption” of one.
You’re “logic” is purely descriptive which is why it is perfectly valid in your view to change premises if you don’t believe your “conclusion” is satisfied by them.