Kantian Naturalist: You simply have not provided any account of truth, reason, and logic. Until you do, there is no reason for me to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has anything at all to do with God.
Some initial first thoughts.
What would it mean to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic? Don’t all of us take all three of these for granted?
Can science settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about the question?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about science?
Who were the first scientists to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Who were the first philosophers to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Is the argument that because someone has not provided an account of truth, reason, and logic there is therefore no reason to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has nothing at all to do with God a non-sequitur?
What is true. What is logical. What is reasonable. Are these not all inter-twined? Which of these can we dispense with while retaining the others?
Hey Mung – you abounding the ‘historical claims’ thread ? Too painful?
For one thing, it’s never been entirely clear to me what the putative distinction between reason and logic is supposed to be. Non-logical reasoning seems a bit odd.
But let’s stipulate that at least one of the following is correct:
1. In additional to formal logic that makes explicit formal inference, there is also ‘material logic’ that makes explicit material inference. “If Philadelphia is east of Pittsburgh, then Pittsburgh is west of Philadelphia” is an example of material inference, because the validity depends on the semantics of ‘east’ and ‘west’. It is not valid by virtue of syntactical structure alone.
2. In addition to logic (whether formal or material) there are also forms of reasoning that are not inferences in the narrow sense but which include informal characterizations of inductive reasoning and — most importantly — what Peirce calls “abductive reasoning”.
However we decide to slice the terminological cake, I am perfectly happy to accommodate the following idea: that human life is “fraught with ought”, that our beliefs and actions are constitutively normative. To be a human being is to be (among other things) a rational animal, one whose way of life is shaped by a responsiveness to reasons — reasons both of belief and of conduct.
Truth is a tricky matter, but let us say — for the time being — that one of the aims of reasoning is true belief. We want our beliefs to be true, and so we adopt forms of reasoning that are (we think) conductive to truth.
And likewise, one essential feature of a formal logical system is that it be truth-preserving. It can never be possible for a valid argument to have true premises and a false conclusion. We define a deductively valid argument in terms of truth: an argument is deductively valid just in case, if the premises were true, then the conclusion must be true.
So there are indeed very tight relations between the concepts of truth, reason, and logic — though I wouldn’t call them relations of “dependence” per se.
On an evolutionary account of human reason, reason evolved from more “primitive” kinds of animal thought. The decisive step was taken with the evolution of language.
No. It would be obvious to a 3rd grader. You’re talking about divine revelation. I have none of that. Not needed. Period
Am I abounding what? You can’t even bother to provide a link. Just like your big brother keiths. Frail and Fail. You can get your own life, you know. keiths is just using you.
Mung,
*avoiding. Looks like there are no eyewitness / contemporary accounts . Fiction.
IOW, if “revelation” justifies knowledge and my wife telling me she loves me counts as revelation, then my wife justifies that knowledge. God? no thank you
Well if there are no eyewitnesses it certainly did not happen! Guilty your Honor. I never realized that we were talking about lack of evidence from non-existent non eye-witnesses!
ETA: What does this have to do with providing an account of truth, reason, and logic?
Mung,
Barry’s claim is fiction. And by fiction I mean a lie. Go back and reread.
wtf are you talking about? Are you trying to hijack this thread?
What is the only way to know that what you believe is not made up unsupported s**t?
wait for it
.
.
.
Revelation
peace
I’m not sure there’s even any evidence for that.
What we do reasonably know, is that the human mind has the capacity to make sense of those aspects of the universe that the human mind can make sense of. We are blind to whatever else there may be in the universe.
I agree that’s a different question. I’m not sure that any answer is possible. It reminds me of the question “why is there something, rather than nothing at all?”
How do you know that revelation justifies knowledge?
peace
Sure you do.
The only time divine revelation is needed is when the question is something that only God would know.
You know lots of things that only God could reveal to you like whether the laws of logic are universal and eternal.
peace
How about geometric reasoning?
Logical reasoning is reasoning about relations between concepts. But then there’s reasoning about how to conceptualize the world. I see that as at the core of science.
You only assume that the human mind has the capacity to make sense of those aspects of the universe that the human mind can make sense of.
If materialism is true you are very likely a boltzmann brain and are imagining the whole shebang.
peace
Granted. What I meant to say was that we (necessarily?) take our evolving, contingent conceptual frameworks to be about, among other things, mind-independent objects: determinate things with specifiable properties that persist in space and in time when not being observed by any minds. (However it may turn out that, according to our best scientific frameworks, what there really is is processes rather than substances.)
Certainly no answer within existing science or any science that we (as we presently are) can currently frame to ourselves as any possible science of the future.
Apparently God can actualize an infinite regress of revelations.
I knew it — FMM and keiths are collaborating!!
I would suggest exploring the relations between the persons of the Trinity. It might provide a way forward in this regard. 😉
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
No, evidence. You’re the worst sort of presuppositionalist – trapped in a prison of your own making.
Not at all, keiths argues that we can’t rule out being a boltzmann brain.
I on the other hand contend that we know we are not a boltzmann brain.
peace
Which of the following does an infinite regress violate?
truth
reason
logic
and why?
Do you have evidence for the contention that evidence is the way to know stuff?
Let’s see if you can get out of the evidence prison that you have constructed for yourself.
peace
So what do we call someone who has absolutely no basis for their beliefs?
fifthmonarchyman,
without trying to engage in your sophist dipshittery, it has done so in the past.
Honest Skepticism.
No one can know anything, and that no one can know anything is itself incapable of being known.
Solipsism?
haha. hoho. hehe.
The “skeptic” calling fifth a sophist!
Mung,
Depends on what your threshold for ‘knowing’ is, I’ve argued before a better concept is ‘confidence’.
None. I was being facetious. Wasn’t it obvious?
Why on earth would you consent to such nonsense? We can make sense of the things we can make sense of is a tautology. It has nothing to offer about how we make sense of anything at all.
It tells us nothing about truth, logic or reason, but rather assumes them as necessary for us to make sense of anything at all. Question begging in the extreme.
A Trump voter.
#sorry
#notsorry
LoL!
ETA: We probably need a separate thread to talk Trump. 🙂
As the old joke has it, one person’s modus ponens is another person’s modus tollens.
Meaning, whereas you want to say, “there is knowledge because there is divine revelation,” keiths is saying “there isn’t divine revelation, therefore there isn’t knowledge.” That’s the whole point of his ‘Cartesian skepticism’!
I took Neil to be saying rather that the structure of the human mind imposes certain constraints on what we can know, and that there’s almost certainly going to be many truths about the universe that we can never discover because of those constraints. That’s not tautologous. And it doesn’t undermine the idea that we can know some things about the universe.
So can we all agree that atheism, which is a mere lack of belief in some non-defined or ill-defined entity, cannot provide an atheistic account of truth, logic, and reason?
Atheism in this respect is irrelevant, merely derivative. Someone else has to do the heavy lifting, and God forbid that they be theists!
Mung,
Wow. Atheism is downstream from logic and reason, a product of it.
Mung,
You’re starting to get it, finally
I’d put it this way: there can be a non-theistic account of truth, logic, and reason — by which I mean an account of those concepts that does not rely on theism at all. Our understanding of those concepts can be kept separate from whether or not God exists.
And, it ought to be noted, to some degree non-presuppositionalist theists would agree with that claim. A Thomist would want to say that we are led to God by way of reason, which requires that we can get reason off the ground (so to speak) without bringing God into it at the very first step. (Though the Thomist would also want to say that we cannot have a fully satisfactory understanding of reason without understanding that knowledge of God is the final end of reason.)
Likewise, an evidentialist who thinks that there’s empirical evidence for God would have to agree that we can get a secure grip on the concept of what counts as good (or good-enough) evidence without presupposing God at the very beginning of the investigation.
As a naturalist, I think that one can provide a satisfactory account of truth, reason, and logic without bringing God into it at all. But the debate that naturalists are going to have with Thomists and with evidentialists will be completely different from the debate that naturalists can have with presuppositionalists — if naturalists and presuppositionalists can have any debate at all.
The I Lack Belief Zone.
Too bad Elizabeth misled everyone into thinking that “The Skeptical Zone” was a haven for “The I Lack Belief Zone” folks.
The Disbelief Zone.
What evidence do you have for this claim?
For that matter what evidence do you have that there is a past?
peace
His 5 points (in that Wikipedia article) look pretty reasonable.
Will truth be revealed in a debate or does one of the participants possibly already have it upon entering the debate?
I see it as you and keiths being the modus ponens and modus tollens.
You both begin with yourselves when thinking about epistemology.
He begins with himself and and concludes that knowledge is not possible yet does not ponder how he knows that
You begin with yourself and and conclude that knowledge is possible and don’t ponder how you know that
Both of you are constrained by the incorrect frame work established by Descartes
Peace
One thing FMM and I agree about is that this remark about what you need to know stuff is wrong.
I like how you think nobody could be pondering unless they end up agreeing with you. What you never seem to ponder is that you’re completely wrong. But you are wrong: your premises are generally false, and your logic is usually defective as well. If God is indeed logic, you’re not giving him nearly the respect he deserves.
Or, assuming you DO ponder, you think you can stop because of
wait for it
Revelation
Now THAT is lazy.
That’s another remark FMM would disagree with, I think.
What are you getting at there?
You mean you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are unable to know stuff unless you first assume logic,truth and reason in order to assume the existence of a God who actually does engage in revelatory certainty to justify how you know stuff like your assumptions are true, logical and reasonable.
And since you know with certainty born of this assumption of certainty that knowledge does not require certainty , then we can know the answer to your question.
First we also assume that logic ,reason, truth exist thereby we can know things provisionally thru methods tested by time and error , naturalistic methods. Now if you want to assume nature is the result of the divine, a deistic God would suffice.
Faith could provide the certainty sans revelation* ( assumed )
Silly Descrates
Nice!