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?
That is not at all what I mean.
For probably the one hundredth time
It’s not about me it’s about God who reveals
peace
can you talk us through how that revealing happens?
not you too walto.
I have bent over backward to be brief and to the point to minimize the chances of you all misunderstanding my position but you still miss it by 180 degrees
once again for the one hundredth and first time
Knowledge is not about me at all it’s about God who reveals
Did you get it that time?
peace
God can reveal any way he chooses.
Think about how your wife reveals to you that she loves you.
There are an almost infinite number of ways she can do it. For starters she can
1) Remember your favorite movie
2) Take care of you when you are sick
3) Tell you she loves you
4) Put up with your family
5) Defend you when you are being bullied
6) Tell you hard truths that you need to know but would rather not hear
7) renew your wedding vows
8) cook you your favorite meal
9) listen to you ramble on about epistemology
10) Go for a walk with you when she has a headache
etc etc etc
I hope you get it
peace
This would be funny if it was not so tiresome. Is it really that hard to get your head around this?
please repeat after me
Knowledge does not require certainty
Knowledge does not require certainty
Knowledge does not require certainty
If you still disagree simply tell me how you know
peace
She’s real. I can follow the causal chain back to her, and can definitely attribute things to her. How does it work for you and God? What has been revealed, and how did it happen?
If you have empirical evidence that your wife is not pretending that she loves you? I’d sure like to see it.
I never cease to be amazed at the utter lack of thought suggested by some comments here
peace
How do you know she is real?
Exactly like it does with you and your wife
Anything I know and however God chose to reveal it.
peace
One through ten, not so much. Eleven? Definitely.
Wow. You’re a bit light on specifics but I’ll infer based on your answers that god moans at you about loading the dishwasher and sits next to you watching TV which (s)he categories as a doing things together. You also hold hands on vacations, enjoy fine dining together – God always says (s)he doesn’t want any desert and then eats half of yours. How did I do?
You are getting warmer 😉 .
The point is there is no set process or procedure to revelation it’s up to God (or your wife) how it’s done
from a view of ten thousand feet it looks something like this
1) A person (your wife or God) chooses to reveal X to you
2) That person also chooses how to reveal X to you
3) You experience the revelation so that you know X
Nothing spooky or otherworldly about it.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Hmmm. So how do I know when its my wife vs. a coincidence or other force? How does that work with God?
May I suggest we all ignore FFM from now on? Just a thought
Hah. You’re more like keitha than I imagined. She too wants me to repeat stuff I’ve said a thousand times, and likes to pretend she just wasn’t there that day. There’s a nice search function on the dashboard. Have fun.
I read it. It’s wrong.
I read them.
Been there, doing that.
I don’t know how anyone can do otherwise.
He thinks he’s at dizzying intellectual heights, when all of the dizziness comes from the vicious circles rigorously dictated by him.
Glen Davidson
It’s possible we are not communicating well when it comes to this question.
I pay more attention to your posts than almost anyone here and I promise you I never saw an answer to that question that was definitive and not just as tentative as the original statement.
Perhaps you think you have given an answer when all I saw was a suggestion to read something,
from my perspective it always goes something like this
FMM: How do you know X?
Walto: by employing tactic Y or because of Z
FMM: how do you know that Y or Z lead to knowledge?
Walto: read Quine and quit bothering me
peace
Your wife makes sure you know
Just like that
peace
How do you know that reading them will lead to knowledge?
peace
I never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the pack.
Knowledge does not depend on my mental acuity. It depends on God who reveals
peace
😉
I know I will.
(Because God has revealed to me that I’ll ignore him.)
Just as with gods, there are an infinite number of candidates that we cannot experience, even in principle. You are privileging the classical theistic conception of god over all those others by remaining “agnostic” rather than dismissing it like the rest. I submit that the only reason for that is cultural, not rational.
I’m not sure I agree. If someone is making a claim that cannot, even in principle, be tested, experienced, or have any impact on reality, there’s literally no reason not to summarily dismiss it.
I agree with you that “brain state” leaves much to be desired as a label. I think we’re on the same track, though.
The issue is that all of the things you listed are detectable in principle. In that they differ markedly from the classical theistic god you postulate. That means that you can’t use them as an argument to remain agnostic on something that is undetectable in principle.
All of which are empirically detectable. Not so with your ill-defined and unevidenced god.
I contend that you are the one unable or unwilling to understand the argument. When you base your epistemology solely on revelation you cannot have justified true belief because there is no mechanism for justifying what you think is revelation. It’s revelation all the way down, any and all of which you admit may be simply your incorrect beliefs. You’re stuck in a circular inability to acquire knowledge according to your own definition.
This is the most tiresome behavior. Your transparent attempt to distract from your failure to support your own claims is noted. Again.
I have empirical evidence that she exists and that she demonstrates loving behaviors. You have neither for your ill-defined, unevidenced god.
Your equivocation remains.
I’ll defer to your expertise on lack of thought. Your theology suggests that you have much more experience in that area than I.
I should start reading in reverse order instead of by time of comments — I could have saved some effort.
You’re right that discussions with him are unproductive, even by Internet standards. I’ll take the pledge.
Sorry fifth, it is about the God you presuppose that reveals.You keep forgetting that.
I think folks who enjoy his non-answers and who enjoy posting considerations he ignores should keep right at it if that’s something they enjoy. Me, I’ve grown tired of it.
A great illustration of FMM’s silly contradictions. If there really were a “god who reveals”, there could be no such thing as “mental acuity”. Brightness/intelligence would simply be a function of who received the most from said god. Alas, there actually is a correspondence between brain activity and intelligence and no god no matter how powerful can overcome such.
I fail to understand the problem with, “I trust my senses. My senses indicate that X corresponds to Y and thus I can predict (and there for “know”) outcomes involving X given Y.” Does that mean that I “know” everything there is to know about X and Y? Of course not. Does it even mean that I can’t be wrong about what I think I know about X and Y. Of course not again. All things I claim to “know” I take provisionally as I can only assess a portion of qualities and evidence about anything and most of that assessment is conditional anyway (and conditions can change.)
So I’m left acting on what I think I know, completely at peace with the fact that what I know is almost certainly incomplete (but hey…I can learn and thus “know” more!) and could very well be wrong.
And it’s not like FMM is in a different boat. He doesn’t know that his wife won’t reveal she’s been having an affair tomorrow, claim she no longer loves him, and leaves. Nor does he know that he doesn’t have cancer or that a plane is going to crash into his house on Memorial Day. And no god(s), not matter how powerful, ever seem to be able to reveal such. Odd that…
Robin,
I’ve said before I would ignore him and didn’t, not going to tell anyone what they should do, of course, but at some point enough is enough for me
Amen.
I really don’t have any desire to be where I’m not wanted. If I’m ignored my comments will go away eventually.
The question at the root of it all will not however.
peace
Why would God want to reveal those sorts of things to me? Why would I want to know them if I could not change them?
I never cease to amazed at the things folks want in a God.
peace
What exactly is the empirical evidence that anything exists out side your mind.
What per-say is a “loving behavior”?
Is there a test to differentiate between a true “loving behavior” and one that only seems to be so.
peace
The issue is that all you do is to repeat the same nonsense over and over again.
No more “how do you know” for me. Try something new or talk to someone else
There’s something about the words “Lord” and “God” and “test” that bubbles up in my memory.
Probably just indigestion.
Revelation is not based on a mechanism it’s based on a person (the revealer). Your wife can reveal her love to you.
And you are justified in believing her if she loves you.
That is true even though you don’t have a mechanism for justifying what you think is her revelation to you.
peace
I only do that because you refuse to answer the question and instead try to change the subject after bringing it up in the first place.
It’s really simple
If you don’t want to discuss epistemology don’t bring it up
If you don’t want to be reminded that you know God exists don’t bring it up
If you don’t want to be reminded that God is truth don’t bring it up.
If you insist on bringing up epistemology you can expect me to ask how you know stuff
If you insist on claiming that God does not exist. You can expect me to tell you that God is truth and truth exists
peace
Could be but you’d need to elaborate in order for me to be sure
peace
Why would any god want to reveal anything to anyone? For that matter, how could any god ever want anything? But I digress…
Any of those conditions could be changed with accurate knowledge at certain times, which really shows just how not-well-pondered your repetition of “revelation”, “it’s not about me…”, and “how do you know that” are.
But more to the point, it’s a pretty simple demonstration that your “revelations” are nothing more than your spin on your limited sensory perceptions that you (like everyone else) relies upon unless and until they prove to be a failure. Because if an actual “perfect god” could actually reveal “perfect revelation to you”, you’d actually know things that you (or anyone) could not acquire via the senses. But as you quite readily note, your god can’t do that. Again I say, odd that…
It never ceases to amaze me the implications theists fail to appreciate in their concepts and claims about their god(s)’ characteristics and abilities…
I may be justified in believing her even if she doesn’t. That’s more to the point. Justification is no guarantor.
That is exactly my feeling except for being amazed
I will probably regret asking this; but given your 3 steps;
a: I come to know X.
b: I have no recollection of anyone “revealing” X to me.
c: I have no reason to think anyone “revealed” X to me.
Why then would I believe someone did “reveal” it to me?
Why not assume I figured it out on my own?
sean s.
Welcome Sean!
Indeed! Assuming we could second-guess Him/Her, why does he need the Universe, the World, Us at all? Company? Is He/She bored?
What presuppositionalists (like FMM) and skeptics (like keiths) would insist on is “how do you know you can trust your senses?”
I think the first step is to stop using “the senses” in an unreflective way, as if it were perfectly obvious what “the senses” meant.
Our senses are not tools or devices to be used; it’s not as if I need to trust my hearing in the same way that I trust the oil light in my car is working correctly. To perceive (in any of the sensory modalities) is, in the first instance, to perceive the world and one’s place in it. Perceiving is fundamentally intentional, in the philosophical sense that it is about or aims at the world (and oneself as a part of that world). (To suspend the intentional structure of perceiving is to have sensing, or in extreme cases — say, intense chronic pain — to be reduced to existing as no more than a sensing organism. The most extreme case here is that of being a victim of torture.)
In the ‘normal’ cases, it is not that we choose to trust in our senses — it is rather that we find ourselves, primordially, in the existential state of trusting in the world. This primordial trust — Merleau-Ponty calls it ‘perceptual faith’ — is the material a priori condition of any possible act of reason-giving or responsiveness to reasons. It is not something that can be justified. Our social practices of asking for and giving reasons can get no grip here.
The error of Cartesianism, as I see it, is to begin by severing the cognitive and affective bond that relates us, in existential trust, to the world (perceptually) and to others (socially and normatively). Once this is done, by assuming a position of fundamental alienation from the world and from others, does it even make sense to ask “but is there an external world? are there other minds?”
And if one takes for granted the Cartesian starting-point — what Jay Rosenberg calls ‘the Myth of the Mind Apart’ — then the next step towards recovering the world is to find some way in which the world is Given to us in a fundamental re-founding cognitive act, whether this be the illuminatio of Augustine or Malebranche or the ‘simple ideas of sense’ or ‘sense-data’ favored by empiricists.
If, however, one rejects the Myth of the Mind Apart and affirms the existential priority of our being in the world as beings that perceptually sensitive to and practically involved with the world, then the question of “how do you know?” becomes a question of satisfying the conditions for justification and for truth.
As I see it, the conditions for justification as always context-dependent. What counts as a good-enough justification — what counts as adequate reasons — depends on the issue at stake. Perceptual knowledge is secured just in case I have adequate reasons to believe that I have done all I can reasonably be expected to do in issuing a perceptual report. This is a social achievement; whether or not I’ve fulfilled my epistemic duties is a status conferred on me by the recognition I am granted by others as a being that can make reliable perceptual reports and be held responsible for them.
My position on truth is more complicated and still evolving, but generally, I think that there are two dimensions here: truth internal to a conceptual framework and the truth of the framework. “Batman is Bruce Wayne” is true within the conceptual framework of DC Comics, and “Superman is Arthur Curry” is false within that same framework. Like for “there is absolute space” — true within the framework of Newtonian mechanics and false within the framework of general relativity.
But we still want to say — rightly, I think — that general relativity is a better conceptual framework than classical mechanics. And better and worse are assessment of degree. If one insists that truth cannot be a matter of degree, no matter — we can talk about adequacy or aptness of a framework. Assessment of the adequacy or aptness of a conceptual framework lies in comparing it with its rivals and predecessors (which is not to dismiss the possibility of genuine incommensurabilties, in which case the comparison will have to be done much more informally and gradually).
And although all assessment of cognitive claims — both the first-order claims of science, law, and morality and the second-claims of epistemology and metaphysics — is provisional, tentative, and revisable, that doesn’t make knowledge itself problematic or mysterious.