@jwray

Thanks again for responding and clarifying your points.

I stumbled on this link last night while doing a Google search for something else. Thought you and @hpqp might like it--it's very well-written. Took a look at some of the other articles on the site and everything seems pretty decent.

http://www.naturalism.org/epistemology.htm#action

When atheists argue that "God" does not exist, they are usually arguing against a specific idea of god as defined by one or another religion, which is possible to do, both with logic and physical/scientific evidence (example: the Abrahamic God that apparently made all of humanity from the incestuous offspring of two people is easily disproven, while his omnipotence is logically incompatible with his omni-benevolence).

If He is so easily disproven, it's interesting how no one in history has ever done so. What you're detailing in the supposed conflict between Gods omnipotence and omni-benevolence is the logical problem of evil. Plantigas free will defense proves that they are in fact logically compatible, so you don't have an argument here.

Let's put it this way: do you believe fairies exist? If no, prove it! You can't explain why dew drops are so neatly arranged on spider webs, or how the beautiful designs in the frost of windowpanes are made, so fairies make them. Tada!! Sure, you can be agnostic about fairies, arguing that they're manmade fiction, and explain scientifically how dew drops and frost patterns work, but that's just eliminating one definition of "fairy", there are infinitely more! A-fairyists, meanwhile, live with the evidence-based assumption that the probability of fairies existing is null, and the burden of proof lies on those who insist that some sort of fairies exist.

See where this is getting?

Yes, I see where you're conflating the issue. Anyone can make a claim, but that doesn't make every claim equally valid. Yes, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, and you can't disprove a universal negative. Yet just because you cannot disprove the existence of God does not make the God hypothesis equal to cosmic teapots. There is no good reason to believe there are cosmic teapots, but plenty of good reasons to believe there is a God. The difference lies in the explanatory power of the claim, which is the basis for believing any theory.

You believe in the theory of abiogenesis, presumably, even though there is no actual evidence for life from non-life. So by your logic, a magic teapot could be an equally valid explanation for the origin of life. But since Abiogenesis has more explanatory power (barely) for the origin of life than a magic teapot, that makes it more probable and gives you justification for believing it.

The burden of proof lies with whomever is making a claim, for or against. Your epistemological position about uncertainty is countered by the fact that certain claims have more explanatory power than others. I cannot absolutely prove magic teapots don't exist, but that doesn't mean I don't have good reasons to believe they don't exist; since they explain precisely nothing they can safely be discarded as a valid claim.

>> ^hpqp:
@GeeSussFreeK: I do agree, however, that many atheists like to posit the position that God, indeed, does not exist. That would require some evidence as absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
@shinyblurry: Yes, they do like to posit that. When asked for that evidence however, they like to say they merely "lack belief", which is meaningless. Basically, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to say no to the question of whether God exists but escape the burden of proof. That is what this "lack of belief" is all about. It's not an "i don't know", it's a "no, but i dont have to provide any evidence for that".
When atheists argue that "God" does not exist, they are usually arguing against a specific idea of god as defined by one or another religion, which is possible to do, both with logic and physical/scientific evidence (example: the Abrahamic God that apparently made all of humanity from the incestuous offspring of two people is easily disproven, while his omnipotence is logically incompatible with his omni-benevolence).
I love how shiny uses the expression "want to have our cake and eat it to", which is a very rational and feasible desire (I'm a greedy atheist, I don't share my babby-cake with anyone. Mmmm, fetus fudge! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/smileevil.gif">).
Let's put it this way: do you believe fairies exist? If no, prove it! You can't explain why dew drops are so neatly arranged on spider webs, or how the beautiful designs in the frost of windowpanes are made, so fairies make them. Tada!! Sure, you can be agnostic about fairies, arguing that they're manmade fiction, and explain scientifically how dew drops and frost patterns work, but that's just eliminating one definition of "fairy", there are infinitely more! A-fairyists, meanwhile, live with the evidence-based assumption that the probability of fairies existing is null, and the burden of proof lies on those who insist that some sort of fairies exist.
See where this is getting?

@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^marbles:
>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^marbles:
You’re trying to argue semantics now.
In fairness, the entire video and discussion is an argument about the definition of "Liberty"; that's a textbook case of arguing semantics and that's what you're all doing.

So if someone calls the sun the moon and you say "No, that's the sun", you're arguing semantics?

That's a really terrible comparison but, if it comes down to you and "someone" having different definitions of the words "sun" and "moon", then yes.


To borrow the metaphor, we're having a discussion that started from someone saying "the moon is made of cheese", and then when someone else says "actually, there's quite a dispute about what the moon is made of", and the first guy responds "no, it's settled, because that's what the definition of 'moon' is -- a big hunk of cheese".

I don't think that's a semantic argument. It's more like the opening salvo of an epistemological debate.

*citation needed*

How can you assert that "they surely did a part"? I call BS unless you can provide some historical evidence.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^bobknight33:
Very interesting and worthy of watching. There is more than we don't know than we do know.

More to the point, how do we know what is known is truly known (by knowledge, I might right and true belief). Epistemology is my favorite philosophical topic

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/hpqp" title="member since July 25th, 2009" class="profilelink">hpqp
Many of the Greek city states pledge to a Patron God: Poseidon at Corinth, Hera at Argos, Zeus at Kos, Athene at Sparta, Tegea and Athens. Different parts of the Nile also had the same type of Patronage. It is debatable how much of a role they played in war, but they surely did a part.

>> ^bobknight33:

Very interesting and worthy of watching. There is more than we don't know than we do know.


More to the point, how do we know what is known is truly known (by knowledge, I might right and true belief). Epistemology is my favorite philosophical topic


@hpqp

Many of the Greek city states pledge to a Patron God: Poseidon at Corinth, Hera at Argos, Zeus at Kos, Athene at Sparta, Tegea and Athens. Different parts of the Nile also had the same type of Patronage. It is debatable how much of a role they played in war, but they surely did a part.

It doesn't jive with how you experience reality? Well sorry, but, too bad -- that's precisely what it is. Your phenomenological experience feeling different to your epistemological experience is irrelevant. At some point you have to stop the infinite regress of intervening variables and just accept that brain=mind, and that ironically, your mind has not evolved to comprehend the vastness of a system like the brain. All the evidence we have suggests brain=mind. You can invoke dualism but it's akin to supernaturalism -- there's no need. Furthermore, the idea that the eye and smell system never "touch" is wrong. Finally, why focus on cross-modal sensory integration when there are more interesting questions that relate to the brain and mind? e.g., qualia, peak shift, synchrony.

Sorry don't mean that to sound rude, just my 2c.

Given how much I follow politics, I kinda recognize when people are just trying to give the least offensive answer to a question and avoid controversy.

So, girls in a beauty contest are overwhelmingly giving the safe answer "people can believe whatever they want, and people should be taught everything in school".

I wasn't keeping a tally, but I think there were only two that said evolution shouldn't be taught, and only 2-3 who took the position that it not only should be taught but taught as the one and only truth.

My feeling is that they need to find a way to teach epistemology to kids as early as possible. The real issue people care about in the creationism vs. evolution in school isn't whether they're taught generally, but whether they're taught as fact or opinion.

To some degree the solution to the larger debate isn't for the answer I think is right to win the fight (evolution), but to get more people to understand the limits of human knowledge, and to really come to understand the methods for evaluating whether something is true or false, or knowable or unknowable.

Yes, most people get exposed to those tools in science and math (empiricism and deduction, respectively), but it's probably worthy of a class itself.

Then again, if I ran the world "philosophy" would be as much a core subject as "math" and "science" in school.

Also, if I ran the world, I'd probably have more than one of these women in my harem...

A fair statement, and I understand and tend to agree with where you're coming from.. I chose to challenge you only because I am familiar with the work that IONS (the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which Mitchell founded based, partly, on this original seminal experience), and the research they do on the paraliminal levels of consciousness and the expanded ranges of human potential. I'm quite familiar with the scientific rigor with which they approach such research and the basis upon which they rely on multiple ways of "knowing," that does not simply base all knowledge on logic and reason, but also on phenomenal experience, qualitative understanding, and intuitive inquiry. There are multiple approaches to epistemology that include and extend beyond mere logic and reason -- and the scientific wisdom it yields just as valid, reliable, and valuable to attained human knowledge.

Personally, I understand Mitchell's quote as a form of "received" wisdom, not unlike Rene Descarte's vision of the "Angel of Truth" which ultimately gave rise to the cogito ergo sum, Archimedes' moment of Eureka which served as the basis fo displacement as a measurement of density, or Sir Isaac Newton's revelation of mathematics as encapsulating the laws of universal physics.


>> ^WKB:

>> ^Trancecoach:
And on which form of epistemology do you base that statement?
>> ^WKB:
>> ^Trancecoach:
I think Mitchell's use of the term, "divinity" refers to the force or power inherent in humanity's reason and capacities to acquire knowledge, rather than in the "magic" of one's faith in a deity.
>> ^WKB:
>> ^Trancecoach:
My sense is that a lot of our international issues can be resolved after a critical mass of people make it out of Earth's gravity and are able to look down on its fragile state from above...
Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell said about the experience of spaceflight, "The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes ... The knowledge came to me directly."

The first half of your statement I agree with in absolute completeness. Understanding our vulnerable situation is indeed reason to work together to ensure the survival of us all.
While I am no astronaut, I could not disagree more with the second half. I think that contemplating the fragile nature of life on this planet and the amazing accomplishments our species has accumulated is a reason to celebrate our knowledge, not our faith. Reason, evidence, and knowledge is what has allowed us to even contemplate this issue. Faith has done nothing to solve the problems of leaving the atmosphere, surviving the vacuum, achieving a stable orbit, or reentering the world safely. To suddenly take the amazement of life as we now understand it, thanks to science, and chalk it all up to some divine magic seems insulting to the knowledge, reason, and human intellect that has gotten us here.


I really doubt that based on the context of the statement. "Life wasn't an accident based on random processes," "the knowledge came to me directly,"... sounds like magic talk to me.


I had to look that word up to make sure I knew what the heck it means. I'm not sure where the nature of knowledge comes into it. I am simply pointing out that it seems to me that the ideas Mitchell brings up in the very sentence in which he uses the word divinity are evidence to support the idea that he is talking about a divine creator. (Which is what I meant by, 'magic,' no offense intended.) I see no evidence that he is using the word divinity to celebrate humanity's reason and capacity to acquire knowledge based on the provided quote. I have great admiration for Edgar Mitchel, and anyone who risks their life to help expand human understanding of the universe as he did, but that particular quote of his seemed to me to ring hollow.

>> ^Trancecoach:

And on which form of epistemology do you base that statement?
>> ^WKB:
>> ^Trancecoach:
I think Mitchell's use of the term, "divinity" refers to the force or power inherent in humanity's reason and capacities to acquire knowledge, rather than in the "magic" of one's faith in a deity.
>> ^WKB:
>> ^Trancecoach:
My sense is that a lot of our international issues can be resolved after a critical mass of people make it out of Earth's gravity and are able to look down on its fragile state from above...
Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell said about the experience of spaceflight, "The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes ... The knowledge came to me directly."

The first half of your statement I agree with in absolute completeness. Understanding our vulnerable situation is indeed reason to work together to ensure the survival of us all.
While I am no astronaut, I could not disagree more with the second half. I think that contemplating the fragile nature of life on this planet and the amazing accomplishments our species has accumulated is a reason to celebrate our knowledge, not our faith. Reason, evidence, and knowledge is what has allowed us to even contemplate this issue. Faith has done nothing to solve the problems of leaving the atmosphere, surviving the vacuum, achieving a stable orbit, or reentering the world safely. To suddenly take the amazement of life as we now understand it, thanks to science, and chalk it all up to some divine magic seems insulting to the knowledge, reason, and human intellect that has gotten us here.


I really doubt that based on the context of the statement. "Life wasn't an accident based on random processes," "the knowledge came to me directly,"... sounds like magic talk to me.



I had to look that word up to make sure I knew what the heck it means. I'm not sure where the nature of knowledge comes into it. I am simply pointing out that it seems to me that the ideas Mitchell brings up in the very sentence in which he uses the word divinity are evidence to support the idea that he is talking about a divine creator. (Which is what I meant by, 'magic,' no offense intended.) I see no evidence that he is using the word divinity to celebrate humanity's reason and capacity to acquire knowledge based on the provided quote. I have great admiration for Edgar Mitchel, and anyone who risks their life to help expand human understanding of the universe as he did, but that particular quote of his seemed to me to ring hollow.

And on which form of epistemology do you base that statement?

>> ^WKB:

>> ^Trancecoach:
I think Mitchell's use of the term, "divinity" refers to the force or power inherent in humanity's reason and capacities to acquire knowledge, rather than in the "magic" of one's faith in a deity.
>> ^WKB:
>> ^Trancecoach:
My sense is that a lot of our international issues can be resolved after a critical mass of people make it out of Earth's gravity and are able to look down on its fragile state from above...
Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell said about the experience of spaceflight, "The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes ... The knowledge came to me directly."

The first half of your statement I agree with in absolute completeness. Understanding our vulnerable situation is indeed reason to work together to ensure the survival of us all.
While I am no astronaut, I could not disagree more with the second half. I think that contemplating the fragile nature of life on this planet and the amazing accomplishments our species has accumulated is a reason to celebrate our knowledge, not our faith. Reason, evidence, and knowledge is what has allowed us to even contemplate this issue. Faith has done nothing to solve the problems of leaving the atmosphere, surviving the vacuum, achieving a stable orbit, or reentering the world safely. To suddenly take the amazement of life as we now understand it, thanks to science, and chalk it all up to some divine magic seems insulting to the knowledge, reason, and human intellect that has gotten us here.


I really doubt that based on the context of the statement. "Life wasn't an accident based on random processes," "the knowledge came to me directly,"... sounds like magic talk to me.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

No, he is nearly making the subtle, but logical distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Have had this conversation here a lot on the sift. The experience of blue is a very different one than the wavelength of 475 nm (which corresponds to blue for most people). "Light" is a subjective experience not related to real properties of photons. Photons appear bright because through the course of a billion years of evolution, interrupting photons as light, and their corresponding wavelengths as colors has better aided that animal that interrupting them as something else. But that says nothing about photons themselves, only the way in which minds are translating reality.
It is the distinction between Empiricism and Intellectualism. One believing that it takes senses to understand truth, the other, that only the power of pure reason can lead knowledge. I, for one, am mostly under the school of intellectualism as it pertains to epistemology. I trust the power of reason and logic to find truth, not eyeballs and olfactories.

No, the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon would more properly apply to colours than to light itself, which was proven by Newton to be a particle (or at least particule-like, and then later a dual particle-wave thingy of course). His conclusions were accepted by Kant, who redefined the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon to not contradict Newton's findings. Goethe disagreed with Kant and Newton, but he was a fool. He thought light and colour were the same thing thus he failed. Schopenhauer rectified Goethe's theory to apply only to the perception of colour but Goethe wouldn't have it thus he failed again and it was up to psychologists to prove Schopenhauer was actually right in a limited sense.

Your distinction of empiricism and intellectualism is also very naive. As far as we know, the only way you can prove the factuality of your knowledge is through experience. That's why modern science works and idle speculation (like most Ancient Greeks did) does not. Being an empiricist doesn't mean you "trust your eyeballs", quite the contrary in fact. That's why David Hume talks a lot of the required skepticism needed to know nature from one's senses. If we could see things as they are (as noumenon), then we would not need our senses nor our reason to interpret what they sense (the phenomenon). That's in fact the basic premise of Kant's whole Critic of Pure Reason. His solution, in a word, was to view reason as recreating it's own idea, in the original Greek sense of "form", of the original noumenon (the thing-in-itself) by interpreting the filtered sense data of phenomenon that passed through the categories of understanding (like substance, causality, etc.). Some call his solution a form psychologism and I think they are right, but Kant certainly didn't think so. In fact, I think it's not psychologistic enough, though one must be wary of going as far as to try founding everything on psychology, a circular dead end if there was one.

Ultimately, it comes to the question of what kind of knowledge you want: absolute knowledge or human knowledge? I purport absolute knowledge is unknowable (irreducible) to human knowledge in the same way the noumenon is irreducible to the phenomenon, not only by its own definition but by the very way knowledge works (at least for us, meaning in a subject-object duality where the subject cannot simply copy the object it wants to know but must make an inherently reduced image of it, i.e. an idea). I think this problem to be related to the P=NP conundrum. Only if P=NP can we ever hope to achieve absolute knowledge and then that is not even guaranteed (we would need to evolve somehow to transcend the P and NP divide which factually exists in our present human knowledge). As Scott Aaronson of the MIT puts it, "If P=NP, then the world would be a profoundly different place than we usually assume it to be. There would be no special value in “creative leaps,” no fundamental gap between solving a problem and recognizing the solution once it’s found. Everyone who could appreciate a symphony would be Mozart; everyone who could follow a step-by-step argument would be Gauss; everyone who could recognize a good investment strategy would be Warren Buffett. It’s possible to put the point in Darwinian terms: if this is the sort of universe we inhabited, why wouldn’t we already have evolved to take advantage of it?" (from his blog).

>> ^robbersdog49:

Is it just me or is the bloke far left (viewer's view) an idiot? The whole light is invisible thing is just an irritatingly misguided regurgitation of an error. I'll add arrogant as well.
He should listen to more Scrubius Pip.


No, he is nearly making the subtle, but logical distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. Have had this conversation here a lot on the sift. The experience of blue is a very different one than the wavelength of 475 nm (which corresponds to blue for most people). "Light" is a subjective experience not related to real properties of photons. Photons appear bright because through the course of a billion years of evolution, interrupting photons as light, and their corresponding wavelengths as colors has better aided that animal that interrupting them as something else. But that says nothing about photons themselves, only the way in which minds are translating reality.

It is the distinction between Empiricism and Intellectualism. One believing that it takes senses to understand truth, the other, that only the power of pure reason can lead knowledge. I, for one, am mostly under the school of intellectualism as it pertains to epistemology. I trust the power of reason and logic to find truth, not eyeballs and olfactories.

>> ^Nebosuke:

>> ^robv:
Ron Paul doesn't believe in evolution. That's not logical. Therefor I can't support him.

Paul is usually reasonable, but the "evolution is a theory" is a game killer.


What game are you playing? Would you rather one that believes in it and never ending war? Also, anyone in medicine believes in evolution, he just doesn't believe it is the complete explanation for life on this planet. (to which many different people hold in fact. Some think that the particles for life come from outer space, or even that those particles were already organic and life didn't originate here...there are many non-evolutionary based ideas here. The debate to the origins of the first life on this planet are not as simple as invoking "evolution". It is still a hot area of debate, and one I take particular interest in.)


"(as if something that is a proven scientific FACT needs belief)"

Firstly, philosophically, belief means any cognitive content held as true. Everything you "think" is, philosophically, what you believe. Belief is your personal, subjective position.

Knowledge is defined as right and true belief. To make the claim something is knowledge, you have to be able to show it is true. Science isn't a method of showing things to be true, but things to be false (you start with a statement "all doves are white", this statement is emperically true until you find you first black dove; the practice of empiricism works on negative evidence). Philosophically speaking, the only path to knowledge is rationalism, not empiricism (as pointed out by Kant's noumena and phenomena). There is no scientific/empirical claim that is irrefutable (meaning certain: without any doubt: can be shown that it can't, and never will, be otherwise (positive evidence)). Certain, without any doubt, is what is meant by the word truth. Knowledge being true (or certain) belief means one can say, logically, that any information gathered empirically isn't knowledge. Is there any scientific fact that hasn't be usurped by later scientific facts? Not even motion has even been certain, which is far less complex than evolution, and we see motion everyday.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

(I largely believe in most of evolution btw)

PS (this comment brought to you by parentheticals...use them love them, overuse them!)

"...profit is the signal which tells us what we must do in order to serve people whom we do not know..."

So only through data from profit, economic success, can we determine the success of something. A doctor that makes money is a good doctor even his patients aren't healed. Or a farmer that makes money is a good farmer even if he grows unhealthy food.

But wait, it's people we do not know. A so called “extended society" where “... we all working for people we do not know and are being supported by people we do not know...”. Who are these people we do not know? Are they off the census or do they live underground in the sewers? How many people don't know their boss, or the company they where they work? I can trace almost anything I buy. Sellers, distributors, transporters, manufacturers, and even the farmers and miners are findable. Look at the lot numbers on an object and you can trace it's history with some work.

I understand that Hayek is taking the epistemological limits and applying them to economics and his “people we don't know” is a representation of the unknown beyond limits of human knowledge. But his fundamental basis is false. An economy is not beyond human understanding. It is not divine power that provides by magic our wants and needs. They economy is made of real people and real stuff.

Maybe later I'll deconstruct Hayek's assertion that “... socialism assumes that all available knowledge can be used by a single central authority.”